Participated · Series C · Aug 2022

Truework provides an income and employment verification product that integrates with third‑party services such as payroll providers, allowing lenders and mortgage providers to verify users and approve loans directly inside their applications. The product is also used by landlords and prospective employers for background and income checks. Truework announced a strategic partnership with TransUnion that will allow TransUnion customers to access both credit and income data via a single API. That partnership is intended to expand distribution into new verticals and use cases, including property management and credit card applications. Financially, Truework closed a $50 million Series C roughly ten months before this announcement and has now received an additional equity investment tied to the TransUnion partnership. The company says the combined offering will make it easier for lenders and other customers to obtain both data sets from one vendor. Truework provides APIs that enable mortgage, automotive, personal loan and student financing lenders to verify income and employment instantly by integrating with payroll providers such as Gusto, Zenefits and BambooHR. The company also supports background checks for employers and staffing firms. Truework estimates it will power more than 12 million income and employment verifications this year. It recently launched Truework Documents, a tool that converts uploaded physical documents into structured data to aid fraud assessment. The business says demand for automated verifications is rising despite uneven mortgage market activity. After raising $50 million in its latest round, Truework plans to bolster product development and increase headcount. Truework offers a platform and API that lets employers enable employees to consent to share verified employment and salary details with banks, landlords, and other verifiers. When a third party requests verification, Truework notifies the individual via email or text to approve or deny the request. The company charges larger enterprises and verifiers for access while offering the product free to small-business employers. Truework says it uses ISO27001 and SOC2 Type 1 & 2 protections and does store users’ data. It reports 20,000 small-business customers, about 100 enterprise customers, and roughly 40,000 verifiers (up from about 25,000 verifiers at the end of 2019). The startup plans to expand the types of identity details it shares via its own services and third-party partnerships and to enable profile updates regardless of an employee’s current employer. Truework builds a network for verified identity that initially focuses on employment and income data used by lending and housing markets. Its platform digitizes verification for HR departments, banks, and other parties to make income and employment checks faster and more secure. The company serves over 3,000 financial institutions and has verified income data on more than $2 billion of home loans. Truework's network includes hundreds of employers such as The College Board, Oscar Health, InVision, and Tuft & Needle. The company plans to use new funding to scale product and engineering teams and to expand the scope of its identity platform for consumer and enterprise users. Truework was founded in 2017 and is based in San Francisco, CA. Truework offers a platform that changes how sensitive information is verified during loan applications, home purchases, and employment screenings. The company is based in San Francisco, CA. Truework recently raised a $2.9M seed round. The round was led by Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures. Other participants included Founder Collective, Menlo Ventures, Crunchfund and many other investors. The articles describe the company as refocusing verification processes for those transactions.

Participated · Series C · Mar 2022

Branch provides instant digital payouts, earned wage access, fee-free banking, paycard alternatives, expense management cards, business debit issuance and a cash-back rewards program aimed at hourly, contract and gig workers. The company acquires users by partnering directly with employers and tech partners and runs programs with customers such as Uber Freight and Walmart’s Spark Delivery. With Uber Freight, Branch can pay drivers roughly two hours after proof of delivery versus the industry norm of 30–60 days. Branch says it has seen over 2,000% growth in the last three years and 700% year-over-year platform growth in 2021, though it declined to reveal hard revenue figures. The firm is expanding its product set (expense controls, custom rewards, wallet features) and plans to deepen penetration in trucking, logistics, last-mile delivery and restaurants while entering construction, hospitality and fitness. Its digital wallet is core to the product and reportedly becomes the primary account for about one in four users, enabling plans to layer on additional financial services to help workers manage cash flow. Branch provides enterprises a faster, cost-effective way to pay employees and independent contractors and offers tools such as digital payouts of tips, wages, and off-cycle payments, earned wage access, fee-free banking, and a paycard alternative. The company recently expanded the platform to support contractor payments and reporting, creating a more streamlined, uniform payments experience for 1099 workers. Branch partners with employers, gig platforms, staffing companies, and other businesses; customers named in the announcement include Kelly, Tagger, Delivery Drivers, Inc., and Rippling. The platform also offers workers a zero-fee bank account, free instant access to earned wages, and personal finance tools to manage cash flow between paychecks. Branch grew over 300% year over year and will use the new funding to deliver faster payments and inclusive financial services to more sectors and workforces. Founded in 2015, Branch aims to expand instant payments and workplace-driven financial products to additional employers and contractor platforms. Branch Messenger is a Minneapolis-based company that offers an app enabling hourly and gig workers to get paid and manage schedules. The company recently filed that it raised $19.47 million in venture capital, though Branch declined to comment on the raise or its intended use. The cash was contributed by seven investors, with Matchstick Ventures' general partner Ryan Broshar saying his firm invested over $1.8 million as a follow-on with existing backers. Named the Business Journal's most promising startup of 2017, Branch previously raised $6.8 million in 2017 to support hiring. The CEO, Atif Siddiqi, was honored by Ernst & Young as an Entrepreneur of the Year last year. Other identified investors in the new round include March Capital Partners, CrossCut Ventures and Techstars Ventures. Branch Messenger provides a mobile-first employee self-service platform (iOS and Android) that lets hourly shift workers manage schedules, swap and pick up shifts, and access workplace-specific messaging channels. The app is free for employees and is being tested at more than 100 Target stores, distribution centers, and call centers. Tens of thousands of hourly shift workers use Branch daily, and users posted more than 2.5 million hours in available shifts on the platform over the last 12 months. Hundreds of enterprises, including Target, McDonald’s, and Walgreens, use Branch to tap an elastic on-demand workforce and extend existing workforce-management systems without switching costs. The company says its technology reduces absenteeism, payroll costs, and management time and can be deployed across an organization in days. Branch was created at Idealab and is a Target + Techstars portfolio company headquartered in Minneapolis with an office in Los Angeles.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2022

