This Founder raised $600M+ to help workers get paid faster

no I was uh very very fortunate to have very supportive parents in anything I did ultimately I think at the end of the day it still comes down to solving customer you know I think for us what continues to motivate us is just the impact we're having [Music] on welcome to today's episode of emerging founders with manob today's guest is aif sadiki he's a founder and CEO of Branch app a workplace platform that's changing the way workers and businesses managed pay his journey to launching Branch began with this time at eir at ideal lab which is an accelerator based in Pasadena he firsthand saw the challenges faced by workers using outdated Payment Systems this Insight led him to create the platform to solve this problem since then branch has grown to an insane level and they've raised more than 600 million funding they have an insane really big team and I'm really excited to have you on the show this is my first time talking to someone who scaled the company to this levels oh thank you for having me awesome how's your like how have you been like it's been like a long journey like eight nine years like I usually think a lot of nowadays there's this like adhc with entrepreneurs they keep jumping around switching ideas and what was the thing that stuck with uh with Branch yeah it has been a long journey I think one of the things I've learned it's definitely a marathon not a not a not a Sprint you know part of that is really just uh you know really taking uh pride in the journey and the learnings along the way you know I think for us what continues to motivate us is just the impact we're having on everyday working American lives you know it's like almost 70% of the American economy that works in a hourly job a tip job uh as an independent contractor and just so seeing that impact and the challenges that we're solving for these individuals financially is I think what really motivates us and continues us to keep going the Inception of the idea was solving a problem for the gig economy like the the Freelancers what was the Inception of the idea yeah the Inception of the idea was really focused on hourly workers when we first started so you know kind of the mission behind branch has always been the same which is like how do you help these workers grow financially um and you know early on the idea a lot different product than what where we're at today but we started with initially helping them earn more income at their current place of employment one of the things we kept doing though was peeling back the layers on like why were they looking for more income in the first place more Shi and that's when we discovered the Financial challenges that this demographic faces income volatility with you know um you know their their schedules fluctuate so their their income fluctuates ultimately you know we were sitting on a lot of the data from the systems of record of like how much they worked when they showed up to work how much they earned and we felt like you know if we could accelerate those that payment to individuals that's a way of helping them financially CU they're less financially stressed what was the first moment when cuz I know branch has like so many different features right now so many different solutions but what was like the first if you could remember the moment where you were like oh we have product Market fit yeah I think um it was really just looking at the growth rates and demand you know um if you go back to the scheduling software we was a mobile mobile sort of B2B layer on top of an existing workforce management system and when we launched this idea U the fintech application for branch around what's now called earn wage access right providing portion of income for W2 employees ahead of the pay cycle that they've already earned I think within like 2 months we surpass all the growth we saw and 2 years selling a B2B SAS product and that's when we knew like okay this is something the growth rates are really incredible here people keep requesting this now we just have to find out how we're going to scale this and make this a business so uh currently how does the integration with Uber works so like if I'm an Uber driver and I'm using the branch app do do I get the payment right away like the day of all driving yeah so you onboard as a new Uber driver and you have the option to say Hey you know I want to get paid right after my ride is complete I'm going to opt into the Uber Pro card which is a white label version of branch that we power for Uber um and once you do that you know as soon as your ride is completed you get those funds instantly deposited into your Uber Pro card that you can go out and use um I think there's unique rewards we've baked in for drivers like up to 5% cash back on gas which is very meeting for for you know these drivers it's a frequent expense for them um so yeah it's become a great way for them to not only get money faster but also you know get rewards they can continue to increase their balances and take more rides and how big is Branch now like are you guys International what's the next stage for branch app like to blow this up yeah um we're not International we're in domestic right now just in the US um we're about 240 employees thousands of businesses on the platform active on the platform now you know where we have we've taken really focused approach to our go to market where we verticalized the business a couple years ago and so focusing on you know those businesses allowed us to go really deep get a good understanding of our ideal customer profile you know so you know for example the verticals that we're in are Hospitality you know largely restaurants Health Care largely like healthc care Staffing um business services do have more general purpose Staffing call centers and so taking that vertical approach has been you know allowed us to be very methodical on like how we continue to grow and so now we validated new verticals coming into this year like construction another big problem you know when it comes to um you know Antiquated payout methods right and so we're now working with doing a vertical