By the time we had 50 locations and 800 employees, I thought I'd seen everything. I hadn't. I'm watching from inside the restaurant as a tow truck hooks up to one of my employees' cars. Right there in the parking lot. Mid-shift. She owed less than $800.
She'd asked me for an advance a week earlier. I'd said yes once before, out of my own pocket, and it hadn't ended cleanly. This time I hesitated.
Now her car is gone. She still has four hours left on her shift.
I bookmarked that moment.
At any given time, 10–15% of my workforce was asking for an advance. When I said yes, it came out of my pocket. When I said no, I watched good people fall into debt spirals.
Even at a well-funded Silicon Valley company, the problem showed up. In Hong Kong and San Francisco, employees at every level running out of runway between paychecks.
Same problem. The best I could build was a manual PTO advance. One solution for a dynamic problem. I searched for five years. Nothing was good enough.
Solves $30–$300. Can't touch $3,000.
Solves $3,000. Overkill for $30 or $300.
Free, zero fees. Genuinely useful when your need fits the window. Most of the time, it doesn't.
One platform. One payroll integration. Three products that match the shape of the need.
Instant access to wages already earned. Low-cost, settled through payroll.
$1,000–$5,000 underwritten against income. No credit check, repaid through payroll.
A full checking account and debit card. The product that captures the direct deposit.
Built by operators who lived inside this problem for twenty years. As both the employer and the customer.
Patch Systems live. First employers onboarded through broker network. EWA, loans, and debit card generating revenue.
Broker network expanding into new markets. Business card and invoice factoring live through existing partners. Referral partnerships active, including healthcare and mortgage.
Expanding into highest-value markets. Select programs brought in-house to improve margins. Direct deposit capture transforming unit economics.
She wouldn't have needed to ask me. She would have handled it herself. Quietly, completely, without anyone knowing she was on the brink.
An $800 payroll-tied loan. Repaid automatically.
Two months later, she's already forgotten it happened.
| Problem | 67% of workers live paycheck to paycheck. When a crisis hits, payday lenders charge predatory fees, 401(k) withdrawals can cost up to 30% in taxes and penalties, and earned wage access only covers part of the need. For decades, multi-billion dollar markets have emerged around this problem, most recently a $9B+ EWA sector, but every solution addresses only one piece. Meanwhile, employers lose at least 20% of annual salary every time financial stress pushes a worker out the door. |
| Solution | One platform, one payroll integration. EWA, loans, and a debit card delivered through employers. |
| Market | $2.5T+ in annual payroll across target industries. $11B domestic premium finance market. |
| Distribution | Insurance brokers bring employers. Employers bring workers. One broker cascades into thousands of workers. |
| Team | Third-time founder + attorney/economist co-founder. 20 years of shared history with this problem. |
| The Ask | $6M SAFE, $24M cap. $2.9M committed. Launching summer 2026. |
$9B+ US market in earned wage access, growing 25%+ annually. Patch extends the opportunity with payroll-tied lending for needs up to $5,000.
$11B US market in premium finance. Every business with employees needs insurance. Most can't afford to pay annually upfront. Patch's wedge into employer relationships and a standalone revenue business.
$2.5T+ in annual payroll flows through Patch's target industries: construction, manufacturing, transportation, hospitality, security, and staffing. Every direct deposit captured generates interchange and float revenue.
Payroll data is now accessible. Integrating with employer payroll systems was impossible ten years ago. Now it's a standard API call.
Financial products can be delivered through licensed, regulated partners without Patch taking balance sheet risk.
Labor markets are tight. Turnover costs are rising. Employers are actively looking for retention tools that don't add overhead.
Lower-income wages grew ~1% year over year while inflation ran at 3%. The gap is widening and workers are falling further behind every pay cycle.
401(k) hardship withdrawals hit an all-time high in 2025. Nearly quadrupled since 2020. Workers are destroying their futures to cover emergencies under $2,000.
Total US credit card debt hit $1.28 trillion, an all-time high. Serious delinquencies among workers under 30 reached 10.3%, the highest since 2011. The safety net is gone.
Patch Premium Finance. We finance insurance premiums for small and mid-sized businesses — an $11B domestic market.
Premium finance earns the employer relationship before the full platform launches. Brokers bring us employers. Employers bring us workers.
Insurance brokers sell premium finance to employers. Every employer that finances through the broker becomes a warm introduction to Patch.
| EWA | Lending | Debit Card | Employer Channel | Broker Distribution | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EWA Providers | ✓ | ✗ | Some | ✓ | ✗ |
| Payroll Lenders | ✗ | ✓ | Some | Limited | ✗ |
| Neobanks | Some | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Payroll Platforms | Some | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Patch | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Metric | Year 1 | Year 3 | Year 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employers | ~28 | ~111 | ~560 |
| Active Workers | ~553 | ~2,223 | ~11,202 |
| Total Revenue | $182K | $868K | $4.0M |
| ARR | $315K | $1.2M | $5.7M |
| Gross Margin | 57% | 61% | 61% |
| EBITDA | -$724K | -$309K | $1.6M |
| CAC per Employer | $4,010 | $776 | $179 |
| LTV:CAC | 2.6x | 33.9x | 405x |
| CAC per Active Worker | $200 | $39 | $9 |