Zurich-based Ledgy has been encouraging a culture of ownership across Europe’s business landscape since 2017. Now, the startup has just picked up €22 million to fuel the expansion of its platform.
Retaining and attracting top talent has become one of the biggest challenges HR teams have to overcome in recent years. For startups in particular, it can be tough to retain talent especially when having to compete with the salaries and perks that big corporate companies can offer. So, many now offer equity to their employees and a new culture of ownership is emerging.
The equity landscape is pretty complex and can be hard to navigate, so while teams may want to use it to retain talent, it’s not necessarily easy to do so. Zurich-based Ledgy wants to empower teams with the tools they need to leverage the full value of equity. The company has just picked up €22 million to expand its product and accelerate the mission forward.
Funding details
The €22 million Series B round was led by global venture capital firm, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from Sequoia Capital, Speedinvest, btov, Visionaries Club and VI Partners, as well as existing angel investors.
It comes one year after closing a Series B round at $10 million, which saw Luciana Lixandru (Partner, Sequoia) join Ledgy’s board.
As part of the Series B funding, Jonathan Golden, Partner at NEA, will also now join the Ledgy board. Ledgy will use the funds to hire top-class talent, increase the pace of product and feature development, and solidify its market presence in Europe.
Jonathan Golden, Partner at NEA added: “Through my lens as an investor at NEA, combined with my past experience at category-defining companies like Airbnb, Dropbox and Hubspot, I’ve seen the central role ownership plays in building enduring companies. The equity management challenge is especially acute in Europe, with different legal structures governing equity in every country. Ledgy has created a smart and powerful equity software platform and built an incredible, best-in-class team to support it. Yoko, Ben and Timo understand the challenges faced by companies as they scale, and we are thrilled to partner with the Ledgy team as they continue to reinvent how companies think about equity and ownership.”
Leveraging the power of equity
Founded in 2017 by CEO, Yoko Spirig, Chief Product Officer, Ben Brandt and CTO, Timo Horstschäfer, Ledgy was created to transform the way companies handle equity. The platform supports high-growth companies by enabling them to better understand their cap tables so they can successfully raise the funds they need while motivating and retaining employees by demonstrating what their equity ownership really means.
It’s helping companies attract, engage, incentivise and retain top international talent – a key value point in this competitive job market. Ledgy moves equity management off of high-maintenance, error-prone spreadsheets and onto a platform that gives all company stakeholders (i.e. founders, investors and employees) visibility and insight into what the equity ownership component of their remuneration packages means to them.
Further, the platform can run different country-specific equity plans side-by-side – which is incredibly useful for high-growth startups which are often working on a global level. With it, leadership teams can trust that the platform will treat all stakeholders fairly, and provide a single source of truth. Bringing this complex landscape into one platform also relieves the financial team of complex administrative processes and enables HR and People Teams to confidently hire cross-border talent.
The tool integrates with secondary platform Semper, compensation benchmarking platforms Pave and Figures as well as over 40 HRIS platforms, such as Hibob, Personio and Workday. Thanks to its usability, it has been adopted as the equity management partner of choice for over 50 VC firms and accelerators such as Techstars, Entrepreneur First and APX. Startup clients include some of the big guns of Europe’s ecosystem, including Getir, Kry, Monese, Selina Finance, Gorillas, Choco, Alan, Pennylane, Scalapay, and wefox.
Peak is an AI company working with Ledgy. The Finance Director, John Fraser, said: “Company culture, team engagement and employee wellbeing have always been incredibly important to us at Peak. Part of that is always looking to build a more productive and meaningful culture of ownership within the team. Working with Ledgy, we have created a new share option award across the business. It’s been well received and knocked days – not hours, days – off the process for my team. Compared to what we had before, it’s night and day.”
Now, the fast-growing company wants to supercharge its expansion and enhance product development, building this culture of ownership to more companies across Europe and changing how employees feel valued in their team.
Ledgy Co-founder and CEO, Yoko Spirig: “In the past 12 months we have enjoyed double-digit monthly growth. We have gone from 15 to 65 employees, expanded our customer base to over 45 countries and 2,500 companies, opened a London office and grown our presence in Berlin, and we’re just getting started. The participation of top tier VCs in our Series B is significant for two reasons. First, it’s a powerful validation of Ledgy and our strong growth in the 12 months since our Series A. Second, it reflects a significant trend in which leading US investors are increasing their exposure to the European continent by partnering with the best companies in what is a fast-growing and vibrant startup ecosystem.”
