Nearly five years ago, we met a pair of founders who were fed up with the difficulty, tedium, and counterintuitive bureaucracy of managing taxes and household payroll. They were also parents – a husband and wife duo who knew firsthand how complicated it was to pay a nanny or caregiver “over the table.”

It’s a common pain-point, but these two had an uncommon response: founding a business to solve it. Poppins Payroll, Alina Nisenzon and Mike Wussow’s company, has now grown from an idea to a platform reaching tens of thousands of families across the U.S. And five years after meeting Alina and Mike, we’ve announced our investment in that business, our continued partnership with that duo, and the appointment of a new Chief Executive, Nafeesa Remtilla, to lead the next phase of Poppins’ growth.

Solving the Complexities of Household Payroll

The problem Alina and Mike set out to solve is part of a broader shift in how families operate and manage their domestic lives. Today, more than 2.2 million domestic workers – nannies, housekeepers, and caregivers – are employed across the U.S., forming a critical yet historically overlooked part of the labor economy. As dual-income households become more prevalent, the demand for reliable, legally compliant household help continues to grow. Households paying workers more than $2.8K annually are obligated by law to report, and pay taxes on, those wages. And it isn’t just about the law – workers paid over the table gain the protections and financial security they deserve, from Social Security benefits to proof of income that helps them build their future. But compliance is low: only about 5% of eligible households file accordingly.

Among the reasons for that is the obtuse and burdensome process for households to become an “Employer of Record”: obtaining an employer ID number, submitting statutory new-hire reporting, calculating and remitting federal and state taxes, and more. Parents, already strapped for time and energy, are left frustrated: wanting to do the right thing, but getting stuck in the complications and requirements.

Poppins tackles this challenge head-on. The company has built a product that makes compliant household employment straightforward to both understand and achieve. Families can easily configure their worker’s specific schedule and pay rules, set up automated payments, and let Poppins do the heavy lifting of tax calculation and withholding, on-time payments, and documentation for filings. Poppins is not just solving an administrative hassle – it’s helping to professionalize a large and growing segment of the labor market, bringing the transparency and efficiency of the modern workplace into America’s living rooms. Trust sits at the heart of every family-caregiver relationship; Poppins bolsters that with clear, transparent, efficient solutions.

Today, Poppins has scaled to become the largest independent player in this market with a leading product and a growing base of tens of thousands of families using its software.

A Unique Business with Familiar Traits

We were drawn to Poppins because of its unique value, but also because it matched patterns we’ve seen across many Spectrum portfolio companies. Like others we’ve partnered with, Poppins shares traits that we see in enduring, category-defining businesses:

• Bootstrapped founders with personal origin stories. Mike and Alina built what they wished they could have bought, echoing the path of many other Spectrum founders – from B2B solutions born of professional pain points (Teachers Pay Teachers, Kajabi, SponsorUnited) to consumer products rooted in personal experiences (The Knot Worldwide, Headspace, GoodRx).
• Family businesses built on trust. Welcoming an outside partner into a family-led company requires an uncommon level of trust. We’ve had the privilege of earning that trust from many family founders – like Offsec, Visual Lease, iPay, World-Check, and Lynda.com.
• The growing “Family Tech” space. Poppins joins a series of partnerships with companies serving parents and families, from parental communication platform OurFamilyWizard (now part of the In Tandem parent brand) to leading genealogy platform Ancestry.com.
• Consumer internet and mobile app-centric businesses. Poppins also reflects our history of backing digital-first, app-centric businesses designed around simple, accessible user experiences, such as Rover, Grubhub, and AllTrails.

Finally, in the introduction of new CEO Nafeesa Remtilla, this investment highlights an important part of our partnership: drawing on trusted relationships to identify rising stars and talented first-time CEOs.

Partnering with Poppins for the Road Ahead

Under Nafeesa’s leadership, Poppins is poised to deliver even greater value to families and caregivers. Since joining, Nafeesa has invested in expanding customer operations, product development, and go-to-market functions, helped the company achieve nationwide coverage in all 50 states, and continued the culture of deep user empathy that has underpinned the brand, product, and service since its founding. We’re thrilled to partner with Nafeesa and the Poppins team in support of households and caregivers nationwide.