# HireAthena

> HireAthena is a San Francisco back-office-as-a-service company that pairs a remote, mostly work-from-home workforce with workflow software to handle accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, HR, benefits, tax, and fund administration for startups, non-profits, and small and medium businesses. Founded by Kristen Koh Goldstein in 2010 as BackOps, it merged with her workflow-automation company Scalus and relaunched as HireAthena in 2016, carrying a social mission to bring stay-at-home talent - especially mothers - back into the workforce.

- **Founded:** 2010
- **Headquarters:** San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founders:** Kristen Koh Goldstein (Founder & CEO), Mark Goldstein (Co-Founder), Bob Hiller (Co-Founder)
- **Team size:** ~13 employees (core team; supported by a larger distributed remote workforce)
- **Products:** Accounting & Bookkeeping, Payroll, HR & Benefits, Tax, Fund Administration
- **Notable:** Merged two of founder Kristen Koh Goldstein's companies - BackOps and Scalus - into a single back-office platform, HireAthena, in 2016., Raised $8.65M across seed and Series A rounds from investors including Google Ventures., Backed early by notable angels including Naval Ravikant, Max Levchin and Mark Pincus (across the BackOps/Scalus lineage).

## Products & services

- **Accounting & Bookkeeping** — Day-to-day bookkeeping, monthly financials and financial reporting handled by a dedicated remote team.
- **Payroll** — Payroll processing and administration integrated into a single executive dashboard.
- **HR & Benefits** — People operations, benefits administration including FSA and 401(k), and HR support.
- **Tax** — Tax preparation and management with top-tier partners.
- **Fund Administration** — Back-office and fund-administration support for micro-funds and investors.
- **Scalus Workflow Software** — Workflow-automation platform enabling rapid onboarding of remote employees, standardized quality and full audit compliance.

## Achievements

- Merged two of founder Kristen Koh Goldstein's companies - BackOps and Scalus - into a single back-office platform, HireAthena, in 2016.
- Raised $8.65M across seed and Series A rounds from investors including Google Ventures.
- Backed early by notable angels including Naval Ravikant, Max Levchin and Mark Pincus (across the BackOps/Scalus lineage).
- Built a distributed remote workforce offering full benefits years before remote work became mainstream.
- Launched a Slack integration in 2016 to embed back-office workflows in team chat.

## Latest updates

- **2016-04** — HireAthena emerges from stealth and launches its on-demand accounting and HR labor marketplace, combining BackOps services with Scalus software.
- **2016-06** — HireAthena unveils a Slack integration to bring back-office approvals and notifications into team chat.
- **2016-10** — Founder Kristen Koh Goldstein publicly leans into women-friendly, remote-work positioning for the workflow software.

## Links

- Website: https://hireathena.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/hireathena
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/HireAthena
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hireathena

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/hireathena
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-11