Announcing our $200 Million Series E Led By General Atlantic

Today, I’m pleased to share that Guideline raised a $200 million Series E led by global growth equity investor, General Atlantic, with participation from our existing investors, Generation Investment Management, Greyhound Capital, Felicis Ventures, and Propel Ventures.

When my Co-founders, Jeremy Caballero, Mike Nelson, and I started Guideline in 2015, our goal was to create an easy, affordable retirement platform that prioritized the needs of small businesses. We wanted to build something optimized for positive outcomes for participants.

When we brought a product to market about a year later, it was immediately clear we were bridging a gap in the market that had left small businesses and their employees alienated from retirement planning for decades.

Fast forward to today, and more than 21,000 small and midsize businesses have chosen Guideline as their retirement platform of choice to manage more than $4.5 billion in assets.

We are proud of our significant growth over the past six years as we have worked to modernize a legacy component of the U.S. economic system and ensure retirement planning is accessible to all.

We are excited to draw upon General Atlantic’s deep expertise at the intersection of technology and financial services as we continue to empower businesses and employees to plan for the future. This additional capital will fuel more innovation and expansion of our platform as we scale our team to further our mission: help everyone arrive at a safe, secure retirement, whether they're a small business owner, an employee, or self-employed.

General Atlantic’s Managing Director and Global Co-Head of Financial Services, Aaron Goldman, who I’m excited to welcome to our board of directors, had this to say about the investment:

“Guideline is uniquely positioned as a modern, digital-first solution for small and mid-size employers who have been traditionally underserved by legacy providers. The Guideline team deeply understands the needs of its client base, offering a holistic platform that allows employers to seamlessly provide retirement benefits and enables employees to begin building retirement savings. We admire Guideline’s transparent approach and believe the business is poised to expand as it scales its platform and offerings. We look forward to partnering with Kevin and the Guideline team in this new phase of the business’ growth.”

To say that the last 15 months+ have been challenging for the small business ecosystem would be an understatement. But even so, our community of small and midsize businesses offered a silver lining. At a time when businesses were forced to make significant cutbacks, last year roughly 7,000 small businesses in the U.S. still decided to offer employees a Guideline 401(k)—most of which had never offered a 401(k) before.

That accounts for 40 percent growth year-over-year amid a global pandemic. And not only did more small business employees than ever decide to participate in the 401(k) offered to them, but the amount they saved also increased significantly at the peak of the pandemic—by more than a third.

We’re proud that during such a challenging period, these businesses prioritized the implementation of high impact benefits for themselves and their employees, who took clear advantage of the benefit. While we’re thrilled with what we’ve accomplished to date, there’s a lot more work for us to do in order to greatly expand access to retirement in this country.

We need a bigger team to do it, so an immediate focus for us is recruitment. The Guideline team is now 200+ people strong and we’ll be hiring 60 more employees before the end of the year. With offices in Austin, TX, San Mateo, CA, Portland, ME, and a new office set to open in San Diego, CA, soon—plus a flexible approach to where you work—if our mission resonates with you, I hope you’ll check out our open roles.