RALEIGH –Oakland, California-based Even, a company with a mission to help people who live from paycheck to paycheck with personal finances, is opening its East Coast office in Raleigh. The company recently closed a $40 million B round with participation from Durham-based Bull City Venture Partners.
The B round, which brings the total raised by the company to $52 million, was led by Khosla Ventures, with Valar Ventures, Allen & Co., and Silicon Valley Bank, Harrison Metal, SV Angel, and others participating. Forbes estimates the startup, founded three years ago, will hit $20 million in revenue in 2018.
The company, with seven people in place in Raleigh, plans to hire up to 20 people locally with jobs currently open for member advisors, recruiters, security operations engineers, backend engineers and accounting managers.
Cofounder and COO Quinten Farmer, who grew up in Raleigh and went to school at North Carolina State University, said “After leaving NC State to pursue technology entrepreneurship, I’ve always looked for opportunities to return.”
Farmer tells WRAL Techwire that the company’s mission is to “Help the more than 170 million Americans move out of the living paycheck to paycheck cycle.” He points out that the problem exists across every level of income, affecting managers as much as hourly workers.”
Three pillars of the app
The company created a fintech membership service to help people manage their money, plan for upcoming bills and save. The company, which offers its full range of features as a subscription service that costs users $6 to $8 a month through employers, inked a nationwide partnership with Walmart in December 2017.
The Even app has “Three pillars,” explains Farmer. It helps with budgeting, linking to user’s bank accounts and asks about coming bills to predict cashflow. Secondly, it provides for automatic savings. And finally, it offers an earned wage option that allows workers early access to their pay.
More than 200,000 Walmart associates, about 15 percent, are already using Even to manage their finances and access wages early. Approximately 100,000 use it every day. Typically, an opt-in human resources benefit sees about a 3 percent adoption. Workers pay a monthly membership fee
One of the problems of living from paycheck to paycheck, Farmer notes, is that if a bill is due on the first of the month, but a worker is paid on the 10th, they frequently have to borrow money at expensive rates from sources such as paycheck lenders or pay hefty late fees. By making it possible for workers to access half of whatever pay they have due early, Even helps prevent that sapping of limited resources.
BCVP likes mission-driven companies
Farmer said Jason Caplain, cofounder of Bull City Ventures, was generous with his time even when Farmer was a student at NC State. Caplain helped facilitate opening the Raleigh office, “Connecting us to the community,” Farmer said. “That’s important to us.”
Jason Caplain. WRAL TechWire photo (Copyright by Capitol Broadcasting Company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Caplain tells WRAL Techwire that at Bull City Ventures (BCVP) that actively helping a startup in various ways beyond an investment “Is the fun part for David (Jones) and I.” Jones is cofounder and general partner with BCVP.
“We really like their team a lot. We very much like mission driven investments. They’re solving a problem for millions of people in the U.S. who have to seek out expensive and taxing ways to live, things like payday loans and expensive debt just to get by. Along comes Even, solving a very big pain point.”
Farmer, Caplain said, “Has a very big heart for Raleigh-Durham, and the company can certainly benefit from the talent in the region. We hear this more and more, Silicon Valley companies, even startups want another office to access more talent.”
In the Triangle, he notes, “There is less hopping from job to job. Entrepreneur want stickiness, people who stay longer than a couple of years.”
That helps make Raleigh-Durham is a logical place for Silicon Valley investors and its on their mind, Caplain said.
