RangeRadar

Idea

A compliance checker that stops job postings from breaking state pay transparency laws before they go live, and keeps watching after. RangeRadar scans a job posting for the salary range, benefits summary, and jurisdiction rules it needs, flags what is missing or wrong, and then polls the company's live postings on a schedule so a posting that was compliant in January does not quietly go stale when a new state law kicks in. It sits next to whatever ATS or job board a company already uses instead of asking them to switch platforms.

Market gap

18 US states plus Washington DC now require salary ranges in job postings, and the list keeps growing. Coverage thresholds are inconsistent (4 employees in New York, 5 in Vermont, 15 in California, up to 50 in Hawaii), and the biggest trap is remote hiring: if a "remote anywhere" posting can be filled by someone in a covered state, most legal guidance says the posting needs a compliant range even if the employer has no office there. Small and mid-market companies without in-house employment counsel have no reliable way to track this per posting, per state, per law change.

Enforcement moved from warnings to real penalties in 2025 and 2026. Massachusetts and New Jersey both shifted from policy to active audits. California's Labor Commissioner has issued citations up to $10,000 per violation. New York City penalties reach $250,000 for repeat violations. The tools that exist today are built for companies that already have an HR compliance budget: enterprise pay equity auditors and sales-quote document automation platforms. Nothing serves the company that just wants to know, right now, whether the job it is about to post on LinkedIn is legal.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Bottom-up, from published Census and SBA figures:

• The US has roughly 5.58 million employer firms with 1 to 499 employees (SBA-cited 2023 Census figure). Firms under 10 employees rarely run a formal recruiting process or hire across state lines, so they are excluded from the target segment.
• Using the standard SUSB firm-size skew (the large majority of employer firms have fewer than 10 employees), the 10 to 499 employee band is estimated at roughly 950,000 firms. This is the ICP: big enough to hire regularly and post jobs in more than one state, small enough that an enterprise HRIS compliance module or a sales-quote product like SixFifty is out of reach.
• Assume 40% of these firms actively hire in a given year, and 50% of active hirers post at least one remote-eligible or multi-state role (a reasonable share given how common remote and hybrid postings became after 2021). That is a serviceable market of roughly 190,000 companies.
• Blended annual contract value across the three pricing tiers below: approximately $1,800.

TAM: 950,000 x $1,800 ≈ $1.71B SAM: 190,000 x $1,800 ≈ $342M SOM (year 1, realistic for a self-serve launch): 150 paying companies x $1,800 ≈ $270K ARR

Sources for the base figures: SBA Office of Advocacy 2025 Small Business Profile, and the Census-derived firm count cited in small business statistics roundups (see Sources).

Monetization strategy

Straight B2B SaaS subscription, billed monthly or annually, paid by the company (HR, recruiting ops, or the founder doing hiring directly at a small company). Customers keep paying because state pay transparency law changes constantly (new states, new thresholds, updated enforcement guidance), so a one-time check goes stale in months. The subscription is the ongoing insurance policy, not a single audit.

Pricing strategy

• Starter, $79/mo: up to 50 employees, up to 10 actively monitored postings, all 18+ state rulesets, one connected ATS or job board source, email alerts. Entry point for a small company or a solo recruiter.
• Growth, $249/mo (anchor): up to 250 employees, unlimited monitored postings, multiple connected sources, Slack alerts, quarterly compliance report export for leadership or outside counsel.
• Scale, $699/mo: up to 500 employees or multiple brands/entities, API access, priority updates when a new state law passes.

Anchor is Growth because most companies past 50 employees post more roles than Starter's cap covers. Starter exists purely to get a company through the free scan and into a paid account fast.

Lead magnet

A free, no-login instant compliance scan: paste a job posting or its URL, get back a pass/fail per applicable state, with the specific missing element named (no range, range too wide, missing benefits summary, wrong jurisdiction assumption for a remote role). One scan, no account required, no result saved. It proves the product's core value in under 30 seconds and mirrors exactly the panic moment a recruiter has right before hitting publish.

Social proof that the problem exists

• New York City Council's Committee on Civil and Human Rights investigation (January 2025) found job seekers routinely encounter thousands of postings on Indeed and Google for Jobs missing salary ranges, and recommended the city's Commission on Human Rights engage the platforms directly to fix it: council.nyc.gov
• Indeed itself built and documents a "why was my job flagged" support process specifically because so many employers submit postings that violate state salary disclosure rules: indeed.com
• G2's 2026 platform data shows a 90% year-over-year surge in payroll and HR compliance software reviews, which G2 attributes directly to employers scrambling to meet 2026 pay transparency deadlines: finance.yahoo.com
• Fox Rothschild's employment law group published a 2026 explainer specifically on the remote-posting trap (one California-based employee can pull an entire "remote anywhere" posting into California's law), aimed at employers who keep getting this wrong: californiaemploymentlaw.foxrothschild.com

Competitors

• SixFifty: law-firm-affiliated (Wilson Sonsini) document automation for employment policies and handbooks, with a pay transparency policy builder that can flag postings for compliance gaps. Sold via a custom quote based on employee count and state count, not self-serve.
• Trusaic (PayParity): enterprise pay equity audit software that analyzes HRIS compensation data for statistical pay gaps. Built for Fortune 100-scale employers, with implementation costs from $5,000 to $75,000+ and per-user pricing around $20 to $80/month.
• Syndio (PayEQ): the largest specialist pay equity vendor, combining pay gap analysis with promotion and hiring opportunity analytics. Also enterprise-scale and HRIS-integrated.
• GovDocs / Poster Compliance: labor law poster compliance for physical and digital workplace postings. Adjacent category, does not touch job posting text.
• Bundled HRIS modules (Rippling, Paycor, ADP, Gusto, Paycom): several full HR platforms have added pay transparency features as part of their broader payroll and HR suite, but only for companies already running payroll through them.

What competitors offer now

SixFifty generates the policy language and can audit postings you feed it, but it is a document-generation platform first, sold through a sales conversation, and priced for companies that already budget for employment law tooling. Trusaic and Syndio analyze pay data after the fact to find statistical inequities across a whole workforce; neither is built to catch a single job posting missing a salary range before it publishes. The bundled HRIS modules only work if a company has already migrated its entire payroll and HR stack to that vendor, which is a heavy lift for a 50-person company that just needs its next LinkedIn posting to be legal.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Ship a standalone, cheap, self-serve tool that plugs into whatever a company already uses (LinkedIn, Indeed, Greenhouse, or just a careers page URL) instead of asking for a platform migration or a sales call. Lead with the free instant scan so a recruiter gets an answer in the exact moment of anxiety, right before hitting publish, not after a quarterly HR audit. Keep monitoring live after the posting goes up, since laws change mid-quarter and nobody re-checks a posting that already shipped.