Figures, a Paris-based salary benchmarking application, announced on Wednesday that it has secured €6.8M in the Seed round of funding.
Seed-stage venture capitalists Point Nine led the round with participation from existing investors like Seedcamp, Bpifrance, Kima Ventures, and new participants Acadian and Entrée. Figures’ previous funding round was led by Seedcamp in 2021, raising €1.7M.
The announcement comes a couple of months after acquiring its London-based rival Payspective in June 2021 to make a move into the UK market.
Fund utilisation
Figures will use the funds to accelerate tech development, plans to broaden its remit with services including budget forecasting and real-time market tracking, and strengthen benchmarking services, covering shares and benefits.
The French company also plans to invest in developing tools that will help companies define and share their compensation policy and prepare and run their compensation reviews.
The capital will help the French company to expand into new European markets, including Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Nordics.
How was Figures born?
Virgile Raingeard (CEO), who spent his first eleven years working in the HR sector of various industries, got frustrated with the lack of qualitative and reliable data on the compensation market in the startup/scale-up ecosystem.
Then he decided to address the problem with Bastien Formery (CTO) to create a product around his vision.
Thus Figures was born.
Figures CEO, Virgile Raingeard, says, “I created Figures in October 2020 to provide company leaders with reliable compensation data and an overarching product that I would have loved to have during my 11 years of career in HR.
Figures: What you need to know
Founded in 2020, Figures aims to improve how companies manage compensation for their staff. The platform allows companies to benchmark market salaries on over a hundred roles across Europe while managing compensation policy.
Figures says it is also helping highlight gender pay issues and allowing businesses to manage their remuneration budget better.
The brand is already well established in many other countries, including France and Germany, helping them to create the most accurate salary benchmarking system currently in operation.
The company’s application can be easily integrated with major HRIS software like Personio, BambooHR, and HiBob, allowing businesses to take a proactive approach toward talent acquisition and retention.
Figures’ solution is used by around 700 European startups/scale-ups to help employers benchmark compensation for specific roles at different company sizes and stages.
Raingeard adds, “We’re helping over 700 companies make fair and efficient compensation decisions, up from less than 200 to start the year. Our growth has been unexpected and exceptional, partly due to our acquisition of Payspective back in May 2022.”
Figures’ expansion in the Netherlands
To learn more about the Netherlands’ expansion and strategies, we reached out to Hakon Junge, GTM and country lead for the Dutch market.
Talking exclusively to Silicon Canals, Junge says, “With the funding, we plan to start building a small but growing dedicated team for the Dutch market as we continue our expansion plans across Europe. We’ve already started hiring locally in Amsterdam.”
At the time of writing this article, Figures is hiring for an “Account Executive” to support the increasing demand. You can click here to apply.
Junge, on the importance of the Dutch market, explains, “The current Dutch market was a clear area for expansion for us as the tech ecosystem has been flourishing but also access to compensation data to support hiring has been a big struggle for local startups to get pay right especially in the current market local and with inflation.”
The company claims to have over 50 customers in the Netherlands since its launch two months ago. The French SaaS company works with startups like Mollie, Biller, Orderchamp, and Trengo and local startup ecosystem partners like Techleap.nl.
He continues, “I myself lead our Dutch efforts and GTM expansion plan, and very early on, the response from the Dutch market has been overwhelmingly positive, so we’re doubling down our efforts.”
According to Junge, Figures is adding roughly 10 Dutch startups/scale-up companies to the Benchmark per week, offering them 12 months of access FREE to Figures.
On September 13th, Figures is hosting its first flagship event in Amsterdam, “Closing the gap: Creating irresistible organizations with Fair Pay for all.”
You can check out more details about the event here.
Investor
Point Nine is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on B2B SaaS and online marketplaces. Since its inception in 2011, the firm has invested in more than 140 startups in more than 30 countries.
Louis Coppey, Partner at Point Nine, comments, “At Point Nine, we’ve invested in multiple HR tech software over the past ten years such as 15five in 2013, Factorial in 2018, or Pento in 2019. No matter the funding and the talent market environment, we believe compensation management is a category in HRtech that’s ripe for disruption, and Figures has a headstart in the European market. We’ve been most impressed by Virgile and his team’s deep expertise in the topic and very much look forward to partnering with them as they disrupt the incumbents with a data-centric, software-first approach.”
