The hiring market is hot and becoming more complex as enterprise talent acquisition leaders confront technology gaps when assessing candidates. This makes it difficult to determine compensation.
Compa. Compa is a deal management platform that allows recruiters to manage their compensation strategies and create and communicate offers that are clear and objective.
Charlie Franklin, Compa's co-founder and CEO, said that losing a candidate during the compensation stage was frustrating. Therefore, the company developed its software to help reduce the need to rely on crowdsourcing data or surveys for comparing pay.
Franklin explained to TechCrunch that recruiters often lack the tools and data to determine how much to pay employees and communicate this effectively. Talent acquisition teams are like sales teams to us. It is clear that they must close a candidate. However, asking the recruiter to use a spreadsheet slows down that process.
Compa allows recruiters to input their pay expectations, compare offers and collaborate with others and hiring managers to achieve pay consensus faster. Compa provides real-time market intelligence and insights into compensation across similar industries.
Base10 Partners provided seed funding of $3.9 million to the company. The company is based in California and Massachusetts. Crosscut Ventures and Acadian Ventures participated in the round, as did a group strategic angel investors, including Tony Jamous, Oyster HR CEO Tony Jamous, Stan Garber, Alex Yakubovich, and Scout RFP cofounders.
Jamison Hill (partner at Base10 Partners) stated via email that his firm was conducting research on the ESG megatrend and specifically looking for startups that focus on compensation management. When it found Compa, he said.
Attracted by the founders' clarity and conviction about the companys vision, understanding of the market pay gap, how Compas solution could create a new wave smarter, data-driven recruiting teams, and how it was enabling employers use compensation and positive offer management to distinguish themselves from their competitors, he was drawn to Compas.
Hill said that they are very familiar with the nuances of enterprise-level HR teams. They bring this expertise to all aspects of Compa's product offerings. This is why Compa believes it can be a leader in this market and chose to partner up with this team.
Franklin, who had previously been in charge of human resources M&A at Workday's, co-founded Compa last year along with Joe Malandruccolo (who was an engineer at Facebook and Oculus) and Taylor Cone (who has provided innovation consulting services for organizations such as Stanford University).
Franklin stated that the company was founded from scratch prior to seeking seed funding. Franklin explained that the capital will be used to grow the team and to create new products that are in line with its mission to make compensation fair and competitive for all.
He says that the future will see changes in the way people work and how they are compensated. Compensation will become an important aspect of remote work and the ability to attract diverse workers.
Franklin stated that this is a long-term trend in HR compensation. It's not just an internal spreadsheet, but a shift from being secretive to transparent and accountable. We have the technology to create pay differences. Technology is catching up.
