When Josh Wymer thinks about why so many ideas never make it past the “hack on the weekend” stage, he doesn’t point to funding, product-market fit, or even grit. He points to paperwork.
“I’ve started a number of companies and not started a handful,” Wymer says. “And the reason I didn’t was mostly because I remembered all of the crap you have to deal with once you incorporate and start running a real business. It was enough friction to say, ‘maybe I just won’t pursue this.’”
That personal frustration became the seed for Central, the startup Wymer co-founded to eliminate back-office complexity.
Outcomes, Not Tools
Central is not another dashboard or a prettier payroll form. It’s an AI-powered teammate that lives in Slack, handling payroll, compliance, benefits, and tax filings with the simplicity of a message.
“Founders don’t want tools, they want outcomes,” Wymer says. “Existing solutions give you the knobs to turn, but what you really want is just for payroll to run. We didn’t see a product delivering that outcome, so we built one.”
The decision to embed directly in Slack came from observing how founders already dele
gate. “If you hired someone, you’d just message them: hey, please do this thing. We wanted Central to feel like that employee. You type, ‘change this person’s salary,’ hit enter, and it’s done.”
This shift, from beautiful dashboards to “manic simplicity,” as Wymer puts it, signals a broader UX/UI evolution. “It’s all micro apps,” he says. “We’re translating natural language into outcomes, then surfacing the minimal interface to confirm and submit. That’s the future.”
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Timing, Wymer argues, has been everything. Just as AWS allowed startups to skip buying servers, embedded fintech infrastructure has matured to the point where a compound business
like Central could be built in months, not years.
“Gusto and Rippling had to build everything in-house. We can offload payroll rails, benefits administration, accounting primitives, and focus on solving the new problems like compl
iance. That’s why we can deliver more value, faster.”
This approach has allowed Central to scale rapidly. Since launch, the company has processed over $75 million in payroll and counts hundreds of startups as customers. Remarkably, more than 30% are switching from incumbents, a scenario Wymer himself doubted at first.
“We thought nobody would switch. But once companies start hiring and the compliance burden snowballs, that’s the breaking point. They hit tax season, find errors, and ask: what else
is out there? That’s when they land on Central.”
One customer, Wymer recalls, initially left for Rippling. “Six weeks later, he was back. His message was basically: yeah, you were right, compliance is a nightmare. Can I get back on board?”
A High-Performance Engineering Lens
Wymer’s engineering DNA runs deep. Before Central, he was Staff Tech Lead Manager a
t Mixpanel and a Senior Software Engineer at Facebook. That experience shapes everything about Central’s culture and stack.
“We’re a full-stack TypeScript monorepo, on Neon for Postgres, withTemporal handling asynchronous workflows,” he explains. “The goal from day one was developer experience. If engineers can ship without friction, they’re happier, more productive, and the product gets better.”
This foundation matters because the surface area of Central is wide. “Payroll, HR, bookkeeping, taxes, it’s complex. But technically, it’s not new. My teams have solved these kinds of problems before. That lets us move really fast.”
Central raised $8.6 million in seed funding this August, led by First Round Capital, with participation from Y Combinator and a roster of founder-angels. Beyond capital, Wymer credits investors with providing access to design partners, technical advice, and crucial domain expertise.
“Our gap was industry knowledge. We’d all been paid before, but we’d never worked in payroll. Investors introduced us to veterans who helped us see around corners and avoid short-sighted decisions.”
As for what comes next, Wymer says the focus is clear: scale what’s working, deepen the product, and continue hiring, especially engineers. “We’ve built Central to be a place where high-performance engineering meets high-impact outcomes. That’s how we’ll win.”
