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From Healthcare Tech to Fintech: How Immediate Found Product-Market Fit by Zeroing in on Industry-Specific Financial Stress
When Matt Pierce founded Immediate in 2018, he didn’t start with a laser focus on healthcare and hospitality workers. Like many founders, he began with a broader vision: helping employees access earned wages between paydays. But after a year of market testing and data analysis, a crucial pattern emerged that would reshape their entire go-to-market strategy.
The Strategic Pivot to Vertical Focus
“In the first year or so of selling, we really took anything,” Matt shares in a recent Category Visionaries episode. “Then what we started doing was evaluating the data and seeing areas, verticals and individuals and demographics that were enrolling and utilizing the platform the most.”
This data-driven approach led to a critical discovery: healthcare and hospitality workers weren’t just using the platform more – they were enrolling at two to three times the rate of other industries. This insight prompted a strategic refinement that would accelerate their growth trajectory.
The Counter-Intuitive Implementation Strategy
While most HR tech companies battle long implementation cycles, Immediate took a radically different approach. “We’ve seen people in as little as ten minutes from the time they open that email, log in and start making their first transaction,” Matt explains. This focus on rapid deployment wasn’t just a nice-to-have – it became a crucial differentiator in an industry plagued by complex rollouts.
The proof? A surprising metric: zero customer churn. “To date, knock on wood, we haven’t lost a single customer,” Matt reveals. In the B2B SaaS world, where some churn is considered inevitable, this achievement signals something remarkable about their implementation approach.
Breaking Through the “Priority” Barrier
Perhaps the most valuable insight from Immediate’s journey is their recognition of their true competitor: not other fintech solutions, but organizational inertia. “Our biggest competitor is priorities,” Matt notes. This understanding led them to develop what they call “weaponized hospitality” – a high-touch, Southern-influenced approach to customer success that overcomes implementation hesitation.
The Geographic Advantage Play
Counter to conventional wisdom about startup locations, Immediate made a strategic decision to relocate from Atlanta (population 7 million) to Birmingham, Alabama (population 1 million). “We moved here because we wanted to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond,” Matt explains. This move allowed them to attract top talent in a less competitive market while maintaining their Atlanta presence for additional recruitment options.
The Market Timing Opportunity
The most compelling aspect of Immediate’s strategy is their recognition of market timing. With only 15% market penetration in a workforce of 180 million people, Matt predicts that “by 2030 every company in the US is going to be offering some form of earned wage access.” This massive untapped opportunity drives their aggressive expansion strategy, evidenced by their closing of nearly 60 deals in just 100 days.
Lessons for Founders
Immediate’s journey offers several key lessons for B2B founders:
- Data-driven vertical focus can accelerate growth more effectively than a broad market approach
- Implementation friction is often a bigger competitor than other solutions
- Geographic advantages can be found outside traditional tech hubs
- Sometimes the best growth strategy is zeroing in on where you’re already winning, rather than forcing expansion into new verticals
For founders building in the B2B space, Immediate’s experience suggests that the path to rapid growth might not be through expanding your target market, but through doubling down on the segments where you’re seeing organic traction.
Actionable
Takeaways
Identify Untapped Needs in Established Markets:
Matt leveraged his experience in healthcare technology to address a widespread issue in fintech and HR tech, underscoring the value of cross-industry insights to innovate and meet unmet needs.
Prioritize Seamless User Experience:
Immediate's success in getting employees to quickly adopt its platform highlights the critical importance of designing intuitive, barrier-free experiences, especially for financial services.
Use Data to Focus Your GTM Strategy:
Immediate's targeted approach to the healthcare and hospitality sectors was data-driven, emphasizing the effectiveness of using user engagement data to refine and focus GTM efforts on the most promising verticals.
Blend Categories to Innovate:
Positioning Immediate at the intersection of fintech and HR tech demonstrates the potential for innovation at the convergence of categories, offering a new perspective on addressing traditional problems.
Build a Mission-Driven Culture:
Immediate's mission to impact the financial well-being of a million Americans by the end of 2024 not only sets a clear goal but also aligns the team and investors around a shared purpose, enhancing cohesion and focus.
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