Syndio’s Maria Colacurcio Wants Software To Close The Pay Gap
Maria Colacurcio is the CEO of Syndio. Syndio is an EquityTech platform on a mission to promote pay equity and opportunity in the workplace. Fortune 2000 companies, like Adobe, Nordstrom, General Mills, and Target, use Syndio’s PayEQ software to conduct pay equity analyses and pay every new hire equitably.
Based in Seattle, the team recently raised a Series B round of funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Prior to joining Syndio, Maria co-founded Smartsheet.com and has led teams at Starbucks and Microsoft. She is the proud mom of seven kids.
In honor of Equal Pay Day, we’re excited to highlight Maria’s work to close the gender and race pay gap through technology. Traditionally, “Equal Pay Day” aims to raise awareness of the gender pay gap. In the U.S, this season of dates symbolizes how far into the year the average woman must work to earn what the average man earns in the previous year regardless of job type or experience.
While March 24th represents the average white woman, Equal Pay Days denoting the far wider-than-average gap faced by women of color and mothers are acknowledged throughout the year. Go mark them on your calendar here!
Maria spoke with us while on a walk with her two-month-old, Mila. She shared why more companies should care about pay equity, her hard-earned lessons as a serial entrepreneur, and how she balanced fundraising with seven kids during shelter-in-place.
What is Syndio’s founding story?
Maria Colacurcio: Zev Eigen, our Chief Data Scientist, originally founded Syndio as a people analytics platform. The early version of Syndio was based on organizational network analysis (ONA), which enables large companies to better understand inclusion, relational data, and how work actually gets done. While these are still topics we discuss today, Zev saw a rapidly changing macro-environment around pay equity and started investigating a software solution. I joined the company as its CEO in late 2018. Syndio had just a few employees and a split focus. It was clear we had to put the ONA solution on the shelf to focus on doing pay equity really well. We made a big pivot, but it has paid off.
What motivated you to join the team as the CEO?
Maria: At Starbucks, we were one of the first companies to publicly announce our pay gap. Not many other companies were talking about their pay gap at the time, so this was a big deal. Yet, I wondered why Starbucks couldn’t commit to 100% gender pay equity vs the 98% we announced. I started asking questions to learn more. Through these conversations, I learned what goes into a pay equity analysis and was shocked at the archaic, expensive nature of the process.
During this investigation, Rob Porcarelli, Syndio’s COO who previously ran Employment Law at Starbucks, introduced me to Syndio and Zev. I started consulting for the company part-time. When the board asked me to consider the role of CEO, I threw my hat in the ring.
Personally, Syndio’s mission means so much to me. I joined Starbucks after a difficult divorce that forced me in many ways to start over both personally and professionally. I encountered firsthand the motherhood penalty and the price women often pay when trying to balance motherhood and a career.
Even now, years later, most companies still rely on outside law firms or legal counsel to conduct months-long pay equity reports. I constantly wonder why leaders let something as critical as pay equity stay in the legal department, viewed through the lens of risk mitigation. Pay equity has much wider implications on employee productivity, turnover, and DEI. All of these things are baked into how we value our people and pay them.
Why should companies care about pay equity?
Maria: First of all, and most importantly, companies should care because their people care. And their people are starting to pay more and more attention to it. That said, pay equity isn’t a new problem. Much in the way that we routinely hear companies make promises to address diversity in their workforce, we hear declarations to address the gender and race pay gap. You hear performative lip service all the time, the difference is, Syndio’s PayEQ software provides a solution that can be implemented today.
Almost every company with a sense of brand or exposure to public perception is taking account of its internal diversity and the pay gap but changing it overnight isn’t easy. It takes time, especially if you’re looking to move people from mid-level ranks to executive suite positions. Yet, pay equity is one of the most tangible ways companies can create more fair workplaces, and they can do it immediately with software like Syndio. If companies truly value their employees, isn’t ensuring fair pay the foundation to an inclusive workplace?
Much in the way that we routinely hear companies make promises to address diversity in their workforce, we hear declarations to address the gender and race pay gap. You hear performative lip service all the time, the difference is, Syndio’s PayEQ software provides a solution that can be implemented today.
How do you pitch Syndio to customers as a need-to-have versus a nice-to-have?
