With backgrounds in engineering and computer science, Jason Fan and Max Hsieh also became certified personal trainers after graduating from UCLA, but they realized there was a way to use their passion for wellness to improve other people's lives on a larger scale.
After talking to a friend in tech who received an employer-provided wellness allowance, they founded Forma, previously known as Twic, in 2017 as way to help more employers offer perks beyond the standard medical, dental and vision benefits.
On Tuesday Forma announced a $40 million Series B that was led by Ribbit Capital and included Emergence Capital, Stripe, Designer Fund, Upside Partnership and AngelPad, bringing its total funding to $57.5 million. The company also announced the rebrand.
Fan, 31, is the startup's CEO and Hsieh, 30, is CTO.
"We founded Twic to really focus on wellness and we've evolved quite a bit to really move beyond the wellness space and looking at the entire benefits landscape," Fan told me. "Forma itself signals the ability to take on different forms, different shapes."
Forma offers HR departments an easy-to-use marketplace that allows employees flexibility to choose their own additional health, wellness and lifestyle benefits.
"Benefits professionals would love to offer more flexibility and choice to employees. Why wouldn't they? This is what benefits programs are supposed to do," Fan said, but "it's actually hugely complex behind the scenes."
Instead of implementing a more complicated, one-size-fits-all approach to such perks, Forma's marketplace streamlines the process for everyone and negotiates for better rates. From there, employers and employees can manage their spending.
The Fremont-based company charges companies fees based on the number of employees onboarded, and also has revenue share agreements in place with third-party vendors that sell services on Forma's platform.
It currently has 300,000 employees enrolled at more than 125 companies with around $500 million worth of benefits managed on the platform.
They offer the same benefits to their own employees.
Forma plans on nearly doubling its headcount this year to 250 people, and then doubling it again in 2023.
The company also says it has quadrupled its revenue and customer base over the past year. And the new capital will help it accelerate growth, including expanding into new product categories, and invest more in sales and marketing.
Fan told me that he envisions bringing traditional medical, vision and dental benefits onto the platform one day but the company is more focused on alternative benefits for the time being.
Its customers currently include Zoom, Twitch, Lululemon, Palo Alto Networks and Stripe.
