ScaleFactor Raises $30M to Expand A I. Accounting Service

Despite the votes of confidence from well-known investors, customers were finding that ScaleFactor was falling short. Patrick Coddou, whose e-commerce business paid ScaleFactor more than $10,000, requested to cancel in April 2019 after his statements, expected to be delivered on a real-time basis, were delivered monthly because they were being processed manually. While his friends saved pennies for video games, he mowed lawns to save for his first business. By the time he launched ScaleFactor in 2014, he had worked as an auditor at KPMG, and as a CFO at a small telecommunications company.

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Rathmann acknowledges the decision may have affected his business once the pandemic hit, as customers demanded more human relationships, rather than automated services. We laser focus on a handful of niches including fitness, legal, SaaS, managed services, and creative agencies. If we don’t work with your niche, we are happy to offer quality referrals, people that we trust will take great care of you. For those who are a good fit, and who are eager to make a fast transition to an accounting team that will be around for years to come, we are temporarily waiving our onboarding fees for former ScaleFactor clients.

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Procure gross vs net to pay (P2P) software provider Zip has raised $100 million in a Series C funding… Part of this has to do with a hiring spree that followed its January Series B. But it’s not done yet, ScaleFactor is still actively hiring for roles in sales, product, accounting and engineering. Accounting Prose empowers our clients with the accurate data they need to make crucial financial decisions and successfully scale their business. Even as doubts about its product emerged, ScaleFactor scored a term sheet for a $60 million funding round at the start of June 2019. Coatue Management, a large technology investor overseeing $16 billion in assets, led the new funding round, joined by Bessemer, Canaan and others. Last year, ScaleFactor made the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce’s A-List of Hottest Startups in the mid-sized category.On Tuesday, ScaleFactor announced plans to shut down after raising $103 million from investors – including $90 million in 2019.

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Rathmann explained that, since ScaleFactor’s software is already integrated into so many parts of the customer’s operations, there are plenty of opportunities to offer additional services. Equipped with that information ScaleFactor software can do things — like prompt business owners of the revenue targets they need to hit each month or suggest lending options to cover shortfalls — that better equip business owners to handle disruptions. Founded by longtime accountant, Kurt Rathmann, the Austin-based company has created a software service that collects and analyzes data from point of sale systems, bank accounts, credit cards and billing systems, to automate recordkeeping and payroll functions.

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• If we don’t work with your niche, we are happy to offer quality referrals, people that we trust will take great care of you.
• About 100 people would be laid off with three months of severance, and cash would be returned to investors — a seemingly tidy end to another startup afflicted by the pandemic.
• It was then reported that customers started to cancel, while some of them demanded refunds.
• As an example, Rathmann explained how ScaleFactor’s software had discovered that a coffee shop was acquiring too much inventory, impairing its cash flow.
• “Bookkeeping and accounting is really the nucleus,” says Michael Gilroy, a principal with Canaan Partners.
• I’ll let you decide, but the one thing that’s apparent is that the challenge of interweaving accounting and AI functionalities into one platform that accomplishes tasks that are regularly performed by humans is no easy feat.

Accounting can be hard work, but watching the people who rely on our team thrive is the greatest reward imaginable. Reach out today and mention ScaleFactor if you’d like to take advantage of this opportunity. At the end of the day, Kurt Rathmann explained to Forbes last month, customers were craving a person, rather than a computer to do their accounting.

• Even though ScaleFactor was under confidentiality provisions barring it from discussing the funding round outside the company, Robert Stang, the coffee shop owner, says he was offered a discount because ScaleFactor was chasing a sales target ahead of an impending series C funding round.
• Founded by longtime accountant, Kurt Rathmann, the Austin-based company has created a software service that collects and analyzes data from point of sale systems, bank accounts, credit cards and billing systems, to automate recordkeeping and payroll functions.
• We help our clients scale their revenue and profits by implementing our 7 Factors of Scale.
• Procure to pay (P2P) software provider Zip has raised $100 million in a Series C funding…
• The latest round also includes contributions from returning investors Canaan Partners, Broadhaven Ventures, Firebrand Ventures, and various angel investors.
• The new funding round follows a Series A round last July when ScaleFactor raised $10 million.
• Paperwork is the bane of many a small business, forcing owners to burn precious time plowing through receipts or huddling over an accountant’s spreadsheet.

The Austin, Texas-based company had most recently raised a $60 million series C led by Coatue in August 2019, which had given the company a $360 million post-money valuation. Other investors included Canaan Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners; those investors declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. The company said it would redistribute a portion of its capital back to investors, but declined to say how much. Paperwork is the bane of many a small business, forcing owners to burn precious time plowing through receipts or huddling over an accountant’s spreadsheet. One startup, however, promises to reduce the pain of these back-office operations with software that can scalefactor automate many of the most tedious tasks. Nathan is a Senior Research Analyst at G2 focusing on finance and accounting software and their respective markets.

Launched in 2014, ScaleFactor offered software that automates back-office tasks including bookkeeping and payroll. The idea was to provide the automated bookkeeping tools available to larger companies to small and medium sized businesses, a tool that complement other products from Shopify and Square that enable small businesses to operate online. It charged its more than 1,000 business customers a flat fee for its software, with packages starting at around $6,000 and reaching as high as about $30,000 a year — a revenue stream that has https://www.bookstime.com/articles/wine-accounting now dried up as small and medium-sized businesses have had to cut their own costs.

• Bessemer Venture Partners then invested another $30 million, and recently, ScaleFactor raised another $60 million in a Series C round led by Coatue, bringing the total capital raised to over $100 million.
• Coatue Management, a large technology investor overseeing $16 billion in assets, led the new funding round, joined by Bessemer, Canaan and others.
• We do plan to continue to invest in our own technology (our development team is finishing work on some top-secret stuff), but we will not take on a mountain of debt or sell out control of the company to do so.
• Coming from the world of finance, Nathan understands and is familiar with the importance of finance/accounting software, and the complexities, struggles, and nuances that come with them.
• ScaleFactor intends to use the cash it raised to expand operations, but also to explore other products such as providing loans or insurance to its clients.

In these roles, Rathmann saw firsthand a glaring need for technology to help small businesses with their bookkeeping services. On Thursday, Austin-based ScaleFactor announced it had raised a $30 million Series B funding round to expand its operations, which already serve thousands of small businesses across the country. ScaleFactor, the accounting fintech serving the small and medium-sized business market, raised $60 million in venture funding, in its third fundraising round in about a  year. While the initial services business holds a lot of value and has managed to attract scores of small businesses, both Rathmann and his new investors led by Canaan Partners and including Citi Ventures and Broadhaven Capital see bigger opportunities down the road for ScaleFactor. An informal limit on the value of contracts allowed to be cancelled during Churn Desk meetings was then imposed in an attempt to slow the outflow.