Fintech Takes x Pipe presents Vertical SaaS: Fintech Disruption by a Thousand Cuts Episode 2: Customer Centricity

Sep 29, 2025

Brian Soller, Chief Product Officer at SpotOn, discusses the evolution of their platform into a restaurant-focused vertical SaaS. He reveals the importance of customer centricity, emphasizing depth over breadth in serving independent restaurants. Soller explains how empathy drives product decisions, illustrating with SpotOn's DayCheck feature that offers same-day pay to boost employee retention. He also shares insights on when to build vs. partner in embedded finance and the impact of AI tools like Profit Assist that identify hidden costs.

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INSIGHT

Focus Trumps Broad Appeal

Vertical focus wins because you can obsess over one customer type and ship faster.
SpotOn chose independent restaurants to build deep, tailored product rather than lukewarm general features.

INSIGHT

Survival Hinges On Micro Decisions

Independent restaurants operate on razor-thin margins and thousands of micro-decisions determine survival.
Longer hours alone don't fix profitability; small operational tweaks matter more.

ANECDOTE

Product Teams Work Shifts

Brian and other SpotOn employees adopt merchants and work shifts to feel daily pain points.
That hands-on immersion revealed small UX issues, like a needless button that slowed bartenders during peak service.

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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.

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