Spine
Spine is a YC Fall 2026 (F26) company. Based in San Francisco, CA, USA.
About Spine
Summary
Spine runs benefits, payroll, compliance, and people ops for startups and mid-market companies, replacing both the traditional benefits broker and the PEO. Dedicated senior HR and benefits specialists operate directly inside a company's existing HRIS, whether Rippling, Gusto, Deel, or ADP, handling open enrollment, multi-state tax compliance, onboarding, and employee support. The work it displaces is the back-office HR burden that founders, finance teams, and chiefs of staff otherwise carry themselves.
Business model
Free for the core service, with revenue drawn from plan optimization and carrier relationships rather than direct fees to the employer.
Go-to-market
Serves startups from first hire through Series A and scales up to 200-plus employee companies; teams start via a demo request, and Spine also acquires customers through a partner network of fractional HR practitioners, accountants, fractional CFOs, and venture capital firms managing portfolio benefits.
From the Y Combinator listing
We run benefits, payroll & compliance for startups, for free
Spine runs benefits, payroll, and compliance for startups for free. We do the work by giving teams dedicated senior HR and benefits specialists who operate on top of their existing HRIS (Rippling, Deel, Gusto, ADP). We help companies find better-fit, more cost-effective health plans - reducing healthcare costs by around 15% on average - while running payroll, handling compliance, managing open enrollment, and supporting employees directly in Slack. 30+ startups already use Spine to lower healthcare costs and take hours of back-office work off their teams. Learn more at joinspine.ai or email onur@joinspine.ai
Facts
- B2B / B2B -> Human Resources
- San Francisco, CA, USA
- Active
- Early
Founders (2)
- Ece Cokar
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