Pave Secures Series B Valued at $400 Million and Releases Free, Real-Time Compensation Benchmarking

By AIT News Desk On Aug 11, 2021

Pioneering a New Era for Pay Transparency and Fairness, Comp Tech Category Leader Announces Availability of Free Benchmarking Data

Pave, the leading compensation technology platform, announced today that it has raised $46 million in Series B funding led by the YC Continuity Fund and has welcomed Ali Rowghani to its board. The round also includes participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and others. Pave integrates directly with customers’ HR and equity systems so that customers have access to real-time compensation data and never have to use spreadsheets for compensation surveys, merit cycles, or total rewards statements again.

“Y Combinator Continuity is excited to partner with Pave so that every startup in the world can gain access to Pave’s real-time benchmarking data and broader suite of compensation tools”

Effective today, Pave is making its real-time compensation benchmarking data portal widely available for free. API-powered with no manual data entry, companies can sign up here to integrate HRIS, ATS, and Cap Table systems in minutes to unlock benchmarking data based on 65,000 anonymized employee records from more than 25 participating VC partners such as Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz and others across 900-plus companies.

“Y Combinator Continuity is excited to partner with Pave so that every startup in the world can gain access to Pave’s real-time benchmarking data and broader suite of compensation tools,” said Ali Rowghani, Managing Partner of Y Combinator Continuity and Pave’s newest board member.

“Compensation is more stressful than ever,” said Matt Schulman, Pave Founder and CEO. “We believe everyone is entitled to fair market information. We’re focused on unlocking insights and helping companies make informed and equitable decisions about their compensation packages, and we are excited to partner with investors who share our vision.”

The pandemic has accelerated workplace shifts, creating an urgency for real-time insights amid a genuine need for greater transparency and pay parity as employees increasingly work in hybrid or remote environments, relocate, or change jobs. Pave’s platform leverages its real-time data so that companies can react quickly to flux in the labor market. Currently, Pave offers three core products:

Plan: Frictionlessly administers bonuses and equity refreshers during merit cycles with customizable recommendation and approval workflows that help leaders turn their compensation philosophy into reality.
Communicate: Extends visual offers and total compensation statements to candidates and employees, empowering them to model out their total compensation package and a potential exit on their equity.
Benchmark: Taps into thousands of real-time compensation benchmarks to determine how much to pay anyone from a software engineer to a sales rep, helping companies to attract and retain top talent.

“Pave helps our managers visually plan and transparently communicate all aspects of compensation to our employees in a seamless, easy-to-use platform,” said Discord’s Head of Total Rewards & HR Operations, Irene Canes-Vargas.

Founded in 2019 with products in market by mid 2020, Pave has experienced tremendous growth across all indicators, including increased revenue of 25x since the Series A in late 2020, an ecosystem of more than 30 integrations and growth from 9 to 50+ employees in 7 months. The new funding supports Pave’s goal to democratize access to compensation data for every company from start-ups to the Fortune 500.

Pave recently launched the Pave Data Lab, showcasing compensation trends in the market backed by Pave’s real-time dataset. According to Lab data, the average equity value issued to a female engineer is 64% of that granted to their male counterpart.

Marc Andreessen weighed in on the investment in Pave: “Companies are caught in a deep philosophical debate around how to compensate in a post-COVID era, and Pave will be the first to know as the market moves.”