Maria: Our value proposition is three-fold. First, our software saves companies time. Instead of going back and forth with a law firm for six months to get one report that is stale upon arrival, Syndio enables companies to analyze and resolve issues immediately — within minutes.
Secondly, we enable companies to stay on top of pay equity over time, as the business evolves. When a company changes through re-organizations, hiring, lay-offs, or lateral movements, the pay equity landscape changes too. Syndio helps companies stay on top of pay equity over time and eliminates this recurring problem. HR can use Syndio to make sure each new offer is in line with market pay, as well as internal equity.
Finally, Syndio helps companies prevent problems and stay in compliance over time. Leaders can share their results, creating a more transparent and accountable environment. Our software allows companies to ensure pay equity faster and with more accuracy than their legal reports, in the light of day without clouding it behind attorney-client privilege. By sharing their work, companies can reap the benefits of creating a more fair workplace for employees.
You previously co-founded Smartsheet.com, which successfully IPOed in 2018. As a serial entrepreneur, what are your biggest lessons learned that guide your work at Syndio?
Maria: Focus. Smartsheet was such a ubiquitous tool for managing work that, in the beginning, we didn’t have a good sense of who our buyers were. We tried to create a tool that was everything to everyone from event planners to HR professionals. We lost sight of creating a purpose-built solution that best served our target buyer.
At Syndio, we’ve approached it differently and know exactly who needs our solution. We’re looking at Fortune 2000 companies. We’re talking to compensation and legal, as well as the C-Suite and Board. These are the people who are consumed by the value that pay equity provides. People are a company’s most important asset, and, if you’re not paying your people fairly, there are all sorts of ramifications and unintended consequences.
I’ve also started to think more about combining social good and profitability. How do the two work together? Tech is growing up and out of the single bottom-line model. Now, the most progressive tech companies are thinking about ESG in addition to profitability. They are blending their corporate governance and social responsibility with their bottom line and driving returns to investors.
What do you think is the secret to building an enduring and successful company?
Maria: Make sure you have product-market fit and are solving a real business problem. At Syndio, we’ve been intentional about defining our two main products and the problem each address. PayEQ tackles pay equity, while OppEQ tackles the pay gap. The media often confuses the two, but they are different. Pay equity means equal pay for equal work. Am I paid less than my peers because I am a woman or Black even though I do the same work?
Solving the pay gap is about fair representation and distribution within a company. You can look at the average female salary versus male salary to see where women are situated within a company compared to men. Are they represented in high, low, and mid-level positions? OppEQ allows enterprises to set a goal for representation and helps them get there with data.
Another key part of building a successful company is hiring the right team. Founders must focus on hiring the right people for the right roles from the beginning.
Early on in a startup’s trajectory, you should hire with the “athlete” mentality.
Tell me about the first hire you made at Syndio.
Maria: My husband owns a gym and trains athletes on a daily basis to reach their full potential. I thought about hiring my team in the same way. Early on in a startup’s trajectory, you should hire with the “athlete” mentality. My first hire was Rob Porcarelli, who was previously the lead employment lawyer at Starbucks, to run our sales at Syndio. He understood our business problem and had been a consumer of the old pay equity solutions for over a decade. He could express the value of our solution to customers like him–mainly GCs and the heads of employment law at Fortune 200 companies. From a traditional SaaS perspective, the hire may not have made much sense, but Rob was the well-rounded athlete we were looking for.
The second example is Katie Bardaro, who previously ran a team of 16 data scientists and analysts. She runs our customer success team. She may not have had the profile of a traditional customer success leader, but her expertise in our product and her approach to team-building and problem-solving made her the ideal candidate. And our NPS scores prove it.
Founders often think about [acquiring customers] backwards from a cool or innovative solution instead of targeting a real problem that enterprises want to solve.
Syndio’s platform is used by the likes of Adobe, Nordstrom, General Mills, and Target. What’s your advice to founders trying to target larger enterprise customers?
Maria: Founders often think about acquiring customers backwards from a cool or innovative solution instead of targeting a real problem that enterprises want to solve. First, find a massive problem that enterprises face. Many Fortune 2000 companies clearly care about their employer brand and becoming a pro-DEI organization. To me, ensuring fair pay is table stakes to achieving this goal.
Large enterprises also have a lot at stake if they don’t solve pay inequity. Class-action litigation is only the tip of the iceberg. Public perception of a pay equity lawsuit, even if you’re not guilty, is detrimental. Large companies want to mitigate this risk, as well as ensure their employees feel taken care of and valued. To be an enterprise player, you have to start with an enterprise-level problem.
