New fintech platform from the founders of Kabbage® secures $9 million seed round for first real innovation in compensation since the introduction of stock options
SAN JOSE, California—May 18, 2022—Keep Financial, the technology company revolutionizing compensation to enhance recruiting and retention, today announced the KeepTM platform and its initial Keep Vesting Cash Plans. With Keep, companies can attract and retain high-quality employees with upfront cash payments that vest over time, supporting an employee’s personal goal such as a down payment on a house, repaying student loans, investing for retirement, and more.
An easy-to-use platform, Keep works for any industry and in a variety of use cases, including differentiating job offers in a crowded labor market, targeting key workers at competitive firms, retaining employees in the wake of M&A activity, ensuring key employees feel valued, and more.
Andreessen Horowitz led Keep’s $9 million seed round with additional investment from Launchpad Capital, Thomvest Ventures, Cambrian Ventures, and Worklife Ventures. The company’s co-founders include CEO Rob Frohwein and President Kathryn Petralia, who previously co-founded Kabbage®, a cash flow management fintech that was acquired by American Express in 2020.
“The war for talent is real, but the current approach to compensation – from stock options to spot bonuses – is broken. Companies have trouble designing compensation for retention and performance, while employees struggle to understand how their accomplishments are tied to their earnings,” said Frohwein. “Keep was designed to unlock the full potential of companies by enabling them to hire and retain the exact people they need in terms of performance, culture, industry expertise and more. In the world of Keep, cash truly is king and the focus is on finding and retaining the most impactful employees that will drive growth and profitability for the company.”
Keep’s Vesting Cash Plans allow employers to offer a portion of compensation as usable cash, delivered to employees upfront, and vested or forgiven over time. In return, the employees commit to remaining active, supportive workers during that time period. Keep’s Vesting Cash Plans can range from a few thousand dollars for entry-level jobs with high turnover rates to six figures or more for senior roles requiring specific skills and experience, ensuring it is a compensation option across the entire labor market.
Benefits of the Keep platform include:
- Improves the hiring process by offering immediate benefit to the employee
- Rewarding vesting cash plans to increase retention
- Reduces the administrative burden for human resources (HR) teams
- Scalable platform for implementing this new form of compensation
- Flexible and simple to use for any sized organization
- Regulatory and compliance management
- Performance and retention monitoring of employees
- Clear analytics to generate internal return on investment (ROI)
Rick Jensen, former Head of People at HeadSpace and Intuit, commented: “Keep could save HR teams countless hours in repeat recruiting and millions in lost institutional knowledge by helping companies attract, secure, and ultimately retain the top talent needed to succeed in the industry.”
To learn more about Keep, or to join the Beta program, visit keepfinancial.com
If you’re attending Finovate Spring this week in San Francisco, stop by for a live demo of the Keep platform at 2:05pm. Co-founder Rob Frohwein of Keep will also be at LendIt FinTech on May 26th to speak on the topic of embedded fintech.
About Keep Financial Technologies, Inc.
Keep Financial is revolutionizing compensation to enhance recruiting and retention – aligning compensation with business objectives, ROI, and performance. Through the intuitive KeepTM platform, employers can create customizable Vesting Cash Plans to attract top talent, assure retention, and increase overall employee satisfaction and productivity. Keep’s Vesting Cash takes compensation to an entirely new level – providing employees with usable capital up front to satisfy personal goals while enabling employers to retain talent to secure the business’ long term success. Keep is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Launchpad Capital, Thomvest Ventures and Cambrian Ventures.
To learn more about Keep and start attracting and retaining talent Today, visit keepfinancial.com
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