- Salt Labs is a fintech that wants to help hourly workers build wealth.
- Jason Lee, founder of DailyPay and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, founded the startup in 2022.
- Salt Labs used this 13-page pitch deck to raise a $10 million pre-seed round.
This fintech is helping hourly-wage workers build wealth through a rewards points system.
Salt Labs is a loyalty and payments financial-technology company. The startup just launched its app, Salt, which allows hourly employees to earn points, called “Salt,” for every hour they work. Salt can be redeemed for goods and experiences, including wealth-building resources like savings bonds.
“The mission of Salt Labs is to enable hourly workers to own the long-term value of their work,” Jason Lee, founder and CEO of Salt Labs, told Insider. “And we want to effectively create asset-ownership for the work that’s being done.”
Lee previously founded DailyPay, an earned-wage access startup. Prior to DailyPay, he was a managing director in the equity capital markets group at Goldman Sachs.
Salt Labs announced a $10 million pre-seed round on March 29, led by Fin Capital. Lee declined to share the startup’s valuation.
Lee compared Salt to a frequent flyer miles program. In the same way a flyer earns “miles” for every flight, employees earn one Salt for every hour they work. But unlike flyer miles and other rewards programs, the Salt that employees earn never expires, meaning it can be accrued over their tenure.
Salt can be redeemed everything from educational resources like training programs, to savings products, and personal consumption like trips. Salt can also be transferred between users like a peer-to-peer payment app.
The new LinkedIn for hourly workers
Nearly 56% of the US workforce is paid at an hourly rate, according to a 2021 report by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. But wealth-building resources aren’t very accessible or accommodating to this demographic.
“Have you ever tried to transfer a 401(k)? It’s very hard to transfer it to your next job,” Lee said. “So what happens is the hourly workforce will have like five 401(k)s at seven different employers, and there’s all this leakage that’s occurring.”
Salt Labs launched its app on April 1 and already has more than 2,000 users. Its customers are low- to medium-income workers, and since it is a direct-to-consumer, any employee can sign up and self-verify their worked hours.
Lee declined to share the startup’s revenue strategy. However, page six of the pitch deck details “potential Salt applications,” which includes lending, recruiting, background checks, advertising, and loyalty.
One of Lee’s plans moving forward is making Salt cash-redeemable. He also wants to roll out Salt for employers to offer as an employee benefit.
Lee wants to add features like “vesting” — where a worker can earn additional Salt by working at a given job for some period of time. For example, if a worker stays at a job for three months, then they could start earning 1.5 Salt per hour rather than one Salt per hour.
He also envisions Salt becoming like a LinkedIn for hourly workers, where an employees’ Salt earnings profile can be shown to employers as a digital resume.
“Companies are in a labor crunch. They’re having a very difficult time hiring people, finding labor, all of these things,” Lee said. “And so we think this is a perfect storm – having to figure out, ‘Hey, how do we actually create some engaging, loyalty building relationship with that employee while delivering things of value to her?'”
“Sure, initially it’s some points to redeem for some goods and services, but eventually this thing becomes a tool or a digital resume,” he added.
Read the 13-page pitch deck Salt Labs used to raise a $10 million pre-seed round.
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