Go Figure: Transforming Compensation and Pay Equity
Software has introduced efficiency to many aspects of our day-to-day lives. Everything from applying to a job, signing up for an interview, and communicating with your employees — it’s all 10x better than it was decades ago.
Except for compensation.
For employees who are trying to evaluate an offer, there’s a lot of sleuthing involved. Is my salary fair? How does this role compare with others in the ecosystem? What will this equity be worth at the current valuation of the company? What if I leave the company in two years? The process is inefficient and frustrating.
How we are paid and rewarded for our jobs is critical — and in today’s warfare-like environment for talent — being clear and transparent about what someone is worth is a competitive advantage.
Enter Figure. When I met co-founders Geoffrey Tisserand and Miles Hobby for the first time, I was shocked to hear so little innovation had occurred in the ecosystem for years. Both founders held dream jobs at some of the fastest growing companies in the Valley: Instacart, Uber, Checkr — and yet, still felt the pain of understanding how their salary was decided, what their equity meant long term and how they were being valued compared to others. Imagine how opaque other titles and roles felt if engineers (being the most highly sought after talent) felt they were in the dark!
And this was only from the employee side.
If you ask any HR leader or people ops manager — gathering compensation data, understanding what it means for your organization, getting it approved, denied, approved again, day after day, role after role — in the rapid hiring environment of the Valley is a nightmare. The process is brutally manual, and worse, very expensive. Fast-growing startups are forced to buy data that is typically 6–12 months old — but it’s the only benchmark they have to make decisions — beyond their referral networks which can be unreliable.
Figure offers a complete platform that promotes pay transparency — not just because it’s the right thing to do — but because it is the competitive thing to do. Figure provides companies with tools to educate candidates and employees on their total compensation (all parts of it: equity, benefits, salary, and bonuses.) With Figure you don’t get an offer letter with hard to understand information — you get a dynamic document. This in turn gives you access to the complete compensation management system that becomes the system of record for all compensation related decisions, pre and post hire (including long term compensation bands and prevention of pay inequities).
At CRV, we are delighted to lead the $7.5M financing round, alongside a fantastic syndicate including Bling Capital, BTV, Naval Ravikant, Jason Calacanis, Steve Huffman, Des Traynor and others — and welcome Figure to the CRV family which includes Airtable, DoorDash, Zendesk, Twitter and more. As former engineers, Geoffrey and Miles bring a unique perspective to the creation of Figure with an appreciation for how the best product will set the standard. I’m proud to back them and their vision for changing one of the most important factors of the technology and business world: compensation & employee value.
The most important thing is always your employees — and when you use the right tools to educate employees, show them what they are worth, and how they can grow with your company’s success — it leads to greater employee retention and a happier and more successful company.
We invite you to join Figure’s mission to reimagine compensation. We’re hiring.
