Build notes, HR and payroll

In development

Korvahr.

HR and payroll for a startup with people in four countries and nobody whose job is HR.

StatusIn development, no launch date

Built byTechsity Labs, in house

Who it is forSmall teams hiring across borders

This pageWritten mid build, not after

The problem

This category is built for companies that already have an HR department.

The serious platforms in HR and global payroll are good software aimed at a company with an HR function, a finance team, and a budget line for implementation. Pricing is per person per month, modules stack on top of it, and the first month is spent in setup calls mapping policies nobody at a nine person startup has written yet.

For a founder who just hired a designer in Lagos, an engineer in Warsaw and a support lead in Manila, that is the wrong shape of product twice over. Too expensive at their headcount, and too much configuration before anyone gets paid. So the work goes back to a spreadsheet, four different transfer services, and a folder of contracts, which holds until the first tax question arrives.

The brief: a founder should be able to add a person, agree what they get paid, and have that person paid on time in their own country, without a call, a consultant, or a policy document.

Who it is for, and who it is not

Deciding this early is what keeps the setup short. Every audience you add costs a configuration screen.

Built for

Startups and small businesses under about fifty people.

Teams paying employees and contractors in more than one country.

Founders and operations generalists doing HR as a second job.

Companies who want the thing running this week, not this quarter.

Not built for

Enterprises with an HR team and an existing HRIS to migrate.

Anyone who needs deep policy configuration and approval hierarchies.

Recruiting and applicant tracking. That is a different product.

Saying no to these is the only way the first run stays short.

What we are building

Four things, in this order. Anything that is not one of these four is not in the first release.

Add a person

Minutes, not a project

Name, country, role, what they are paid, employee or contractor. The system asks only for what it needs to pay that person in that country and fills in the rest from what it already knows about the country.

Run payroll

One run, several countries

One approval covers the whole team, in the currencies each person is paid in, with a clear record of what left the account and what each person received. Failures surface as a named person and a reason, never as a silent gap.

One record per person

Contracts, leave, documents

The contract, the pay history, time off, and the documents a person needs when a bank or a tax office asks. Replacing the folder and the spreadsheet is most of the value on day one.

The AI part

Setup and answers, not decisions

The model does the reading a founder does not want to do: turning a signed contract into structured terms, drafting the offer or the policy in plain language, and answering "what do I owe for this hire in this country" with the working shown. It does not move money on its own and it does not decide anything a person cannot see the reasoning for.

The rules we are holding to

Written before the build so they can be checked against the thing we ship.

Rule one

Working before configured

A new account starts with sensible defaults per country and one person added. Settings exist, but nothing waits on them.

Rule two

No implementation call

If a founder needs a human on a call to get started, the product has failed at the thing it exists to fix.

Rule three

Price a small team can carry

Priced so a nine person company can run it without a discussion, and so the cost of one more hire is obvious in advance.

Open questions

Unsettled while this is written. If you have run payroll across borders, these are the ones worth arguing with us about.

Which countries first

Depth in a handful of corridors beats shallow coverage of forty. Choosing the first set is a research question, not a preference.

How far into employment we go

Paying a contractor abroad and legally employing someone abroad are different products with different obligations. The line has to be explicit before launch, not discovered by a customer.

What we never guess at

Tax and compliance answers have to be sourced, dated, and shown as such. Anywhere the model is not certain, the product says so instead of producing a confident number.

Founder's note

Nobody starting a company wants an HR platform. They want the person they just hired to be paid correctly on Friday. Korvahr is only worth building if it does that on the first afternoon, with no call.

Joseph AyobamiFounder, Techsity

In progress

Nothing is public yet. These frames hold the first two screens worth showing when they are ready.

Payroll run, one approval across countries

A person's record

Live product

Hiring across borders right now?

Tell us which countries and how you pay people today. Early teams shape what ships first.

Get in touch