Sequoia One

Sequoia One is the PEO within Sequoia's total compensation platform, which brings together compensation and equity, benefits, HR and payroll, and business risk, with analytics, benchmarking, financial modelling, headcount planning and collaborative reporting over the top.

Treating the PEO as a data source rather than as the product is the distinguishing idea, and it fits a specific buyer. A venture backed company managing burn needs to model what headcount and benefit decisions cost before making them, and the PEO happens to hold every input: salaries, equity, benefit elections and claims experience. Selling analysis over that data is a more defensible position than competing on payroll administration.

Cost modelling on benefits is the clearest example. Benefit renewals arrive annually with an increase and a set of cost sharing choices, and most companies decide those under time pressure with no model of the effect on either spend or retention.

Compensation and equity in the same view matters for the same audience, since at a startup equity is a large part of what an employee receives and is invisible to any system that only sees payroll. A company comparing its offer against the market on salary alone is comparing the smaller half.