We didn’t start with a product idea.
We started with a problem — one we experienced firsthand and then kept watching grow around us, in small businesses, in HR conversations, in the spaces where people are just trying to do right by their employees and stay on the right side of the law.
The problem was leave of absence compliance for small businesses. And the more we looked at it, the clearer it became: nobody had actually solved it for the employers that need it the most.
Leave of absence compliance sounds straightforward until you’re in it.
There’s federal law. There’s state law. There are employee thresholds that determine which laws even apply to you, and those thresholds are different depending on the program, the state, and sometimes the type of leave. There are timelines that don’t align. Programs that overlap. Documentation requirements that vary by jurisdiction.
And underneath all of that is a simple, uncomfortable reality: most small businesses don’t have a compliance team. They have an office manager, an HR generalist, or a founder wearing twelve hats, trying to piece together the right answer from state websites, vendor platforms, and a lot of hoping nothing gets missed.
We felt that. And we started looking for an HR compliance tool that would actually help.
The SMB-friendly tools we found were easier to use, but shallow on compliance. They tracked dates and managed requests. They didn’t tell you what you were legally required to do, or what state leave laws were changing and when.
So, we kept looking. And what we kept finding was the same gap, over and over.
The more we talked to HR managers and office managers at small companies, the more consistent the picture became.
They weren’t starting from zero. Most of them knew federal leave laws existed. They knew state programs were expanding. They had some version of a leave of absence policy somewhere in their employee handbook.
The issue wasn’t awareness. It was what happened when everything needed to work together — at the same time, for the same employee, in a state where the law had changed six months ago and nobody had sent them a memo.
We heard versions of the same story repeatedly:
“I Googled it and hoped the answer was still current.”
“I didn’t know that law applied to us until an employee asked.”
“We found out something had changed after the fact.”
None of these were careless people. They were capable, well-intentioned professionals navigating a system that wasn’t built with them in mind.
State leave laws have changed significantly in just the last two years alone.
New paid family leave programs have launched. Existing paid sick leave requirements have expanded. Employer thresholds have dropped, pulling more small businesses into FMLA and state leave compliance obligations they didn’t previously have. Some states passed laws, amended them, and passed new ones, all within the same cycle.
The pace of change isn’t slowing down. If anything, it’s accelerating. More states are moving toward mandatory paid leave programs. Thresholds that once exempted small employers are being lowered. The patchwork of federal, state, and local leave requirements is getting more layered, not less.
And the gap between what’s changing and what small businesses actually know about it, that gap is widening.
That’s not sustainable. And it’s not fair to the businesses trying to do things right, or to the employees depending on them.
We’re building a compliance-first tool specifically for small businesses.
Not a watered-down enterprise platform. Not a leave tracker that ignores the legal layer. Something purpose-built for the office manager, the HR generalist, the founder who needs to know what the law actually requires, based on their state, their employee count, and what’s changing.
The core idea is simple: you shouldn’t have to piece together leave of absence compliance from five different sources and hope you get it right. You should be able to see exactly which state leave laws apply to your business, clearly, accurately, and with enough notice to act before something changes.
We’re still building. We’re testing. We’re making sure what we put in front of people is accurate before we ask them to rely on it.
Because in compliance, being close isn’t good enough.
We’re not ready to open the doors yet, but we’re close. If this is a problem you’ve felt, follow along. We’re building this for you.
Leave is personal. Compliance should be clear.