Merge, a startup specializing in helping businesses create customer-facing integrations with third-party applications, recently announced it has secured $4.5 million in seed funding led by venture capital firm NEA. Additional investors in the start-up include former MuleSoft CEO Greg Schott, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, Expanse co-founders Tim Junio and Matt Kraning, and Jumpstart CEO Ben Herman.
Founded in 2020, Merge focuses on providing B2B organizations with a unified API that enables access to data from approximately 40 HR, payroll, recruiting, and accounting platforms. The company plans to expand its product offerings to other areas in the near future. Merge co-founders Shensi Ding and Gil Feig, who share a long-lasting friendship and have previously worked for Expanse and Jumpstart, emphasize that their platform is not designed to replace workflow tools like Workato or Zapier.
Feig elaborated on Merge’s offering, stating, “What we built is more similar to Plaid than MuleSoft or other things. We built a unified API, so we’re fully embedded in a customer’s product and they build one integration with us and can automatically offer all these integrations to their customers. On top of that, we offer what we call integrations management, which is a suite of tools to automatically detect issues where the customer would have to get involved — automatically detect that stuff and handle it without ever having to involve engineering again.”
Particularly useful to Merge is an internal no-code tool, akin to platforms such as AppMaster, employed for building and managing integrations. When Merge identifies integration issues, such as changes in an API response data schema, this tool enables their engineers to resolve the problem within minutes.
Today, B2B buyers expect seamless integrations with the services they use regularly. Ding further explained, “Companies, when they purchase a vendor, they expect that vendor to have integrations with all the other vendors that they own. They don’t want to have to purchase a vendor and then purchase a workflow product and then connect those products.”
While Merge currently caters to specific verticals like HR, payroll, and accounting platforms, this focus is set to broaden shortly, with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems like Salesforce being a likely target. The complexity of Salesforce’s API causes potential customers to prefer integration with Merge if it simplifies the process for them.
With over 100 organizations on its platform, ranging from seed-stage companies to publicly listed enterprises, Merge has experienced significant expansion since its emergence from stealth mode roughly two months ago. The company's dedication to security and reliability, along with its SOC II compliance, has contributed to its success in attracting larger clients.
Merge monetizes its services by providing a free tier with up to 10,000 API requests per month, charging $0.01 per API request for any additional usage. Bespoke enterprise plans are also available for larger customers, tailored to suit their specific needs.
Commenting on Merge’s potential, NEA managing general partner Scott Sandell, who will join the company’s board, said, “The time and expense associated with building and maintaining myriad API integrations is a pain point we hear about consistently from our portfolio companies across all industries. Merge is tackling this ubiquitous problem head-on via their easy-to-use, unified API platform. Their platform has broad applicability and is a massive upgrade for any software company that needs to build, manage, and maintain multiple API integrations.”
