EquityBee, the startup employees stock options funding solution, announced its recent funding round of $6.6 mn. The round was led by Group11, with participation from Battery Ventures and LocalGlobe. In the past year EquityBee enabled hundreds of Israeli startup employees to exercise their stock options, and now it will leverage its experience and vast Investor Community to support the U.S. market. The company officially announced entering into the US market.
In the United States, Startup employees, the company builders, forgo 50% of $60 bn in unexercised stock options every year. When employees leave their startup, they have a limited amount of time to exercise their stock options before they expire. The cost to exercise can reach hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars, as the employee is required to purchase their stock as well as potentially pay substantial taxes on the theoretical profit at the time of exercising the options. Very few employees have these financial resources available, causing 50% of employees to forgo their stock options, lose their hard-earned equity and the right of participating in the future success of the company they helped to build.
EquityBee connects the startup builders with its Investor Community. This enables the builders to obtain all of the capital they need to exercise their stock options and pay the taxes, become a shareholder and take part in the company’s success.
EquityBee has taken over the Israeli market and brings its global experience to the U.S.: In the past year alone, EquityBee has helped hundreds of employees from more than one hundred different companies including Taboola, MyHeritage, SimilarWeb, MagicLeap, IronSource and many more.
“As a serial entrepreneur and being part of the startup sphere for the last 15 years, I have witnessed countless employees, colleagues, and friends lose out on a significant part of their compensation because they couldn’t afford to exercise the options they worked so hard to earn. EquityBee is changing the situation and helping startup builders. We have successfully solved this problem for Israeli employees, and now EquityBee is ready to support every startup builder in the US,” says Oren Barzilai, CEO of EquityBee. “Our mission is to enable all startup builders to own their hard-earned equity and their share from the company they helped build.”
“The US is home to over 525,000 tech companies employing over 11.2 million tech workers of whom 6 million work for private tech companies. While inconceivable, as it stands today, a vast amount of these workers do not get to exercise or finance their stock options thus lose annually about about $30 Billion. This is why we invested in EquityBee,” says Dovi Frances, Founding Partner at Group 11.
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