Kombo - Volition Capital

HR Tech

Kombo is a B2B infrastructure company that provides a unified API enabling software platforms to integrate with dozens of HR, payroll, and applicant tracking systems through a single connection. By standardizing access to fragmented employment data and handling authentication, maintenance, and updates, Kombo reduces the complexity of building and managing HR integrations.

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ABOUT KOMBO

Kombo is a unified HR and payroll API platform that enables software companies to integrate seamlessly with their customers’ HR systems. Through a single API, Kombo provides access to dozens of HRIS, payroll, and recruiting platforms (such as Workday, BambooHR, and Personio), allowing businesses to sync employee data, org charts, time-off records, and other workforce information without building and maintaining individual integrations. By handling authentication, normalization, and ongoing maintenance of these connections, Kombo helps B2B software companies reduce engineering overhead, accelerate implementation timelines, and deliver more reliable, secure HR data integrations to their customers.

BACKGROUND

Kombo was founded in 2022 by Alex Kübel and his co-founders, a deeply technical team that thrives on solving hard problems with elegant technical solutions. From the outset, the team took a deliberate, verticalized approach, focusing exclusively on HRIS and ATS use cases rather than pursuing a broad, horizontal integration strategy.

That focus has proven to be a key differentiator. By going deep into HR-specific data models, workflows, and edge cases, Kombo has built integrations that customers consistently describe as more reliable and complex than alternatives, supported by a team of subject matter experts available 24/7. The company has earned a strong reputation for product quality, reliability, and domain expertise, which has manifested in exceptional customer feedback and retention.

Since launch, Kombo has scaled to hundreds of customers globally, reached meaningful ARR with strong unit economics, and is now doubling down on its product and go-to-market capabilities to capitalize on the largely untapped market opportunity.

WHY WE INVESTED

Fragmentation in HR Tech Has Turned Integrations Into a Bottleneck

Managing the employee lifecycle from hire to retire runs on a complex and highly fragmented ecosystem of HR technology solutions. From applicant tracking systems (ATS) and HRIS platforms to payroll, IT, benefits, and compliance tools, companies rely on dozens of systems to manage candidates and employees. For HR tech vendors, enabling seamless data flow across these systems is no longer a “nice to have” — it is essential to delivering a competitive product experience.

Yet building and maintaining integrations is a burdensome process. Each system has its own APIs, data schemas, edge cases, security requirements, partnership protocols, and ongoing maintenance needs. Engineering teams are forced to spend months building one-off integrations that distract from core product development and innovation. As companies scale, this problem compounds, slowing customer onboarding, increasing technical debt, and creating real go-to-market friction.

As HR software continues to proliferate globally, the need for a scalable, trusted integration layer has become mission critical

A Mission-Critical Infrastructure Layer With Clear ROI

Enter Kombo, a company solving this problem by providing a unified API purpose-built for HR, payroll, and IT integrations. Instead of building and maintaining dozens (or hundreds) of direct integrations, customers integrate with Kombo once and gain access to more than 200 (and counting) pre-built integrations across ATS, HRIS, payroll, and adjacent categories.

The value proposition is immediate and ROI tangible. Customers dramatically reduce engineering time dedicated to integrations, accelerate partner onboarding from months to weeks or days, and eliminate the ongoing maintenance burden that comes with supporting a fragmented vendor landscape. Once implemented, Kombo becomes deeply embedded in customers’ core workflows, effectively serving as the integration backbone behind their product.

This mission-critical positioning is reflected in Kombo’s performance. The company has achieved strong capital-efficient growth, high gross margins, and best-in-class retention, with customers consistently describing Kombo as “Stripe-like” infrastructure — once installed, it is not something lightly ripped out.

Why We’re Excited to Partner With Kombo

When we first met the Kombo team, we were impressed by the clarity of their vision and disciplined execution. Kombo is building foundational infrastructure in a market where reliability, trust, and domain expertise are paramount.

We believe Kombo’s verticalized strategy, combined with its growing integration coverage, opinionated data layer, and strong customer relationships, positions the company to become the single source of truth for HR integrations. Over time, this foundation creates natural expansion opportunities into adjacent use cases, new customer segments, and agentic workflows that further increase the platform’s strategic importance.

Just as importantly, Alex and the team possess a rare combination of technical rigor, customer obsession, and capital efficiency. As Kombo scales, we are excited to partner closely with the team and support them as they enter the next phase of growth — expanding market reach, strengthening go-to-market execution, and continuing to invest in a product customers truly depend on.