Origin Ventures and Felton Group led a $17 million fundraising round for Fringe, an HR digital startup that enables businesses to offer employees customisable perks and incentives. According to CEO Jordan Peace, the funds will be used to develop new products, expand Fringe to more nations, and increase the team’s size from 72 to over 100 by the end of the year.
With former classmates Jason Murray, Isaiah Goodall, Andrew Dunlap, and Chris Luhrman, Peace founded Fringe in 2018. Together, they set out to create a platform for benefits that would let employees pick and choose the extras that best suited their requirements and stage of life.
In addition to virtual fitness, virtual coaching, wellness online counselling, streaming services, and food and grocery delivery, Fringe also hosts a marketplace of benefits from about 450 vendors. The platform combines stipends and reimbursement platforms and offers tools and opportunities for peer-to-peer giving, employee donations, and incentives for recruiting.
Employers are charged $5 per employee per month by Fringe, with the price going down for bigger businesses. The money that businesses would typically spend on lifestyle benefits is sent into employees’ Fringe accounts, where it is converted to “points” that may be used to purchase goods and services from the aforementioned merchants. Through its rebate scheme, Fringe transfers the discounts it receives from the providers—which range from 10% to 60% off the services—to the staff members.