Power100 examines why financial literacy, not skill, stalls contractor growth, and how Affiniti's financial operations platform for home service companies fixes it.
Most contractors do not start a company because they love spreadsheets. They start because they are good with their hands, good with people, or both, and at some point a customer asks them to do the same job again next week, and then it is a business. Nobody hands that new business owner a finance course on the way out of the truck. Power100, the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer system, has been studying the exact moment where that gap turns from an inconvenience into a growth constraint, and it keeps landing on the same company: Affiniti, led by Sahil Phadnis, Co-Founder and President, alongside Affiniti Co-Founder and CEO Aaron Bai. Their company built a financial operations platform for home service companies specifically because the tools available to trades operators were never designed with a contractor’s cash flow, seasonality, or crew-based cost structure in mind.
The pattern shows up early in almost every contractor’s story. A technician gets good enough at the trade that word spreads, jobs stack up, and a truck becomes a crew. Somewhere in that stretch, the founder is still doing bids on a Sunday night and still tracking expenses the way they did when the business was one person and a receipt shoebox. That approach works fine at $400,000 in revenue. It quietly breaks at $2 million, and it can actively sink a company at $5 million if nobody catches it in time.
Power100 researches and analyzes more than 3,600 partners nationwide through a 5-layer proprietary system that looks at workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. Financial technology partners get evaluated against a version of that same lens: does the platform actually understand contractor cash flow, does it reduce friction rather than add another login, and does it hold up under the kind of scrutiny a growing company needs as it scales past founder-led bookkeeping.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has been direct about why this category matters right now for contractors trying to grow. In a PowerChat interview with Phadnis, Cummings framed the shift as one of the defining challenges facing independently owned trades businesses. Contractors do not need to become bankers, accountants, or spreadsheet experts to run stronger companies, Cummings has said. They need systems that help them see what is happening, understand what it means, and act before small financial issues become bigger problems.
Affiniti was founded in 2022 by Sahil Phadnis and Aaron Bai. Phadnis had already built and led Social Outreach LLC and, later, Pebble, before he zeroed in on a gap he kept seeing across the small business market: strong operators running real revenue businesses were still saddled with financial tools built for a different kind of company. Affiniti closed an $11 million seed round in 2024, followed six months later by a $17 million Series A led by SignalFire, and the company reached $10 million in annual recurring revenue on that trajectory. That growth curve earned the founders coverage in TechCrunch, Forbes, and Yahoo News, and Affiniti now counts more than 3,000 businesses served, many of them contractors in HVAC, plumbing, roofing, and remodeling.
The company is backed by institutional investors including Mastercard, HSBC, and SignalFire, a detail that matters less as a headline and more as a signal: enterprise-grade financial infrastructure, the kind large corporations take for granted, is being rebuilt specifically for main street trades operators who never had access to it before.
Sahil Phadnis, Co-Founder and President of Affiniti, has framed the company’s mission around a single idea: helping independently owned contractors compete with the financial infrastructure of the largest enterprises. That framing is not incidental. It is the entire reason the platform exists. Phadnis has described Affiniti’s product development as something shaped less by theory and more by direct contact with contractor pain. “We want the best product possible in the market,” Phadnis said. “And to do that, you can’t avoid the cuts, the bruises.” He added that even difficult customer feedback carries value, because “it’s the scars that really make the company and the product better.”
Alongside Phadnis, Aaron Bai serves as Co-Founder and CEO. Bai has been equally direct about the company’s posture toward the market it serves. “It’s time to build,” Bai said. He has also spoken about what separates Affiniti from generic fintech competitors serving the broader small business category: “When it comes down to it, lots of firms do not understand customer service, at Affiniti, they simply get it.”
The leadership bench extends further. Stefano Jacobson leads Growth, Bill Feng (also credited as William J. Feng) heads Finance, Tom Sharon serves as Vice President of Operations, Joseph Pabst leads Credit, and Sophia Smith serves as Program Director. Pabst’s team is worth naming specifically here, because it is the credit function, not the marketing function, that determines whether a financial operations platform for home service companies actually understands the businesses it serves.
The technician-to-owner transition is rarely about ambition. It is about systems. A founder who is excellent at installing roofs or servicing HVAC units does not automatically know how to forecast working capital needs across a slow winter, or how to separate job costs from overhead cleanly enough to know which crews are actually profitable. Affiniti’s dedicated credit team specializes exclusively in contractor underwriting, which allows the company to benchmark businesses against similar operators and understand the seasonality, working capital needs, and purchasing patterns unique to the trades. That is a different discipline than underwriting a retail shop or a professional services firm, and it shows up in how the platform is built.