Pinwheel builds payroll-connectivity APIs that surface payroll, income and employment data — including non-traditional income from gig platforms and apps — for neobanks and fintechs such as Block, Varo and Lendly. Its flagship products include direct-deposit switching, income and employment data, and paycheck-linked lending. The platform processes more than 4.6 million operations per month (a 400x increase year-over-year) and the company reported a 177x increase in annual recurring revenue in 2021. Pinwheel is classified as a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) and operates in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which the company says reflects its commitment to data integrity. The company employs about 70 people, roughly two-thirds of whom are engineers. Pinwheel plans to use new funding to triple headcount, stay engineering-heavy while adding go-to-market, revenue expansion and marketing roles, and eventually expand into areas like tax preparation. Pinwheel provides a payroll-connectivity API that enables clients to perform direct-deposit switching, income verification, and payroll-linked lending. The company has positioned direct-deposit switching as a wedge product and is expanding its API offerings from that gateway. Pinwheel says it will be doing close to half of all direct-deposit switches in the neobank market in a quarter and counts neobank Current and mobile payment service Square Cash as clients. The company reported 11x revenue growth last quarter. Pinwheel has grown its team to about 40 people, is reopening an office in the Flatiron District in New York City, and is remote-friendly with roughly a third of staff outside the NYC metro. Leadership changes include co-founder Curtis Lee moving full-time to chairman and president; notable hires include Lauren Crossett as head of commercial and a forthcoming VP of Engineering. Pinwheel provides an API layer on top of existing payroll providers to surface payroll data for income and employee verification, direct-deposit management, and related fintech use cases. The platform lets consumers split or redirect paychecks and enables businesses — for example mortgage lenders — to pull payroll data in a unified, machine-readable format. The team positions Pinwheel as a payroll-data equivalent of Plaid, aiming to power flows between payroll systems and fintech products. The company highlights that 82% of Americans are paid via direct deposit as a signal of the available data in payroll systems. Pinwheel came out of stealth upon announcing a $7 million seed raise and is based in New York City after moving from San Francisco.

Participated · Series C · Dec 2021

Paradox is a conversational recruiting software platform led by founder and CEO Aaron Matos, built to give recruiters, hiring managers, and talent professionals an assistant to get work done. Its core product, Olivia, is a conversational AI assistant that automates candidate screening, interview scheduling, onboarding, and other recruiting tasks through mobile-first experiences. Olivia serves high-volume hourly and high-skilled professional roles and is used by 500+ global clients, including Unilever, Nestle, McDonald’s, CVS Health, General Motors, Lowe’s, and Shaker Recruitment Marketing. In five years the assistant has helped clients save millions of hours of manual work. Paradox acquired Traitify, a personality assessment company, in August 2021. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, the company also has offices in Chicago, Baltimore, Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Vietnam and is actively hiring across client success, sales, product, engineering, and other teams. The company’s latest financing valued it at $1.5 billion. Paradox’s core product is Olivia, a conversational AI assistant that automates recruiting and HR tasks such as screening, scheduling, onboarding, employee Q&A, collecting feedback, and hosting virtual events. Olivia engages across web, SMS, major messaging apps and voice assistants, speaks more than 100 languages, and integrates with leading HR and ATS systems like Workday, ADP, Cornerstone, iCims and others. The company serves 200+ global enterprise clients, including McDonald’s, CVS Health, and Unilever, and has grown to more than 140 employees since its 2016 founding. Paradox has received industry recognition, including awards from Human Resource Executive, Recruiting Trends & Talent Tech, the American Business Awards, and placement on Forbes’ startup employer list. The business says it will use the new funding to expedite its vision of AI as a liberating force for work, continue product and partner roadmap execution, and expand across the U.S. and internationally while remaining based in Arizona. Brighton Park Capital’s involvement is positioned to support further partnerships with HCM providers and accelerate the company’s growth. Paradox is the leading Assistive Intelligence platform transforming talent acquisition and candidate experience with its flagship AI recruiting assistant, Olivia. Olivia supports talent in more than 60 countries, communicates in over 36 languages, and assists over 150 talent-centric organizations including Compass Group, Alorica, Staples, and CVS Health. In 2018 Paradox tripled revenue, doubled its team, and tripled its client base. The company announced plans to double staffing again in 2019, hiring primarily for product, sales, and client success and opening regional offices in Dallas and Chicago to grow its U.S. footprint. Paradox says its product portfolio has broadened through client partnerships to better support candidates throughout the hiring process and their careers. The company received the Talent Solution Impact Award from Recruiting Trends & Talent Tech and was accepted into the SAP.io Foundry program.