In 2015, a small company called Captain401 set out to change the way business owners offered retirement plans to their employees. Their aim was simple: “provide small businesses and startups with affordable, accessible 401(k)s” As of today, they have raised $11 million towards that goal, and have changed their name to Human Interest.
According to their website, the name was changed “to better express our values as a company, the ambitions that we have moving forward, and the promises we want to uphold.” With $11 million to back their ideas, Human Interest is ready to expand their efforts, but they haven’t forgotten the journey they went through to finance their dreams.
“We talked with thousands of entrepreneurs and business owners to learn about their unique needs, published dozens of articles to educate people on various aspects of finance, and wrote countless lines of code to make syncing and tracking 401(k) contributions seamless.”
Their 401(k) program is designed to help companies who are setting up benefits for the first time. Many of their early clients expressed fear at losing good employees to companies with better benefits packages. To combat this, Human Interest sought to alleviate that fear by giving employers a way to quickly deploy a 401(k) program.
They focus their program on the ease of the employer, and tailor it be a breeze for employees by making it easy to check balances and make plans for future investments. Their service stood in contrast to other 401(k) providers who make their products prohibitively expensive, unnecessarily confusing, or just too time consuming to set up and administer.
“Our very first few customers were tech startups in the bay area, and that made a lot of sense for us to start. But we always believed the problem we were tackling was much bigger than bay area startups,” said Roger Lee, founder of Human Interest. Now, with $11 million in the bank, Lee hopes to take his vision to startups and small businesses across the U.S.
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