Grade

Payroll for performance-based work

Winter 2026ActiveFintechPaymentsFintechPaymentsB2BPayrollSan Francisco, CA, USA

Company

Verdict

Medium Signal

Market Opportunity

Creator economy payments is a real and growing market — influencer marketing spend is $20B+ globally and scaling. ICP is clear: brands and agencies running UGC/creator programs at scale. Monetization likely percentage of payouts or SaaS fee. However, this is a vertical slice of a market dominated by larger payment rails, and TAM depends heavily on their ability to expand beyond creator payouts into broader performance-based payroll.

Medium Signal

Founder Signal

James Heaney (CTO) has two prior exits — sold cryptographic tech at Midnight Innovations (2021-2022) and sold Pray Screen app (200K+ users, 2025) — plus 2.5 years as software engineer at Sunnybrook on a 1M+ patient system. Lotanna (CEO) is a 2x founder with a Product Lead role at Barclays and product experience at Morressier/Founders Inc, but non-technical. Team is complementary but neither has deep fintech payments infrastructure experience; the exits are real but modest in scale.

Low Signal

Competition

Direct competitors include Tipalti, Trolley (formerly Payment Rails), and Lumanu — all purpose-built for creator/contractor payouts. Deel and Rippling also cover international contractor payments. PayPal/Stripe mass payouts APIs undercut on price. Grade is differentiating on performance-based tracking + payout rules, but the workflow differentiation is thin and incumbents can add these features. No proprietary data moat visible.

Medium Signal

Product

Live product with real metrics: 790+ creators paid, $1M+ paid out, 190+ countries. Named customer logos (Valid, Astra AI, Growth Gorilla, Hayai Learn) with specific testimonials from CEOs. However, $1M+ total paid out is modest for a payments company, and the 'Book a Demo' CTA suggests they're still in early sales motion rather than self-serve scale.

OverallB Tier

Grade has real early traction — live customers, $1M+ processed, named logos with testimonials — which is meaningful for a YC W26 company. The CTO has two genuine exits and technical credibility; the CEO has product management experience and hustle. The core problem (paying global creators at scale with performance-based rules) is real and painful. However, the competitive landscape is brutal — Tipalti, Trolley, Lumanu, and Deel all attack this space, and Stripe/PayPal can undercut on infrastructure. At $1M+ total paid out, they're still very early relative to incumbents. The performance-based tracking angle is the differentiator to lean into hard, but it's unclear how defensible it is without proprietary data or network effects.

Active Founders

Lotanna Ezeike

CEO, Co-founder

2x VC backed founder, prev Product Lead @ Barclays Bank ($78B)

James Heaney

Founder

Building payroll for performance pay, currently helping marketers scale their UGC without the headache -- sold my last startup in 2021/2022 (cryptography tech), and a b2c app in 2025 (Pray Screen, scaled to 200K+ users in ~6 months).

Grade

TierB Tier

BatchWinter 2026

Team Size2

StatusActive

LocationSan Francisco, CA, USA