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New York, NY – January 10th, 2024 – Today marks a significant milestone for Incentiv, as we proudly announce the closure of our $3M seed funding round, led by leading venture firm Bowery Capital. This investment is a testament to our vision and our commitment to helping growth equity and private equity firms attract, motivate and retain world class executive talent across their global portfolios.
Our Story
Incentiv's journey began from a simple yet profound realization – comp has gotten increasingly complicated, while the tools talent leaders have at their disposal to support their decision making have not changed in years. After sitting through hundreds of board meetings and managing internal benchmarking data, Incentiv co-founder and CEO, Matt Fanelli recognized that the current system for making executive compensation decisions was not only unsustainable but also leading to costly outcomes for both investment firms and their portfolio companies.
“From when I started as an associate in 2016, we were using a single spreadsheet of internal benchmarks across our firm to help us make million dollar exec comp decisions on a weekly basis,” said Matt Fanelli, Incentiv co-founder and former private equity investor at Permira Advisers. “Yet fast forward almost ten years, as comp decisions have gotten increasingly complicated with nuances in equity plans, time vs. performance vesting, and employment terms, we were using the same spreadsheet which had ballooned in size, was impossible to keep up-to-date, and became a pain for our portfolio companies to engage with. The more I spoke with other leading investment firms, we quickly learned that we were not alone.” What started as an effort to make things more efficient internally, evolved into a mission to redefine how compensation decisions are made across private equity for both investors and corporate executives.
The status quo is costing PE firms time, money, and top talent.
Compensation is more than just cash and equity. It’s connecting the dots between individual and company-wide incentives to create a cohesive program that motivates an executive team and drives solid business performance. Yet getting access to relevant benchmarking data to help inform key decisions in the private markets is difficult...
…and the stakes have never been higher. As the talent war rages on, in any given comp decision millions of dollars are at stake – a 2% miss on a $50M comp package is $1M - and investors are making 100s of these decisions a year. Today it’s still common for investment firms to use a combination of surveys reports, spreadsheets of internal benchmarks, and even intuition to inform these decisions but the process has become time-intensive, complex, and often incomplete.
Better outcomes are now possible (better data → better decisions)
The Incentiv platform was designed from the ground up to address the unique compensation and talent management challenges of private market investors. Our solution leverages innovative technology including advancements in generative AI to help investment firms and private companies accomplish 3 major things:
- Save time & money: Seamlessly collect relevant benchmarks to calibrate your decisions to the market - so talent leaders don’t overspend or under-motivate.
- Make better decisions: Access the most comprehensive set of metrics updated in real-time to inform decisions across all types of management incentives.
- Attract top talent: Land your dream exec team with data-driven offer packages.
“We’ve sat through hundreds of board meetings where executive compensation and talent decisions continue to arise. We’re often asked by our portfolio executives ‘what is market for [x]?’ and struggle to answer. The only solution we could trust seemed to be to collect data from our own portfolio companies but that process was manual and time-intensive – until now. Incentiv’s ability to seamlessly collect comprehensive, fresh, and trustworthy data within and across firms so board rooms can be confident in their decisions is a game changer.” said Loren Straub, General Partner at Bowery Capital. “We are thrilled to back Incentiv and look forward to seeing them transform how growth equity and private equity firms attract & motivate executive talent across their global portfolios.”
With this new funding, we aim to enhance our core platform, build out our go-to-market team, and introduce new features that delight our customers and help them make better data-driven decisions when it comes to all things incentives and talent management – from company equity plans & bonus pools to individual executive compensation & employment terms.
We are immensely grateful for the support and trust placed in us by Bowery Capital and our other investors, many of whom are the same private equity sponsors clamoring for a better solution. Their belief in our vision fuels our passion and commitment to making Incentiv a market leader and innovator.
With their backing, we have already partnered with some of the world’s leading investment firms to transform their incentive decision management and look forward to what’s to come.
Now, back to work.
About Incentiv
Incentiv was co-founded by Matt Fanelli, Chris Chi and Yash Kochar to empower growth equity and private equity firms to attract, motivate and retain world class executive talent across their global portfolios. Incentiv’s innovative approach has attracted attention from top-tier investors, securing significant funding to expand our impact and reach. Our client roster includes some of the most well-known names in private equity.
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