Same problem. The best I could build was a manual PTO advance. I searched five years for a real solution. Nothing was good enough.
Built by operators who lived inside the problem we're solving. Built for the businesses where payroll is the largest line item and the workforce is the operation.
I've spent twenty years inside businesses that run on people. Restaurant chains. Tech platforms. Rental marketplaces. The same problem followed me through all of them. At any given time, 10 to 15% of my workforce was asking for a pay advance. When I said yes, the money came out of my own pocket. When I said no, I watched good people fall into debt spirals or leave.
Same problem. The best I could build was a manual PTO advance. I searched five years for a real solution. Nothing was good enough.
Even at a well-funded Silicon Valley company, employees at every level ran out of runway between paychecks.
Same problem, every week. Pay advance requests came out of my own pocket.
The pieces existed. They just didn't exist together. EWA had become a $7 billion industry, but it only covered one piece of the worker side. The market was ready. The platform wasn't there yet. I co-founded Patch with Eric Smithers, an attorney and economist with deep insurance industry experience. Eric understands both halves of what we're building.
Patch is the platform I wished I had when I was running Lighthouse. It's the platform Eric wished existed when he was working with insurance brokers. It's the platform millions of small businesses and their workforces have needed for decades. Now it exists. We built it.
Patch isn't a generic fintech platform with worker tools added on. It was built for labor-intensive small and mid-sized businesses where payroll is the largest line and the workforce is the operation. Everything we build is calibrated to that reality.
The platform is free to access. Revenue comes from product usage. Worker tools are free to the business and free to the worker for most use. We disclose what things cost, who pays what, and how the money flows. No hidden mechanics.
Patch isn't the bank or the lender. We're the integration that connects licensed, regulated partners to your payroll and your workforce. The products run on real financial infrastructure, built by the people who specialize in them.
Brokers, CPAs, and payroll companies already have the relationships with the businesses we serve. We work with the ones who want to help those clients the same way we do, by giving them real tools to run their business better. Partner economics are aligned with platform success, not extracted from it.
Operator across QSR (Chicken Now, ~50 locations), tech (Airbnb, 9 years in Ops & Product), and rental marketplaces (Lighthouse, ~100 agents). Twenty years inside the workforce financial stress problem. Now building the platform that addresses it.
Attorney and economist with deep insurance industry experience. Spent his career inside the broker channel and the regulatory environment that surrounds it. Brings the operational and legal foundation that makes Patch's platform model work.
Leads the technology and engineering work that makes the Patch platform real. Builds the integration layer, the product architecture, and the engineering organization behind a multi-product platform delivered through partners.
Leads operations, loan funding, servicing, and delivery. Drives the strategy and brand work that makes Patch's positioning operator-grounded rather than fintech-styled. Translates between what the founders build and what partners and businesses experience.
Three paths, depending on what brought you here.
Cash flow tools for the business. Financial tools for your workforce. One platform, free to access.
Go to For Businesses For partnersBrokers, CPAs, payroll companies, trade associations, benefits brokers. The channels these businesses already trust.
Go to For Partners Everyone elsePress, vendors, investors, advisors, or a question that doesn't fit a track. We read every note.
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