Finch Is a Universal API for Connecting SaaS Products to 200 HR Systems at Once

01 /The Concept

Finch first appeared on the radar in a [previous review](/review/ne-hvataet-integracij) when the company raised $15M – a striking jump from the $3.6M accumulated across all prior rounds. Now the company has raised another $40M, a step that becomes less surprising when you learn they did it with just 57 employees.

The problem Finch solves is one that every B2B SaaS developer encounters when selling to mid-size and larger companies: the need to integrate with HR systems. There are roughly 200 of them. Each integration requires custom development work. For a SaaS team, building and maintaining connectors to even a fraction of that landscape is a significant ongoing tax on engineering resources.

Finch's answer is a unified API: developers integrate once with Finch and gain the ability to exchange data with any HR system their customers use, through a consistent interface that abstracts away the differences between platforms. When a company administrator wants to connect their purchased SaaS to their HR system, they select it from a list and authorize the connection. From that point forward, the SaaS can automate tasks based on HR data without any additional configuration.

The simplest applications are access management: provisioning new employees with the correct permissions when they join and revoking those permissions when they leave. More sophisticated use cases include triggering compensation adjustments in payroll systems when a CRM registers a closed deal.

Pricing starts at $650/month for a baseline tier adequate for most SaaS teams, with a free sandbox for development and testing. Hundreds of companies already run the platform, covering data for more than 2 million employees. Since the previous round, revenue has grown 12x.

02 /Why It Matters

The driver behind Finch's growth is a shift in enterprise software consumption that shows no sign of reversing. The average company used 16 SaaS products in 2017; by 2021 that number had grown to 110. Each additional SaaS creates new integration requirements – with HR systems, identity management, payroll, and every other piece of the enterprise stack. For SaaS developers, that means an expanding maintenance burden on integration modules that are often rebuilt from scratch by every new team that encounters the same problem.

The response has been a wave of infrastructure startups that absorb that burden. Merge ([related review](/review/zolotaja-integracija)) raised $74.5M, counts itself as Finch's primary competitor, and covers a broader range of HR and ATS integrations. WorkOS ([covered here](/review/bez-jetogo-uzhe-ne-prodat)) raised $95M and focuses on enterprise auth and directory sync. Paragon ([related review](/review/s-kogo-brat-dengi)) raised $16.5M with a similar thesis. Patchworks ([related review](/review/zolotaja-integracija)) raised £4.8M focused on e-commerce SaaS integrations.

The API management market that underlies all of this – the platforms and tooling needed to connect an expanding universe of services – was valued at $2.2B in 2021 and is projected to reach $41.5B by 2031. That trajectory reflects a structural dependency that doesn't go away as long as enterprises keep adding software.

03 /Opportunities

Two distinct approaches to the integration platform opportunity are visible in the landscape above.

The developer-side approach: build a platform that helps SaaS developers integrate their products with other enterprise systems. Finch and Merge are the primary models here – they sell to development teams and sit in the technical stack, invisible to end users.

The company-side approach: build a platform that helps enterprises connect the SaaS tools they already own when native integrations don't exist. Patchworks is the clearest example, with a deliberate focus on e-commerce.

Both approaches can be narrowed further: by system type (Finch's focus on HR and payroll), by customer vertical (Patchworks' focus on retail), or by the specific category of enterprise function being integrated. The narrower the focus, the deeper the pre-built integration library can be – which is often the actual competitive moat.

The broader signal: every new wave of enterprise software adoption creates a trailing demand for integration tooling. Generative AI tooling entering enterprise workflows is generating exactly that kind of trailing demand right now.