FinTech firm aimed to help companies structure their compensation plans and transparently communicate them to their workers Figure raised $7.5m in seed funding led by CRV.
Bling Capital, Better Tomorrow Ventures and Garage Capital also participated in the financing, along with angel investors such as AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, Jason Calacanis, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman and other executives based in Silicon Valley.
The company plans to use its new capital to expand its product offerings and scale its organisation.
Founded by Miles Hobby and Geoffrey Tisserand last year, the company was formed with the aim to improve workflows and transparency around pay, particularly equity.
After working at tech players such as Uber and Instacart, Hobby and Tisserand launched the firm after realising that not knowing one’s equity stake is a real pain point for employees. They developed Figure’s user-friendly platform to help employees easily understand concepts such as tax implications, whether they need to buy the stock and/or hold onto it as well as salary, benefits and bonuses.
Alongside educating on equity, Figure aims to help companies make decisions around pay and equity fairer in a bid to reduce inequality and remove implicit biases that exist around those decisions.
Hobby told Techcrunch, “We saw a void in this kind of context around equity…and knew that there had to be a better way for companies to structure, manage and explain their compensation plans.”
Tisserand said that Figure was designed to help stop instances of ethnic and gender bias. “Compensation should be based on the work that you’re doing, and not gender or ethnic background,” he said. “We’re trying to give that context and remove biases. So, we’re trying to help at two different stages –– to surface inequities that already exist and make sure there are no anomalies, and then to help stop them before they can exist.”
Hobby added, “Our goal is for Figure to become an operating system for compensation, where a company can encode their compensation philosophy into our system, and we help them determine their job architecture, compensation bands and offer numbers while monitoring their compensation health to provide adjustment suggestions when needed.”
The startup already boasts of a client list that includes startups such as FinTechs Brex and NerdWallet and AI-powered fitness company Tempo.
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