In this interview segment, Brennan explains Patch’s current product‑market fit (estimated at 80‑90% after 15 months) and outlines the business verticals where the company is seeing strong traction. The strongest fit is in financial‑technology, including institutional banks, rewards providers, crypto and NFT infrastructure firms, and neobanks. The next major segment is e‑commerce and consumer brands, where Patch’s API powers both infrastructure providers (e.g., Sendosa) and direct‑to‑consumer brands (e.g., Laundry). Emerging opportunities include logistics (the backend of e‑commerce) and carbon‑accounting platforms that white‑label Patch’s technology to enable in‑app carbon compensation, likened to a “Plaid for neobanks.” Travel is identified as a future vertical, though progress has been slower due to COVID and lower prioritization. The conversation concludes with a question about whether Patch will move toward more specialized, tailored experiences or remain a broad, API‑first platform.
So then on the demand side, you know, like what type of businesses use Patch?
Yeah, so we definitely have the strongest product. So for what it's worth, we're only a 15-month-old company. So there's definitely like, we're probably like 80 or 90% product market fit. So like there's definitely some segments where we're like really crushing it, others where I'm like, I'm not really sure this is working or not. So things that are really working well, really any sort of financial technology. So both institutional banks, Ascenda, I would consider kind of in that bucket with rewards providers, crypto companies. So we actually have companies like Palm, which is an NFT infrastructure company, creating carbon-neutral NFTs powered by Patch, as well as things like neobanks. So that's kind of one bucket. Second bucket is e-commerce and brands. So again, that's an incredibly easy kind of sales motion for us, both working with infrastructure businesses to power Some form of e-commerce, like a Sendosa, which actually ships goods to people in the case in context of sales prospects actually, and then actually like proper brands as well, like folks like Laundry who create sustainable swimwear company. The areas that we're kind of just beginning to break into are logistics, which is kind of like the basically it's like underneath the hood of e-commerce. So that's kind of that's almost the same segment, but we don't. Consider it the same. And then finally, carbon accounting. Carbon accounting is actually a brand new suite of software or a new classification of what is traditionally SaaS, where it's essentially— you can think of it as a carbon ERP, where a company might buy a carbon accounting tool like Persefoni, where they say, I don't know what my carbon footprint is and I want to become more sustainable. So this software will actually take all the data across your business and help you quantify the carbon impact of your company and provide reduction suggestions. So this is how you can pollute less or change how your business operates in order to mitigate your carbon footprint. But then the last step is the compensation piece. And so what they're actually doing is providing the ability to compensate in-app using Patch's API. So they're almost white labeling Patch's tech and marketplace within their own product. And so that's kind of like a great example there. That's almost like the Plaid to neobank example where it's a must-have feature, but not necessarily a differentiating feature. makes sense to build in-house for carbon accounting tools. So those are the major verticals we have great fit in. Trying to work our way into travel. That's moved a little bit less quickly, partially because of COVID partially because we haven't really prioritized it, but that's kind of the next, next big vertical for us.
Got it. Yeah, so it sounds quite broad. Do you, you know, do you see like the future as being more specialized within kind of categories and having, you know, a more kind of tailored product experience, or, you know, how do you think about that?
Yeah, totally. So The beautiful thing about APIs— this is what makes me more excited about infrastructure companies versus marketplace companies— where marketplaces, if you have a UI, you're typically forced to specialize or tailor a little bit. That's why there can be so many long-tail marketplaces targeting towards specific niches of people. It's not the case with infrastructure. So right now we're taking a very general approach, like you said, so we can service a huge wide of use cases. I don't see a world where we need to change the product meaningfully in order to capture those verticals. That being said, I think that is actually more of an exercise for like developer relations and product marketing where it's like, hey, if you are a tech company or a travel tech company, these are like the 3 or 4 quick start guides that might make sense for your business. It doesn't mean we have to change the product, but it might change how we market the product and position it.
