Assemble, a compensation platform for forward-thinking organizations, announced a $5M seed round led by Susa Ventures. Goldcrest Capital and several angel investors participated in the oversubscribed round, including bitcoin investor Anthony Pompliano, former TripActions CPO Leslie Crowe, former Stripe Head of Corporate Finance Stacie Faggioli, and former Palantir CFO Colin Anderson.
“Compensation has evolved in the last 5 years. What was table stakes has become an important vector for companies to authentically differentiate themselves on,” explains DoorDash Chief People Officer Katy Shields. “Many compensation tools are fractured – handling pieces of the system. Assemble’s platform addresses the whole organization, helping leaders make better and more consistent compensation decisions, at a faster clip.”
HR Technology News: HR Technology Highlights – HR Tech Daily Round-Up For 12-Jan-2022
Aggressive Growth
Since taking the platform to market in the spring of 2021, Assemble has seen dramatic growth, growing ARR at almost 50% per month compounded. Over the previous quarter, the company grew ARR 4x and more than doubled its customer base while nearly tripling the ACV (average contract value) for new customers.
“We’ve seen strong adoption by companies known for their operationally sophisticated People and Finance departments, who not only care about fair and equitable pay, but also want to decentralize decision-making and support sophisticated dynamic planning and forecasting” explains Enrique Esclusa, cofounder of Assemble.
Assemble boasts dozens of mid-size to enterprise customers, mostly in the technology industry, including ServiceTitan, Sourcegraph, and Kandji. Customers are increasing spend significantly since adopting the Assemble platform as they expand access of their own compensation strategy and data to more stakeholders to support new use cases and empower better decision making throughout the organization.
“Assemble enables us to drive our rapid headcount growth, and has been integral in empowering us to grow Kandji’s headcount by 5X in 2021” reports Kandji CEO Adam Pettit. “By providing our leaders with crucial visibility and the ability to self-service, Assemble’s platform is the source of truth at Kandji for workforce decisions, eliminating countless hours of work previously spent on compensation and empowering us to attract and retain top talent as we rapidly scale our business.”
The Assemble platform is built on what Assemble calls a company’s “Foundation,” a single source of truth for a company’s unique compensation strategy, system, and associated processes. “Organizations must start by aligning around their strategic intention,” explains co-founder Lisa Wallace. Assemble layers this with a real-time view of a company’s employee population, pulled in from systems of record like HRIS, ATS, and cap table management system. Product modules are built on top, such as compensation planning, pay equity monitoring, and illustrative offer letters, to make and communicate decisions to attract and retain employees. At scale, Assemble will be the system every leader and department at a high-performing organization uses to engage with compensation and human capital data to make better decisions faster.
“Compensation is a shared responsibility across the organization, whether it’s employees, recruiters, hiring managers, or leadership,” explains Lisa Wallace, cofounder of Assemble. “Each stakeholder must be empowered with the right tools and data to do their part in making the right decisions for the company and employees alike.”
HR Technology News: Gartner Recognizes isolved in Market Guide for Human Capital Management Suites
An Authentic Lived Experience
Cofounders Enrique Esclusa and Lisa Wallace came up with the idea for Assemble after working together at Expanse, a startup experiencing hypergrowth.
Both underrepresented minorities in technology, Esclusa and Wallace grew frustrated with a status quo that, despite good intentions and countless hours, resulted in painful processes and bad outcomes that disproportionately impacted women and minorities. “It was this frustration, at the personal and operational level, that led us to start Assemble,” explained Esclusa.
“Enrique and Lisa have the sales and technical chops to execute and come at this problem from authentic lived experience” explains Courtney Buie-Lipkin, Susa Ventures Partner. “Assemble is doing the important work of making compensation competitive, equitable, and transparent. The opportunity for Assemble is huge. Every company with employees will use a dedicated compensation platform in the future.”
HR Technology News: Businessolver Announces Product Innovations Designed to Elevate Benefits Strategy and Support Employee Engagement
[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]