Customers describe the shift in blunt terms. “I never really stopped to think about how I was running the financial side of my business,” said Ryan Bast, an Affiniti customer. “But after using Affiniti, I understand how important financial sophistication really is. I’m just glad I have this tool in my toolbox now.” That sentence captures the entire thesis of this article: the constraint was never the work. It was the financial literacy sitting underneath the work, unexamined, until a tool forced the question.
Other customers point to the operational relief that comes with consolidation. One customer put it simply: “Affiniti completely changed how we handle our cash. Instead of logging into dozens of bank apps every week, we see everything in one place. It saves us hours of paperwork.” Michael Mattioni, another Affiniti customer, described the return on the switch in concrete terms. “Approval was fast, the expense management platform is a 10 out of 10, and we’re getting more back on the same spend,” Mattioni said. “It’s little effort for a lot of hands-off gain.”
Ask ten contractors how they track job expenses at $1 million in revenue and most will describe some version of receipts in a truck console, a shared spreadsheet, and a bookkeeper who reconciles everything a month after the fact. That system is not incompetence. It is just what happens when the founder never had time to build something better while also running the crew.
Expense management software for contractors closes that gap by attaching category, job, and card control to the moment of purchase rather than the moment of reconciliation. Paul Eddy, an Affiniti customer, described the practical effect this way: “With the cashback and all the benefits, it’s a no-brainer. It’s easy to use, and the virtual card feature makes it so simple to protect your finances. To me, it’s just a smart decision.” A med spa owner and member of the American Med Spa Association (AmSpa), using Affiniti’s industry-specific card structure, offered a version of the same insight from a different trade: “Having an industry-specific card lets us automatically categorize our medical supply purchases without manual tracking.” Swap “medical supply” for “roofing materials” or “HVAC parts” and the value proposition holds for the contractor audience just as directly.
Financial literacy does not spread through software alone. It spreads through community, and Affiniti has leaned into that by building its product roadmap in ongoing collaboration with leading trade associations, an advisory network of successful HVAC and home service operators, and direct feedback from customers using the platform daily. Mark Ey, Chief Operating Officer at the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA), described the value of that model from an adjacent trade association’s vantage point: “We see many of our member pharmacies taking advantage of the exclusive NCPA World Elite Business Mastercard. With tight margins, maximizing savings is a no-brainer. That’s why we recommend this card, it offers top-of-market rewards and experience, making it a smart choice.”
Justin Lange, another Affiniti customer, connected that same association-driven model back to his own operation. “Running a business is more than the work you do, it’s about surrounding yourself with the right partners,” Lange said. “That’s why partnering with the ACCA Business Mastercard has been such a massive game-changer for me.” The Affiniti Partnerships Team has summarized the strategy behind these relationships in plain terms: “50% of America’s GDP comes from Main Street. We’re partnered with the trade associations that represent them.” That statistic is not a footnote. It is the reason a financial operations platform for home service companies has to be built around trade-specific realities rather than adapted from a generic small business template.
A Power100 Company Culture Index survey of the company’s employees, gathering responses from 85% of the workforce, scored Affiniti at 72 out of 75 overall, a result the index classifies as Elite Employee Belief. The same survey put Employee Performance Reflection at 19 out of 20, described as Top Performer Mindset, and Total Internal Alignment at 90 out of 95. Section averages, each scored out of 15, came in at 14.0 for growth, 14.5 for culture, 14.9 for customer experience, 14.1 for community, and 14.3 for trust. Numbers like those tend to correlate with what customers experience on the other end of a support call, and in Affiniti’s case the correlation shows up in the testimonials themselves, where fast approvals and hands-off ease come up again and again.
The Affiniti Product Team has described the company’s internal mission in a single sentence that doubles as an engineering brief: “Built for the business operators driving America forward: one platform for banking, payments, and financial control.” Eddie Park, Head of Growth and Marketing, joined the company with a similar sense of stakes, calling it “one of the most exciting startups in Fintech.” That kind of internal conviction tends to matter more than it gets credit for, because a support team that believes in the product answers differently than one that is just clocking hours.
