Navigating a 15% Penetrated Market: How Immediate Positions for Category Inevitability

Navigating a 15% Penetrated Market: How Immediate Positions for Category Inevitability

Most founders obsess over beating competitors for existing market share. Matt Pierce is playing a different game. He’s building infrastructure for a market that’s about to expand by 10x.

The earned wage access category sits at just 15% penetration. There are 180 million people in the US workforce. Matt’s prediction? “By 2030 every company in the US is going to be offering some form of earned wage access like what we offer.”

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Matt Pierce, CEO and Founder of Immediate, revealed how his financial wellness platform is positioning for category inevitability rather than just capturing current market share—and why that distinction changes everything about strategy.

Understanding Category Inevitability vs. Market Share

When categories are mature and penetration is high, growth comes from taking share from competitors. It’s zero-sum. Your win is their loss. Strategy focuses on differentiation, pricing, and competitive positioning.

But when categories are nascent and penetration is low, the math changes completely.

“I look at the Financial Wellness earned wage access market of what we do and it’s still less than 15% penetrated,” Matt observes. “There’s 180,000,000 people in the US workforce and we’re sitting here in late 2022.”

The arithmetic is straightforward. If only 15% of 180 million workers have access to earned wage access today, that’s roughly 27 million people. If penetration reaches even 50% by 2030, that’s 90 million people—more than 3x growth in the category itself, before accounting for any competitive dynamics.

In this environment, capturing 20% of a rapidly expanding pie matters more than capturing 40% of a static one. The question isn’t just “how do we win deals today?” It’s “how do we position to be the obvious choice when the market reaches tipping point?”

The Macroeconomic Accelerants

Immediate’s timing intersected with forces accelerating category adoption. Late 2022 brought inflation to historic levels—the highest since the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gas prices spiked. Every worker felt financial pressure, but shift workers earning under $60,000 felt it acutely.

“We’re all kind of feeling the pinch, right earlier this year when the conflict overseas broke out and we see gas prices skyrocket. Every single person in the country is feeling it. Every time they fill up their tank,” Matt notes.

But these macroeconomic conditions didn’t create Immediate’s opportunity—they revealed it. Financial stress among hourly workers existed before inflation. The economic conditions just made the problem impossible to ignore.

“When you take a vertical that we do very well in, like healthcare, and you have someone who’s a nurse who’s making X amount of dollars a year or X amount of dollars per hour, that is now having stress outside of the office,” Matt explains. “And they’re going into the workplace, and they’re seeing patients. And in the back of their mind, they’re wondering, how am I going to pay this bill?”

This visibility accelerated adoption. Companies that might have delayed earned wage access implementations moved them up priority lists. HR teams that questioned whether employees would use it started seeing clear demand. Sales cycles shortened.

But Matt attributes this to preparation meeting opportunity, not just luck. “That’s a testament to, again, having a really great product and some macroeconomic factors that we can’t control but we can participate and be a part of,” he says. “But also it’s a testament to the maturity of this organization.”

Building for Scale Before You Need It

When you believe category penetration will grow 5-10x, you make different infrastructure investments than when fighting for static market share.

Immediate spent their first year navigating legal and regulatory compliance—unglamorous work that doesn’t show up in TechCrunch headlines. They built integrations with multiple time tracking and payroll systems rather than optimizing for a single dominant platform. They invested in customer success and support infrastructure that could scale to hundreds of employers.

“We’ve been at this for about three years,” Matt notes, referring to the three years since their first customer in September 2019. In that time, they’ve reached six figures of eligible employees across hundreds of employer customers.

But more importantly, they’ve achieved zero customer churn. “To date, knock on wood, we haven’t lost a single customer,” Matt emphasizes. “So hundreds and hundreds of customers, we haven’t lost a single customer.”

Zero churn in a nascent category isn’t just about retention—it’s about reference ability when the market tips. As earned wage access moves from 15% to 50%+ penetration, late adopters will look for proven platforms with track records. Every retained customer becomes proof that Immediate can deliver at scale.

The Retention-First Strategy for Category Growth

Most founders in early categories prioritize aggressive customer acquisition. Capture market share while the category is forming. Worry about retention later.

Matt took the opposite approach. Build retention into the DNA, then let category expansion drive growth.

This shows in Immediate’s implementation design. The ten-minute employee onboarding, the two-page employer agreement, the round-the-clock support—these investments increase unit costs but create customer experiences that generate referrals. One customer reporting that Immediate was “the easiest software that I’ve ever rolled out my entire career” closes more deals than ten paid ads.

