Found: Supporting the Future of Work
By Alfred Lin and Josephine Chen on behalf of Team Sequoia
When we first met Lauren Myrick, co-founder and CEO of Found, we noticed immediately how unflappable she was. We were talking via video in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and our WiFi was spotty; after three failed attempts to push through constant buffering, we finally resorted to a phone call. Yet Lauren didn’t miss a beat.
We went well over our scheduled time on that first call, not just because of the technical troubles but because we got caught up in discussing the intricacies of the problems in providing financial services specifically designed for self-employed people. It’s one thing to have a vision. But Lauren, a former accountant before becoming Square’s second product manager and later GM of their Payroll unit, also has incredible context and command of the details. She talked about the hoops self-employed people have to jump through to fill out their Schedule Cs; she explained some of the finer points of different tax codes — and we were riveted. That alone takes a special founder.
Beyond her composure and attention to detail, it was clear that Lauren also has an intense and genuine empathy for her customers. Through her eight years of deep experience at Square, and even within her own family (her sister ran her own yoga studio as a sole proprietor), she has seen up close the rewards and challenges of working for yourself. She’s also recognized that with the rate of self-employment growing exponentially, Found’s customers represent the future of work. Nearly a third of the U.S. workforce was self-employed before the pandemic, and that trend has only accelerated over the last year.
Lauren, along with co-founder and CTO Connor Dunn and their team, have made it their mission to support those millions of people, starting with one of their biggest pain points: taxes. By combining business banking, bookkeeping and tax features within a single platform, they’re able to derive insights from transaction data and automatically classify expenses, calculate deduction and withholdings, and more — creating a seamless, user-friendly experience that is already inspiring customer love. What’s more, Found’s current services are just the beginning of a much broader vision, including tax filing, lending solutions, retirement savings and insurance solutions. The team’s goal is to make working for yourself as simple as working for a traditional employer.
COVID-19 accelerated the future in many ways, not least of which is a large-scale reimagining of where, when and how we work. What was already a massive trend toward self-employment is only getting larger. As the Found team grows, we at Sequoia look forward to seeing how they’ll support customers who are creating their own careers. Our team, in turn, is excited to support Lauren, Connor and everyone at Found on the journey ahead to become the financial partner for the self-employed.
