Y Combinator is a startup accelerator that provides funding and mentorship to early-stage companies. It offers a program where startups receive guidance from experienced entrepreneurs and investors. The organization helps founders in their business models and develop their products. Y Combinator serves industries such as technology, healthcare, and finance.

Y Combinator

Norwest is a venture capital and growth equity investment firm that specializes in venture and growth equity companies. Since its inception, it has invested in more than 600 companies and partnered with over 140 active companies across our venture and growth equity portfolio. The firm invests in early to late-stage companies across a wide range of sectors with a focus on consumer, enterprise, and healthcare. It offers a deep network of connections, operating experience, and a wide range of impactful services to help CEOs and founders scale their businesses.

Norwest Venture Partners

AAF Management Ltd. (AAF) is a leading early-stage venture capital firm focused on pre-Seed, Seed and Series A stage technology companies in North America. Since late 2016, we’ve invested in over 120 venture-backed portfolio companies across fintech, healthcare, consumer, enterprise software and deep tech.  We are backed by over 95 Limited Partners (LPs) across two funds. Our investors include leading multi-family offices, single family offices, royal families, c- level executives, ministers, ambassadors, fund-of-funds, foundations, hedge fund managers and other strategic investors across the US, Europe, and MENA region.    We also actively manage Limited Partnership (LP) allocations into early stage emerging managers globally exposing us to over 600 venture-backed companies. We’ve backed emerging managers who were previous venture investors at prestigious firms such as Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, NEA, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins among others.  Notable companies in our extended portfolio include: Deel, Ramp, Robinhood, Didi, Savage X by Fenty, StockX, Figure, Reddit, Current, Synthego, Epic Games, FiscalNote among many others.  Notable exits in our extended portfolio include: CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), TruOptik acq. by Transunion (NYSE: TRU), Prodigy acq. by Upstart (NASDAQ: UPST), Portfolium acq. by Instructure (NYSE: INST), now a Thoma Bravo Company, HeyDoctor acq. by GoodRx (NYSE: GDRX), Finmark acq. by Bill.com(NYSE: BILL) among others.

AAF Management Ltd.

Zeno Ventures invests in early stage technology enabled companies addressing consumer and enterprise markets. Zeno Ventures likes to back exceptional entrepreneurs before their businesses have scaled and often even before their business models are formed.   Zeno Ventures seeks to partner with talented and passionate founders solving difficult problems that were illuminated by their personal experience.

Zeno Partners

Goodly

Goodly makes it easy for companies to offer student loan debt repayment as an employee benefit. Companies that offer this simple to use platform cut down the time that their employees would otherwise be in debt by an average of 8 years.  A meaningful benefit for companies who care.

Goodly provides a platform for employers to offer student loan repayments as an employee benefit. Goodly’s platform integrates with existing payroll systems to automatically process contributions, and provides a portal for employees to track progress and manage their loan accounts. Goodly’s platform is provided under a subscription model, starting at USD 6 per month per participating employee.

Helping employers provide personalized, high-touch, and holistic financial wellness tools to their entire workforce.

Financial Wellness Tools

Goodly Cloud Selected to Join L-SPARK's 9th SaaS Accelerator

Based in the UK, Salary Finance offers a comprehensive suite of financial well-being benefits for employees. The company partners with employers to offer a platform that provides employees with access to a range of financial well-being products, including salary-backed loans, earned wage advances, savings accounts, and customized educational resources to help them build and automate savings as well as improve their overall financial well-being.In April 2024, the US operations of Salary Finance merged with the financial wellness benefit platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/609722">Finfit</a>. The combined entity now operates under the FinFit brand in the US.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, the platform was used by 600 employers across the UK, available to more than 4.5 million employees. These include more than a fifth of the companies in the FTSE-100 index. Its notable customers include the NHS, Dunelm, Virgin Active, and Simply Health.Salary Finance partnered with the American financial technology company Chime in July 2021, to launch Save—a new product to incentivize US employees to set up a salary-linked savings account with Chime, and become entitled to a USD 50 bonus and a variable Annual Percentage Yield (APY) of 0.50%.

Salary Finance

Payactiv offers a financial wellness solution, centered around "Earned-Wage Access," allowing employees to access their wages before payday. Employees can instantly access funds for hours worked, with options to transfer to their bank, load onto a Payactiv card, or withdraw cash at Walmart. Its app works as a digital wallet and includes additional features such as AI and machine-learning-based tools for budgeting, tracking savings, managing spending and bills, and obtaining personalized one-on-one financial coaching from trained professionals.The Payactiv app also features a free communication tool—Payactiv Connect—that enables employers and employees to connect for HR communications, company news, alerts, and shift scheduling.Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2023, PayActiv’s platform was used by employees at over 4,000 businesses from industries such as retail and food services across the US, with some customers in Canada, Australia, the Philippines, and Brazil. Its clients include Walmart, Wayfair, Ibex Global and several others. It also entered into a partnership with US Bank in February 2022, where users of prepaid US Bank Focus Cards for payroll will be able to access their wages early.The company also has working partnerships with payment processors such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/23004">Fiserv</a> and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/13061">Visa</a> to enable real-time transfer of earned wages to bank accounts of employees.

