How ZayZoon built 300+ payroll partnerships to reach 15,000 businesses without direct sales | Tate Hackert
Fintech Builders · 2025-10-23 · 34 min
Episode notes
ZayZoon pioneered the earned wage access category a decade ago and has become the leading embedded provider through partnerships with over 300 payroll companies. With over $50 million raised and a team of 200, ZayZoon now serves 15,000+ businesses across the US. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, I sat down with Tate Hackert , Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of ZayZoon , to unpack their B2B2C distribution strategy, the economics of three-sided marketplaces, and how they're expanding from earned wage access into the connected workplace. Topics Discussed: Building for two years without revenue while signing payroll distribution partners Why embedded B2B2C distribution beats direct sales for hourly workforce products Engineering three-way marketplace economics that align payroll, employer, and employee incentives The November 2017 trade show that killed their Canadian market strategy Educating three distinct buyer personas in a category creation motion Product expansion strategy: when to stay focused vs.
More from Fintech Builders
All episodes →- How Avantos positioned against CRM by calling itself an operating system for client management - and why buyers got it immediately | Bassam Chaptini 50 / 100
- How Nominal combined go-to-market engineering and CFO dinners to build a pipeline motion that converts | Guy Leibovitz48 / 100
- How Extend built a four-pillar marketing org mapped to four distinct B2B2B growth motions | Guillaume Bouvard 42 / 100
- How Safebooks AI positioned against the 80% accuracy standard that makes AI unacceptable in finance | Ahikam Kaufman
- What ToltIQ's co-founder - a former KKR CIO - says founders must never do when selling AI to financial services buyers | Ed Brandman