It shows in their geographic strategy. Relocating from Atlanta to Birmingham allowed them to build a customer success culture around Southern hospitality. “I would put those teams up against anybody in the industry,” Matt says. That service level becomes more defensible as the category scales because it’s rooted in culture and location, not just process.

It shows in their vertical focus. Rather than chasing every customer, Immediate identified that healthcare and hospitality show 2-3x higher enrollment rates. “In some cases as much as double or triple what we see in non healthcare, non hospitality companies,” Matt notes. This focus creates deep expertise and reference ability in specific verticals—valuable assets when late adopters in those verticals finally implement earned wage access.

Positioning Beyond Earned Wage Access

Category inevitability thinking also shapes how Immediate defines their category. They’re not just an earned wage access platform—they’re a financial wellness company.

“We really view ourselves as a financial wellness company and in the next five years we think we’re going to be able to put a really solid fingerprints all over the US workforce and improving financial well being across the country,” Matt explains.

This positioning matters because earned wage access is the entry point, not the end state. “We want to help people along the way to not just get them unhooked from these predators out there, but also to give them a path to grow and start putting money aside for savings,” Matt continues. “So when the unexpected happens, outside of using Ewa, they can use that, but also to put things aside for retirement at some point or college or whatever it may be.”

If every company offers earned wage access by 2030, differentiation will come from what you layer on top of it. Immediate is positioning as the comprehensive financial wellness platform, with earned wage access as the foundation. This matters less when penetration is 15% (companies just need basic earned wage access), but matters enormously when penetration reaches 50%+ (companies want integrated financial wellness solutions).

The Investment Timing Strategy

Understanding category inevitability also shaped Immediate’s capital strategy. They raised nearly $10 million in equity from high net worth individuals and family offices rather than pursuing institutional capital early.

This patient capital allowed them to spend two years finding product-market fit before scaling aggressively. They could invest in zero churn infrastructure. They could relocate to Birmingham for cultural advantages. They could be selective about verticals.

Now, with proven traction and clear market trajectory, they’re positioned for institutional funding. “At some point in 2023, we’ll be going out to do a larger institutional raise from an equity perspective, to continue to pour gas on the fire and keep growing at the rates that we’re growing at,” Matt shares.

The timing reflects category inevitability thinking. When penetration is 15% and the path to 50%+ is clear, institutional capital becomes most valuable after proving the model works. The institutional value-add—network effects, category expertise, follow-on funding capacity—matters more at scale than at inception.

The Framework for Category Inevitability Strategy

Immediate’s approach suggests principles for founders in nascent categories:

Measure Market Penetration, Not Just Market Share. If your category is <20% penetrated, focus on positioning for expansion rather than obsessing over current competitive dynamics. The pie is growing faster than any individual slice.

Build Retention Infrastructure Early. In expanding categories, every customer retained becomes a reference for late adopters. Zero churn compounds faster than customer acquisition when the market is tipping.

Define the Category Broadly. Immediate positions as financial wellness, not just earned wage access. This broader definition creates room to add value as the category matures and basic features become table stakes.

Time Capital for Leverage. Patient capital during discovery, institutional capital during scaling. When category growth is inevitable, you can afford to prove the model before pursuing maximum growth capital.

Invest in Assets That Compound. Platform integrations, support infrastructure, vertical expertise—these investments seem expensive early but create defensibility as the category scales and switching costs increase.

When the Market Does the Heavy Lifting

Immediate now serves six figures of eligible employees with zero churn, closing 60 deals in their most recent 100 days. They’re achieving 24% average enrollment with target verticals at 25-35%.

But the real opportunity ahead dwarfs current traction. If Matt’s prediction holds and earned wage access reaches near-universal adoption by 2030, the market will grow 5x from today’s penetration. Every piece of infrastructure Immediate has built—the integrations, the support systems, the vertical expertise, the customer references—becomes more valuable in that expanded market.

“The next five years, we’ve got our work cut out for us to get as much of our share of this market as possible while at the same time continuing to evolve and continuing to innovate,” Matt says.

The strategy isn’t complicated: build for where the category is going, not where it is today. Invest in retention and infrastructure that compounds. Position broadly enough to capture value as basic features commoditize. Time capital for maximum leverage.

When category inevitability is clear, the question isn’t whether to grow fast or slow. It’s whether to optimize for today’s 15% penetrated market or tomorrow’s 50%+ reality. Immediate chose tomorrow—and built the foundation to capture it.