Welcome back to our new miniseries, Vertical SaaS: Fintech Disruption by a Thousand Cuts, sponsored by our friends at Pipe.

Vertical SaaS platforms are experiencing major growth; they’ve become the operating system for every industry (with financial products and services baked right into workflows that SMBs already live in every day).

Vertical SaaS wins because no one knows the customer better—every product decision flows from that insight. That’s it. That’s the secret.

In Episode 2, Alex Johnson and Luke Voiles (CEO of Pipe) sit down with Bryan Solar, Chief Product Officer at SpotOn, to talk about what true customer centricity looks like in vertical SaaS.

Bryan shares SpotOn’s journey from loyalty platform to payments … to an all-in-one operating system for restaurants, and why being loved by a subset beats being liked by many; how obsessing over small details (like the wrong button in a bartender’s workflow) can make or break a night, and when to build vs. partner in embedded finance. 

Plus, he shares how tools like Day Check (same-day wage access) and Profit Assist (an AI that once caught an $400-a-day cost error) can make a big impact.

Restaurants run on thin margins, fragile moments, and thousands of micro-decisions — and software that’s built with empathy can literally be the difference between survival and failure.

Don’t miss this conversation on how customer centricity, done right, becomes a right to win. And subscribe to catch future episodes.

Thanks for listening! 

This episode was brought to you by Pipe. Pipe helps vertical SaaS platforms unlock fast, flexible capital, right inside their product. Learn more at pipe.com/fintechtakes.

Sign up for Alex’s Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/

And for more exclusive insider content, don’t forget to check out my YouTube page.

Follow Alex: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

Follow Luke:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-voiles/

Follow Bryan:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryansolar/

Learn more about Pipe here.