Georgina Fairhall, a Leeds entrepreneur, has secured £1m in angel investment to develop WAC, her time-tracking app for hourly-paid workers. Despite launching her app during a national lockdown, Fairhall aims to build a £13m turnover business in three years. Years of experience working in hospitality demonstrated to Fairhall that hourly-paid workers were frequently paid incorrectly, expected to work overtime and sacrifice their breaks. WAC resolves these issues, enabling workers to track their hours, add their rota and get live payslip estimates, including tax deductions.
Initially launched with a subscription model, WAC saw revenue generation and a decent conversion rate. However, to quickly raise more funding and gain traction, Fairhall onboarded Tim Brooke Thom, a former chairman of Monzo, and made the app free to focus on product scalability and user feedback. WAC now has over 300,000 app installs in 136 countries, with 25,000 active users.
Fairhall messaged 2,000 investors on LinkedIn during COVID to secure angel investment, but investors repeatedly advised her to relocate from Leeds to London. Despite this, Fairhall rejected such advice, and WAC now has a team of eight, with three in the UK and a full-time tech team of five in India.
With plans to launch a premium plan and explore multiple revenue streams, Fairhall aims for almost 400,000 installs and £4.7m revenue this year, with targets of 826,000/£9.6m in year three, and 1m/£13.2m in year four. Over the next year, WAC aims to expand its team in the Yorkshire area while discovering emerging tech talent to challenge social injustice and make an impact in the world of work.
