Maria Colacurcio of Syndio Solutions during the GeekWire Elevator Pitch finals at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle in 2019. (GeekWire Photo / Dan DeLong)

Syndio, the Seattle startup that works to eliminate gaps in pay equity, has raised $17.1 million in new funding, the company announced Thursday.

The new investment, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, comes just eight months after Syndio raised $7.5 million in a Series A round in May 2020.

“We have seen incredible demand in 2020, and this investment gives us the ability to innovate faster, creating new products that address some of the most difficult and embedded problems organizations face,” Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio said in a statement.

The startup’s so-called EquityTech analytics software, and flagship product PayEQ, analyzes salaries, rooting out discriminatory differences in pay that are tied to gender, race, ethnicity or age while providing strategies for fixing those disparities. Syndio says more than 100 companies, including Nordstrom, Salesforce, Slack, Adobe and others, use the product across 2.3 million employees.

The cash infusion will be used to “drive rapid product development across opportunity equity, benchmarking, and workforce analytics,” the company said.

Colacurcio previously told GeekWire that the COVID-19 pandemic had increased the risk of pay equity because “when survival is priority No. 1, fairness takes a back seat.” The company has released research around the impact of COVID on women in the workplace and a white paper on race and pay equity.

The death of George Floyd and subsequent social justice protests have also been a tailwind for Syndio as companies put more attention and awareness on equity in the workplace. In addition, lawmakers are increasingly enacting new legislation related to pay equity.

Despite the struggles of the health and economic crisis, Syndio says its annual recurring revenue nearly tripled during 2020.

Emerson Collective and Voyager Capital also participated in the Series B round. Byron Deeter and Talia Goldberg from Bessemer joined the Syndio board.

“Workplace fairness is no longer simply ‘nice to have.’ Legal requirements are expanding state-by-state and globally, but perhaps more importantly, equity and transparency are becoming necessary ingredients for workplaces to attract and retain the best talent,” Byron Deeter, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, said in a statement.

Data scientist and law professor Zev Eigen launched Syndio in 2017; Colacurcio joined in 2018. Syndio won GeekWire’s Elevator Pitch competition in 2019 and the 33-person company raised a $5.2 million seed round in January 2019.

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