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Sapling

“Can an onboarding-first HRIS become the connective tissue for people data in modern HR stacks?”

Founded2016
HQSan Francisco, California, United States
FoundersBart Macdonald
Total raised$4M+ (seed)
Latest roundAcquired by Kallidus (January 2020)
IndustryHorizontal SaaS / HR & Payroll

The story

Sapling was founded in 2016 as an employee onboarding and people-operations HRIS for mid-size distributed teams. After a $4M seed in 2019, it was acquired by UK HCM vendor Kallidus in January 2020 and folded into a broader human capital management suite. Sapling itself does not offer embedded finance — it is a data source for embedded finance platforms via unified HRIS APIs like Finch.

Last 12 months

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Product timeline

2016

Sapling founded in San Francisco as a people operations / HRIS platform focused on onboarding for distributed teams· pivot

2019

Raised $4M seed round led by Gradient Ventures (Google's AI fund) and Tuesday Capital· banking

2020

Acquired by Kallidus to complement its HCM software suite· acquisition

2022

Integrated into Finch's unified HRIS/payroll API, making Sapling data accessible to fintech apps· banking

The stack

1 layer disclosed in Sapling’s embedded-finance stack

Unified APIs

Finch

Accounting gap: none

Sapling — frequently asked

Who founded Sapling?

Sapling was founded by Bart Macdonald and is founded in 2016, headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States.

How much funding has Sapling raised?

Sapling has raised $4M+ (seed) in total (latest round: Acquired by Kallidus (January 2020)).

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