Ravio raises $10M Seed round led by Northzone to scale its compensation platform to help startups win the talent war

• Ravio has developed a real-time compensation benchmarking and analytics platform to help startups create compensation packages that attract and retain more talent.
• The company is working with unicorns Deliveroo, Truelayer, Flink, Zego and a host of high-growth European startups including Healx, Zoomo and Plum Guide.
• The startup is emerging from stealth and announcing $10 million in seed funding led by Northzone with participation from Cherry Ventures and Spark Capital.

27 April 2022: Today we're delighted to officially launch Ravio and announce our $10 million seed round led by Northzone with participation from Cherry Ventures and Spark Capital.

A talent war that has gone global – for good.

Attracting and retaining talent is the number one challenge for fast-growing tech companies. But it has never been more difficult. The rise of remote work, fast moving markets and the so-called great resignation have seen the war for tech talent go global. In this context getting compensation right - salary, equity and benefits - is critical to stay competitive. Yet, most companies don’t have up to date information on what the market is offering in compensation, or if they are paying their teams fairly.

Ravio enables tech companies to calibrate winning compensation packages for their teams, through a platform that provides access to real-time market benchmarks and compensation analytics. Companies no longer have to be in the dark or use outdated data when making offers and trying to retain their best talent.

Ravio’s core benchmarking product is free and operates on a sharing principle. Companies can anonymously and securely contribute their data, and in exchange access market benchmarks and use filters to compare themselves to similar companies. Ravio’s wider suite of products allows companies to manage and communicate their compensation internally, from running performance review cycles to educating candidates on equity packages and vesting.

Ravio’s three founders have strong track records of launching and scaling high-growth tech businesses. Roy Blanga and Merten Wulfert, who jointly run the company as co-CEOs, have been working together for the past 7 years, most recently at Deliveroo where they built the company’s international operations from scratch and led the business through the hyper-growth stages up to pre-IPO. Roy was COO of Deliveroo, while Merten oversaw the company in APAC and the Middle East. The product and technical team is led by Raymond Siems, CPTO, who has built and sold two startups, most recently in the AI space.

“We’ve experienced first hand how hard it is to hire and retain great teams and scale internationally. Getting compensation right from day one is crucial and it only gets harder the larger you become. When we were growing, we couldn’t find any reliable or real-time data to help us determine the right compensation for each person on our team. We lost great people, and missed out on key hires as a result. We’re surprised that no one has built a better solution to this problem yet” says Roy Blanga, co-CEO.

Michiel Kotting, Partner at Northzone comments: “We see a huge market shift happening which is going to leave behind companies who don’t modernise their approach around compensation. Winning companies will be transparent with compensation in the context of rising prices (inflation, cost of living, logistic costs) and a tighter talent market, especially in tech. Roy, Merten and Raymond are going after a problem that all companies big or small have, and are poised to build a leading company in the category. They have the experience and leadership to tackle all things compensation from salaries to equity and benefits, all big pain points for fast-growing companies.”

A new era for fair and effective compensation.

For decades compensation decision-making has been defined by tedious processes and uncertainty. Companies are faced with filling out old school compensation surveys and waiting months for results that are outdated when they arrive, with critical information such as equity often missing and data gaps for many key job functions. Analysis is largely stuck in spreadsheets, which limits innovation.

Ravio is changing the game. Companies can connect their HR systems with one-click integrations, pulling together salary, equity and benefits information from multiple systems, and start tracking market changes in real-time. Customers can explore market data and compare themselves to companies with similar characteristics such as location, industry, funding raised and headcount growth.

The company has enlisted leading compensation experts with experience from Meta, Amazon, Delivery Hero and Coca-Cola to create a product that builds on existing compensation best-practices, and is taking the space to new levels of sophistication with a data science team from Cambridge and Oxford.

Ravio is working with unicorns Deliveroo, Truelayer, Flink, Zego and a host of high-growth European startups including Healx, Zoomo and Plum Guide. The company is onboarding customers from across Europe, with an initial focus on the UK and Germany.

Thomas Lueke, Partner at Cherry Ventures, says: "We were immediately intrigued by the vision that Merten, Roy and Ray laid out as it matched our experience. The way hiring and especially compensation decisions are made within most companies is still arcane - the process lacks structure and insight. Ravio enables the HR function and the hiring manager with powerful modern tooling to make these very important decisions grounded in data."

A focus on diversity – without data there will be no action.

Ravio enables companies to identify compensation inequalities at individual, job type and company levels - and compare to peers in the market. Whether it be gender, background or other criteria, this offers the most detailed diversity insights available to companies who want to make data-driven changes.

“Awareness has grown significantly in recent years around diversity gaps in compensation and recruitment, although it’s often limited to high-level reporting and discussion. There’s clear research showing that diverse teams are more innovative and successful, and yet too many companies are still struggling to get this right. It’s now about creating tools to drive change and get the job done. Our goal is to empower companies to build better teams and ensure everyone is paid fairly, no matter who they are. We’re convinced that when compensation is done right, everyone wins” says Merten Wulfert, co-CEO.

To bring its vision to life Ravio is hiring for more than 15 positions, including reinforcing the leadership team. With offices in London, Cambridge and a remote presence across Europe - Ravio is looking for motivated talent to continue its growth and innovate in a space that impacts everyone with a job.