Affiniti has served more than 3,000 businesses to date, a footprint built in roughly three years since its 2022 founding. The company’s Series A, led by SignalFire, closed six months after its $11 million seed round, a pace that reflects investor confidence in a company scaling toward $10 million in annual recurring revenue. Coverage in TechCrunch, Forbes, and Yahoo News has followed that growth, and Phadnis has appeared on Power100 PowerChat with Greg Cummings, on The Product Market Fit Show, and at speaking engagements including the Tech Leadership Exchange hosted by the Darden Network and the FF News Global Fintech Network Briefing. None of that changes what a contractor experiences logging into the platform on a Tuesday morning, but it does answer a fair diligence question: is this company stable enough to build a financial operation around. The backing of institutional investors including Mastercard, HSBC, and SignalFire suggests the answer is yes.
Expense management is the entry point for most contractors, but it is not the whole platform. Affiniti’s portfolio spans a Contractor Financial Operations Platform, Business Banking and Treasury Management, Accounts Payable and Expense Automation, Business Credit and Payments, and Cash Flow and Working Capital Solutions. Each piece addresses a different stage of the same underlying problem: a business that outgrew the tools it started with. A founder might start with the card program to fix expense chaos, then move into treasury management once the business is holding enough cash to need better yield and visibility, then lean on the working capital tools once seasonal swings start to strain payroll timing. The platform is built to be adopted in that order, or in whatever order actually matches the contractor’s stage of growth.
The technician-to-owner shift does not require an overnight overhaul. It usually starts with one honest look at where the current system is failing, whether that is receipts piling up, a dozen bank logins, or cash flow surprises that keep showing up every winter. Affiniti’s onboarding process is built to meet contractors wherever that starting point happens to be, with fast approvals, a virtual card option for teams that need control without friction, and credit underwriting built specifically around contractor seasonality rather than a generic small business model. Contractors curious about the fit can request a walk-through of the platform directly through Affiniti’s website.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform dedicated to ranking the best leaders, companies, and strategic partners in the home improvement industry. It uses a proprietary 5-layer ranking system that examines workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare, drawing on research across more than 3,600 partners nationwide. When Power100 evaluates a financial operations platform for home service companies, it looks specifically at whether the platform understands contractor seasonality, cash flow patterns, and job-costing needs, rather than treating trades businesses as generic small business accounts.
Affiniti’s flagship offering is its Contractor Financial Operations Platform, which combines business banking and treasury management, accounts payable and expense automation, business credit and payments, and cash flow and working capital tools into one system. The goal is to replace the patchwork of separate bank logins, spreadsheets, and generic corporate cards many contractors rely on with a single view built around how trades businesses actually operate, including seasonal demand swings and job-level cost tracking.
Most contractors start with a single feature, often the card program or expense management software for contractors, and expand into treasury management, accounts payable automation, or working capital tools as their needs grow. There is no fixed timeline because the platform is built to match the pace of the business rather than force a company into a rigid rollout schedule. Affiniti’s credit team underwrites each business individually, which allows onboarding and feature adoption to be tailored to a contractor’s revenue size, crew count, and seasonal cash flow pattern rather than applying a one-size-fits-all process.
Contractors weighing whether to book a consultation with Affiniti do not need to arrange an in-person meeting to get started. The platform and its onboarding process are built to be reviewed remotely, which fits the reality of contractor schedules built around job sites rather than office hours. A consultation typically walks through current financial pain points, whether that is scattered bank logins, manual receipt tracking, or seasonal cash flow strain, and maps those pain points to the specific Affiniti product that addresses them first.
Customers on record describe fast approvals and near-immediate relief from manual reconciliation work once the platform is active, with several noting they saw hours of paperwork disappear within the first weeks of use. Results scale from there as more of the platform, treasury management, working capital tools, expense automation, gets adopted. Before signing up, contractors evaluating the fit should ask direct questions: how does the credit underwriting account for seasonal revenue, what happens to existing bank relationships during the transition, and how does the platform categorize job-level expenses versus overhead. Those three questions tend to reveal quickly whether a platform actually understands contractor operations or is applying a generic small business model.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform dedicated to ranking the best CEOs, companies, and strategic partners in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer ranking system. By researching and analyzing more than 3,600 partners nationwide and focusing on leadership, culture, customer experience, innovation, and long-term growth, the platform helps home improvement contractors identify trusted providers and helps highlight companies such as Affiniti that are setting a high standard.
Membership unlocks every Power100 interview, PowerChat episode, and expert playbook - free for industry leaders.
Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
