Vouch for Finch

San Francisco-based Finch API  announced a $3.5 million seed financing round led by General Catalyst with participation from Menlo Ventures, YCombinator, BoxGroup, Homebrew, Clocktower Ventures, and other angel investors including the founders of Brex, Ramp, Mercury, Vouch, Digits, Human Interest, and executives from Plaid.

Finch does the hard work of integrating with payroll and HR systems to expose a clean, unified API interface to developers. They build the infrastructure for many systems that touch employee records and facilitate data from employers to applications. This can be handy for 401(k) providers, headcount planning, SMB lending, FP&A software, R&D tax credits, security compliance (SOC-II, etc.), employment verification, and health benefits.

One example of an application built on Finch is Mainstreet, which automates business tax credits for startups. At the beginning of the onboarding flow, Mainstreet prompts an employer to connect their payroll and HR system through Finch’s front-end module. They use Finch to pull past payroll runs, employee locations, employee titles, and more to provide the highest amount of tax savings to an employer.

When it comes to insurance, SMB financing, and insurance platforms, Finch suggests these companies can utilize headcount and payroll expenses to augment underwriting and reduce fraud.

“Ansel and I initially teamed up to build an embedded lending infrastructure platform, Extend, and allow vendors to easily offer lending products to their customers. This process involved everything from pulling data from multiple sources to creating A/B tests for credit models. We had several funding sources and partners lined up until COVID hit. Suddenly, customers dropped left and right. I guess no one wanted to launch a lending product during a global pandemic? 🤷” – CEO Jeremy Zhang.