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
Accounting gap: none