Tech startup Slice raises $7M for equity compensation platform

Dive Brief:

Israeli tech startup Slice has raised $7 million in seed funding for its platform designed to ease challenges faced by businesses as they award equity-based compensation such as stock options to employees worldwide, according to a recent announcement.
The startup is focused on enabling companies with global workforces to offer such compensation, while also complying with a complex patchwork of applicable regulations across geographic jurisdictions.
“There is a lack of uniformity among these laws and regulations, and they are constantly changing,” Slice CEO Maor Levran said in an interview, adding that violations can lead to financial penalties for both companies and employees. He said the company’s platform reduces the burden on those who manage such equity issues, often CFOs and corporate finance teams.

Dive Insight:

The funding round was led by led by TLV Partners, with participation from R-Squared Ventures, Jibe Ventures, and law firms Wilson Sonsini and Fenwick & West, according to a press release.

The funding will be used to further develop the platform and expand the number of countries that it covers, Levran said.

Equity has become a significant part of talent compensation packages as the job market has become more competitive, the release said. The problem for companies is that issuing equity is now “a minefield riddled with complex and ever-changing tax laws and regulations that greatly differ from country to country making it extremely challenging for companies to avoid compliance risks and financial penalties,” it said.

A rise in global workforces in recent years — accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic — has only compounded the situation, according to Levran, who spent 13 years as a corporate lawyer before co-founding Slice in 2022. Not only did the pandemic boost global hiring trends, it also drove an uptick in worker relocations, including among senior-level executives who tend to receive a lot of equity, he said.

According to the release, Slice’s artificial intelligence-powered platform optimizes tax for all types of equity grants; continuously analyzes changes in equity regulation and taxation; and sends alerts to employers and employees who are at risk of legal and tax exposure.

The company currently supports 23 countries on its platform including the U.S., U.K., France, India, Australia, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan and Brazil, with plans to scale to over 100 nations by the end of 2024, the release said.