expansion into new verticals I think you guys should explore manufacturing because uh Trump is putting a lot of tariffs on International manufacturing there's going to be this insane boom in the local manufacturing sector yeah that wow that's incredible like uh I kind of want to go back to the beginning of so I worked at an accelerator myself as well it was so much fun being around people and just hearing new ideas every day uh what and I saw like ideal Labs website like the number one portfolio company is Branch app so that's pretty cool uh but yeah how is the experience as idea lab and what was it must have been exciting to be around like other people like yourself it it was very exciting um you know I think the other aspect of this I was a solo founder right and so you have other Founders going through similar challenges very early stage um you know fortunate to also have the opportunity to work uh with the ID lab founder Bill gross right and understand you know how he looked at really early company formation before you even have a product out in the market right and so I think that was very fundamental to just get a deep understanding and making sure that you're really validating you know what you're building and we still do that today you know before we even put any engineering or product resources into what we build we really make sure we validate that we're building the right things at the right time for our customers and I I think now it's good to talk about the future because AI obviously has been around for 2 years and uh I've gone down this Rabbit Hole of deep seek and open Ai and AI agents and open AI has this new feature called tasks and I'm like really down like deep in this so how do you see the future of SAS businesses um are you guys coming out with some of your own AI tools as well yeah I think first is right you can build Now Products really really quickly um you know as a result of AI and you can do it with like a lot less people and a lot less Capital so I think that's exciting for customers and consumers in general they have more choice and know you know better products will rise to the top you know ultimately I think at the end of the day it still comes down to solving customer problems right like at the end of the day the customer doesn't care what model you use they just know that I have a problem and this software layer helps me solve this right you have compliance teams you have fraud teams you have support teams you have uh all the banking operations people dispute charges they you know and so there's huge operational component that you know we're leveraging AI to help some of that and really 10x you know our team there so we can handle more volume we can process more on the operation side one thing I quickly want to ask you is like not part of the rapid fire round but were your parents always like so encouraging with the being an entrepreneur my parents are completely encouraging they're always like manav start something like they're always uh very supportive I want to just like ask you cuz uh with South Asian parents it's uh it's always like tricky they're either supportive or they're not yeah no I was uh very very fortunate to have did right being at uh starting a business I remember when I was 11 years old I wanted to be an exchange student in Japan 11 or 12 and you know it's the big undertaking I spent a summer in Japan but like you know I I convinced them and I think like you know some of those experiences and their support really made me who I am today so yeah no very fortunate that you know no matter what I did whether it was starting ranch or going back to school get my NBA they were always really supportive of my Endeavor yeah that's like I think some of us are just like lucky with that you know is being having that support okay next question what purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last 6 months I would probably say some of the premium versions to he's AI models you know what I mean like I I i' I've tried all of them and you know I just love playing around new Jewels but like you know they they when I look at my usage of them it just increases over time and the models keep getting better over time so i' would say any one of those like whether it's the Chach gbt license the Gemini deep research like all of them are really great it's incredible like I personally I feel like it's like there was this joke like I only talk to three people in my I I only talk to two people every day and one person is a CH GPT and it's so true like uh you people can just use it as a permanent thing uh how has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success it probably felt like a failure in the moment but um eventually it turned out to be like a lesson in Disguise let be CAU I yeah I mean I not sure if our was failure but just even just like you know pivoting uh the company has been it was challenging right like you have to uh again we were still generating good SAS Revenue as a B2B mobile SAS product um and we really had to you know it's almost like you're flying the plane all the way to the ground while you're assembling it and um you know hoping that you assemble it correctly and you'll be able to take off again and so that was uh you know challenging we had to initially you know right size a team for our new direction right and do all those things and But ultimately I think um it right move and you were able to persevere through that and um how can people find you how can people find uh I'm pretty sure branch is always looking to hire more people so how can people know more about what you're building yeah uh you know you can go to our website Branch app.com find everything about us we're also on all socials including myself it's a sadiki on X and so uh Happy to uh you know engage with anybody looking for a new opportunity we are hiring so take a look all right guys thank you for watching I'll post the links to uh ai's LinkedIn Twitter and link to Branch app's website in the show notes and the description uh thank you for watching another episode of emerging founders with manav this was a lot of fun I'll see you in the next episode