Syndio is solving pay equity gaps in the workplace

As venture investors, we are in the business of partnering with and supporting high performance teams with bold visions. To cultivate a world-class workplace and attract and retain the best talent, companies must eliminate disparities across race, gender, ethnicity, and other protected classes.

Pay disparities remain pervasive even in companies that claim to take action. This leads to lawsuits, underperformance, attrition, and frustration over a lack of transparency. Recent cultural movements including Black Lives Matter, Me Too, and Time's Up shine light on these inequities and further demonstrate the need for companies to act with urgency.

Today, we are proud to announce our Series B investment in Syndio – a rapidly growing analytics platform with a mission to ensure fairness and equity are part of every employment decision. Syndio’s data science and AI-powered software helps enterprises quickly assess and resolve pay gaps with real-time analytics, empowering leaders to do the right thing while also doing what is best for their business. Already, Syndio’s HR platform is used by companies employing more than 2.3 million people across the United States — including at leading enterprises like Salesforce, Adobe, Hyatt, Nordstrom, Slack, and Stitch Fix.

We first met Syndio’s CEO Maria Colacurcio by way of Emerson Collective, the social change organization founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. Maria brings 20 years of experience to Syndio, after co-founding Smartsheet, a work collaboration tool, and holding many leadership roles in technology and communications at companies such as Microsoft and Starbucks.

Because of Syndio’s ambition, we instantly connected with Maria and the broader leadership team, which includes Zev Eigen, founder and chief data scientist, and Rob Porcarelli, chief legal counsel. Maria, Zev and Rob believe that interested enterprises can solve pay inequities through software, rather than relying on manual, outdated processes and expensive, outsourced consultants. The universally positive customer feedback and best-in-class growth solidified our enthusiasm for Syndio.

The company’s initial PayEq product leverages sophisticated data science and AI to identify, remediate, and monitor pay gaps in the enterprise. But this is just the beginning. Syndio is quickly expanding its offerings to include analytics for recruiters to calculate equitable starting pay, dashboards for employees to better understand their compensation, and tools for enterprises to assess their compensation policies relative to industry benchmarks. As companies cultivate workplace equity and employees demand that their employers act, Syndio has the potential to become the de-facto, trusted solution and market standard.

We feel privileged to partner with Maria and the Syndio team to support their mission of creating equitable and inclusive workplaces.