Fridge, which enables companies to offer customizable benefits and perks to employees, announced today that it has raised $17 million in a funding round led by Origin Ventures and Felton Group. CEO Jordan Peace said the proceeds will be used to grow the team from 72 employees to 100 by the end of the year, develop products and expand Fringe to more countries.
Salaam started Fringe in 2018 with college friends Jason Murray, Isaiah Goodall, Andrew Dunlap and Chris Luhrmann. Together, they wanted to build a benefits platform that would allow employees to pick and choose the benefits that best fit their needs and lifestyle.
“[We realized that] “Most people—especially millennials and GenZs—didn’t understand or appreciate the benefits of their day,” Pease said.
With the pandemic, there’s been a new sense of urgency to improve benefits to reflect the shift to remote work within the organization — a development that says peace is a fringe benefit. As opposed to perks tied to physical workplaces, like gym memberships and catered lunches, Fringe offered — and still offers — discounts from location-agnostic providers like DoorDash, Uber, and Airbnb.
Today, Fringe hosts a marketplace of benefits from 450 providers, including virtual fitness, virtual training, online wellness therapy, streaming services, and food and grocery delivery. The platform provides options and tools for employee rewards and recognition, leverages peer-to-peer giving, employee donations and incentives, leverages grant and payment platforms.
Fringe makes money by paying recruiters $5 a month, a rate that goes down for larger firms. Companies typically put the dollars they spend on lifestyle benefits into fringe employee accounts. Fringe negotiates a 10% to 60% discount on services, which it passes on to its employees through the discount system.
Many new startups are competing to offer tailored benefits to a young, pandemic-era workforce. There’s Compt, which allows groups to allocate specific allowances in broad categories such as “health and safety” or “family” and then select services within those categories that employees need. Cherry and Forma, like Fridge, let employees choose their own office perks and benefits. And Origin puts a twist on the formula, offering financial planning services as a benefit.
But with more than 200 customers including Chegg, Lemonade and Shipt, Pis believes Fringe is in a strong position. When asked about revenue, Fringe was tight-lipped, but pointed out that Fringe recently signed a partnership with tech services provider Alight to bring Frige’s platform to large enterprise customers.
“While many industries have been affected by the pandemic, for us it has greatly accelerated the adoption of lifestyles as employers look for ways to support their people in times of crisis,” he said. “Demand for our product has never been higher. Given how significantly the world (and its workplaces) have evolved over the past few years, and given how hybrid and remote work is likely here to stay, we expect this trend to only continue. When your people work from anywhere, a flexible lifestyle Giving style benefits is a deal-maker.
To date, Fringe has raised $21 million in venture capital.
