The Story of Pequity: Building the Future of Compensation Technology

Sometimes the best startup ideas come from solving your own problems. But in Pequity’s case, the problem wasn’t just personal – it was systemic. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, co-founder Warren Lebovics shared how a series of compensation spreadsheets evolved into a mission to transform how companies handle pay equity.

The story begins at Cruise Automation, where Caitlin Canop was tasked with creating a compensation program as employee #180. The company was growing at breakneck speed, aiming to double in size quarter over quarter. “She actually snuck a software engineer onto her team to help with connecting the applicant tracking system into pulling data from there, pulling data from the HRIS,” Warren explains, describing how his co-founder (and now wife) cobbled together a solution using “spreadsheet based with, I think, some app script involved and a little bit of zapier thrown in there as well.”

This makeshift solution caught the attention of other HR leaders. After leaving Cruise, Caitlin found herself in high demand as a consultant. “They called her and said, hey, can you do what you did for me at cruise, or can you repeat what you did at google and come in? We’ll pay you $20,000 for a couple of weeks of work to get that up and running.”

After about 20 consulting projects, a pattern emerged. Companies were struggling with compensation management, but existing solutions weren’t cutting it. The problem was clear: compensation data lived in silos. As Warren explains, “Most ATS are focused on just the candidate data, and then HRIS are focused on just the employee data. So you really needed to build something custom.”

The co-founding story takes an interesting twist – Warren and Caitlin are married, and they had already experimented with working together. “We actually opened a pop up bakery in San Francisco on weekends while were still working full time,” Warren recalls. While the bakery wasn’t their future, it helped them understand how to work together as co-founders.

When Caitlin approached Warren with the idea for Pequity, the potential was immediately clear. They made a bold move – Warren quit his job leading product and design at a Series A startup to dive into building Pequity. Their first engineer, found through a Reddit post, remains with the company three and a half years later.

What sets Pequity apart is their focus on user experience in enterprise software. “B to C feels amazing. You cannot launch a B to C product that doesn’t just feel incredible and have all these delight factors, but for a very long time with B to B, you can launch something that kind of feels like crap and it was okay,” Warren notes. This philosophy has helped them grow even during challenging times, doubling revenue in 2022 despite market headwinds.

Looking to the future, Pequity’s vision extends beyond just building great software. “Our mission from the very second that we started Pequity was fair pay and opportunity for all,” Warren explains. They’re particularly focused on mid-market companies (500-5000 employees) where compensation decisions can have systemic impacts on pay equity across the industry.

“We see in three years every single company using Pequity to pay their people and having a lens into pay equity, being completely compliant with all these new pay transparency laws, and even taking a step further to push pay transparency as far as they want to push it as a company,” Warren envisions. With a team of 45 people and growing, Pequity is well on its way to reshaping how companies think about and manage compensation.

The story of Pequity is more than just another SaaS startup narrative – it’s about identifying a systemic problem, building a solution from deep industry expertise, and having the vision to create an entirely new software category. As companies grapple with pay transparency and equity issues, Pequity’s journey shows how technical innovation can drive meaningful industry change.