PayActiv

Based In the UK, Wagestream provides a financial wellness platform, offering a range of services including earned wage access, financial education, tools for savings, and pay and spend tracking. Wagestream’s tools are offered to employees through a mobile app, with an analytics platform for employers to monitor participation and financial resilience of staff.Employees can access their earned wages using the app by paying a flat fee of GBP 1.95 (USD 2.50) per withdrawal. The company’s platform has integrations with several payroll and timekeeping systems, enabling organizations to deploy Wagestream into their payroll process.Wagestream acquired 1) Australian earned-wage access startup Earnd in March 2021 to enter into the Australian market. 2) a credit card startup Keebos, in October 2023, to integrate Keebos credit score building platform (that uses open banking data) with Wagestream’s core offerings.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, Wagestream had a global user base of more than 3 million, which included more than 1,000 corporate customers in industries such as the retail, hospitality, and healthcare sectors. The company has offices in the US, UK, Spain, and Australia and some notable employers include Burger King, Pizza Hut, Crate &amp; Barrel, Bupa, University of Chicago, Popeyes, and National Health Service UK.The company also partnered with French Insuretch provider Wakam in August 2023, to introduce income protection coverage to its users.

Wagestream

Cleo offers tools for budgeting, and provides personalized spending and savings advice by connecting to a user's bank account and applying machine learning algorithms to analyze spending habits and transaction history. The app also provides access to an interactive chatbot which users can query to obtain on-demand suggestions (which has been supported by an in-house large language model since 2023).&nbsp;The platform also offers additional features such as a secured card to build credit score, direct debits, and salary advances.Cleo operates a subscription-based pricing on its budgeting and savings tools, with fee-based pricing on its cash advance offerings targeted at gig workers and workers with poor credit. The platform charges monthly subscription fees in the range of USD 1.99 - 5.99 on Cleo Plus offering and charges USD 10.99-14.99 on Cleo build offering.Cleo’s target market is the Gen-Z segment of the population and as of October 2023, the company had 7 million users, (up from 4 million in December 2020) and had USD 72.3 million annual recurring revenue (which was up 2.4x YoY)

Cleo

FinFit offers a financial wellness benefit platform for employers that uses predictive AI, and includes tools for employees to budget, track spending, set savings goals and obtain personalized financial assessments. The platform also provides access to certified financial counselors to obtain one-on-one financial advice. In addition to financial coaching, the company also offers services such as tools to manage student loan debt, get early access to earned wages, and obtain low-cost short-term loans backed by the employee’s salary. In April 2023, Fitfit merged with the US operations of UK-based financial wellness platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/342361">Salary Finance</a>. The two companies aim to launch a combined platform in the US under the Finfit brand.FinFit operates a subscription-based pricing model, and charges employers in the range of USD 0.30–1.00 per employee per month based on the size of the organizations and number of employees. The platform also generates revenue through interest income by charging users interest in the range of 7.9%–24.9% APR on its loans. It charges fixed interest on its lines of credit.As of March 2024, FinFit was reported to be serving more than 500,000 employees (up from 150,000 in 2020).Key customers and partnershipsIn September 2024, FinFit <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33696">partnered with</a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/945256">Sunny Day Fund</a>, a financial support platform, to offer emergency savings accounts for employees through its SafetyNet platform. In August 2024, FinFit <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32581">partnered with</a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/493140">isolved</a>, a human capital management platform, to expand product reach.

FinFit

Offers end-to-end financial wellness solutions ranging from educational resources to interactive platforms/tools for managing finances as well as access to registered investment advisors.

Provides a platform for employees, through their employers, to access earned wages or obtain emergency interest-free funds/loans, which are settled through their paycheck.

Provides a platform for employers to provide resources such as tools and advice to manage employee debt (with an increased focus on student loan debt).

Apps and platforms that allow consumers to obtain personalized financial advice, automate savings, create budgets, and track and manage spending.

Offers interactive platforms/tools for employers to provide personalized financial education resources and/or coaching to its employees.

Solutions that enable companies to offer and manage employee-sponsored emergency savings accounts through automated payroll deductions.

Platforms for employers to support employees with other debts such as mortgages, credit card debt, etc. through repayment assistance, refinancing options, and automated administrative processes.

Operates a B2B SaaS model to support employers with offering various fringe benefits to employees

Goodly

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless