hr
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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.
Gusto
Gusto is a cloud-based payroll, benefits, and HR platform built for small and medium-sized businesses. Founded in 2011 as ZenPayroll by Josh Reeves, Tomer London, and Edward Kim, the company has grown to serve over 500,000 businesses and recently crossed $1 billion in annual revenue. Gusto handles everything from payroll runs and tax filings to health insurance, 401(k) plans, and employee onboarding - replacing what used to require a patchwork of accountants, brokers, and spreadsheets with a single platform. The company also offers Gusto Embedded, a payroll API that lets other software platforms build payroll directly into their products. Valued at roughly $9.5 billion, Gusto remains private and is widely considered a leading IPO candidate in the HR tech space.
Every
Every is an all-in-one back-office platform for startup founders, bundling free incorporation, business banking, corporate cards, treasury, payroll, HR, benefits, bookkeeping, and taxes into a single dashboard. Founded in 2021 by Rajeev Behera and Barry Peterson and headquartered in San Francisco, the company raised a $22.5M Series A led by Redpoint Ventures in September 2024 to keep replacing the patchwork of tools that consume founders' time.