How should founders think about going to market and getting their foot in the door at large enterprises?
Maria: Smartsheet started as a prosumer tool. We sold the product to individuals first, team managers, and it organically spread to other teams. By the time we spoke to high-level decision-makers within the organization, we’d already achieved a compelling amount of organic usage.
At Syndio, we’ve focused on solving one problem really well for enterprises and creating a wedge to expand our product set within the enterprise. We’ve started with pay equity software, but we see ourselves as an EquityTech platform as we already offer much more in terms of workforce insights and benchmarking.
This year, you raised both a Series A and B led by Bessemer Venture Partners while at home with six, now seven kids! How did you balance raising capital with your family life?
Maria: For one, I use Smartsheet to organize my home and work life! That said, I have an incredibly supportive spouse. When I was raising my Series A, I was on the road all the time. My husband has a flexible work schedule, so he took on a big role at home. I don’t know if I can tell people how to find that exactly, but our partnership structure played a huge part.
To any woman who is fundraising now, don’t give up. Once you tap into a network of investors who have their eyes open to the issues, it gets easier.
How do you think female founders experience the fundraising process differently than their male counterparts, and what’s your advice to overcome that?
Maria: Fundraising for Syndio became significantly easier when we started to connect with like-minded investors who cared about the issue and saw Syndio’s business potential. Sadly, like many women leaders, I found that most VCs had different standards for me than men in similar positions. The conventional wisdom that men get funding based on future potential and women get funding based on past performance holds true in many cases.
We eventually met Emerson Collective, Voyager Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners. They stood out from other VCs because they have an awareness of the double standard and approach their investment decisions with that awareness. They genuinely care about funding companies with society-changing missions in addition to funding great business people.
To any woman who is fundraising now, don’t give up. Once you tap into a network of investors who have their eyes open to the issues, it gets easier. Our existing investors have also pushed us to broaden the racial diversity of our cap table. As part of our Series B, we brought on Next Play Capital and Concrete Rose Capital who also share our vision.
What has motherhood taught you about company-building?
Maria: So much. What determines your success at a company is how you do your work. People usually aren’t let go because of their actual work product. It’s typically something related to communication and how they interact with other people. As a mother, you hone skills like emotional coaching and juggling a bunch of things at once with your kids. I’d love to see more companies value these skills over matching exact experience. At Syndio, we’ve hired mothers returning to the workforce. I hope more companies do for mothers as Starbucks has done for veterans. They look for leadership skills veterans have learned on the battlefield that transfer over to a corporate setting–not necessarily like-for-like experience in B2B SaaS companies.
I noticed an unintentional pressure, as the only woman in the room, to take less equity, to give up a seat at the table, to voluntarily take less pay. Experiencing pay inequity compounded over a career, you start to become aware that there’s a different standard for women and minorities, and we aren’t paid fairly.
How has pay inequity specifically impacted you and your career?
I spent my career in tech with very few women. As I’ve worked in start-ups, and eventually as one of the four co-founders of Smartsheet, I noticed an unintentional pressure, as the only woman in the room, to take less equity, to give up a seat at the table, to voluntarily take less pay. Experiencing pay inequity compounded over a career, you start to become aware that there’s a different standard for women and minorities, and we aren’t paid fairly.
When people talk about why, they often say it’s women’s choice, or we don’t go after big opportunities. All of these factors are not part and parcel to the fact that data shows there is an unaccounted-for gap regardless of career choices, education, and skills that is solely based on gender, race, and ethnicity.
What does Equal Pay Day mean to you?
Maria: To me, this isn’t Equal Pay Day. It’s simply the kick-off to Equal Pay Season. In the months to come, we will note equal pay milestones for Black, Asian, Latina, and Native American women. Each month we have the opportunity to acknowledge another group’s Equal Pay Day. Today acknowledges equal pay for white women, but I don’t want us to lose sight of the ultimate goal that all women are paid equally on January 1st.
Today acknowledges equal pay for white women, but I don’t want us to lose sight of the ultimate goal that all women are paid equally on January 1st.
Follow Maria on Twitter and LinkedIn. Make sure to check out Syndio’s Resource Library for more information and reports on pay equity best practices.
