Humankind, a people-and-culture firm based in Wellington, New Zealand, acquired The Mintable, a training platform for first-time managers, Startup Daily reported on May 11, 2026. The Mintable was backed by Australian venture firm Blackbird.
Terms were not disclosed. The deal came three years after The Mintable raised its seed round.
The Mintable's platform, which combines a community with training content for new managers, becomes part of Humankind's people-and-culture services. In a joint statement, the two companies said existing customers of both businesses would continue to be supported. They did not say how many staff would move across or whether The Mintable name would be kept.
What The Mintable built
Lauren Humphrey and Melissa Miller started The Mintable in 2021, launching from Sydney and Denver. They set out to fix what they saw as a lasting gap in practical training for people managing a team for the first time.
Humphrey said the product was designed around the realities of leading distributed teams. She said managers were dealing with more complexity than before, often without previous experience, and that joining Humankind would let organisations pair structured management training with in-house people and culture advice as they grow.
Before starting the company, Humphrey, who became chief executive, and Miller, who became chief operating officer, each spent more than ten years developing managers in senior roles at US startups Gusto and Brightwheel. When they raised their seed round in 2022, they said they had interviewed more than 230 managers before launch and found that they wanted hands-on help and a way to connect with other managers.
The main product at the time was Manager Foundations, a four-week virtual programme that had trained more than 600 managers by mid-2022. The founders also planned membership packages for individuals and companies and an AI tool to help managers run one-on-one meetings.
By the time of the sale, The Mintable counted Tracksuit, Sharesies, Lion Food and Beverage and Notion among its clients. Earlier customers named in 2022 included Eucalyptus, Sonder, Dovetail and Heaps Normal.
“Good leadership has an outsized impact on an organisation's ability to perform.”
Why Humankind is buying
For Humankind, which works as a consultancy, the deal adds a software product it can sell alongside its advisory services to growing companies.
Humankind chief executive Kalyn Ponti said good leadership had an outsized effect on how well an organisation performs. She said people were often promoted into management because they were good at their jobs and then expected to lead others with little preparation for the daily work involved.
Ponti said improving leadership capability was already a core part of Humankind's work with executive teams, and that buying The Mintable would help it support clients with this at a larger scale.
The founders and the funding
The Mintable raised about A$8 million (roughly $5.9 million) in total. That included a A$1.3 million (about $0.9 million) pre-seed round in 2021 and a A$6.8 million (about $4.9 million) seed round in June 2022, led by Blackbird. Treble Capital, Startmate, Black Nova, Flying Fox Ventures, Saniel Ventures, The Sypkes Group and Global Founders Capital also invested in the seed round, and several of them had backed the pre-seed alongside angel investors.
Blackbird partner Michael Tolo, who led the seed investment, described the sale as a handover. He said Humphrey, Miller and the team had made a real difference training managers in Australia and beyond, including leaders at many of Blackbird's own portfolio companies, and that the firm was glad the platform would carry on under Humankind.
Neither company disclosed The Mintable's revenue, its number of users or its headcount.
What happens next
For Humankind, the attraction was a ready-made training programme aimed at the problem its chief executive described: employees who are promoted for their individual work and then have to learn to manage others. Instead of building its own course, the consultancy can now offer The Mintable's platform to the growing companies it already advises, alongside its work with their leadership teams.
For Blackbird, the sale was an exit from a company it had backed since the seed round. Because the price was not made public, it is not known how the outcome compared with the roughly A$8 million The Mintable raised from investors. The companies also did not say whether Humphrey and Miller would join Humankind.
