Californian financial tech startup company Bluevine closed its $40 million Series C funding last Wednesday. Menlo Ventures lead the investment and other participants, including new investor with Rakuten FinTech Fund.
Eyal Lifshitz, CEO and founder of BlueVine told The PE Hub Network, "We are thrilled to welcome Menlo Ventures and Rakuten FinTech Fund to our esteemed group of investors and to embark on our next phase of growth." He also commented the new funding, "BlueVine has ushered factoring into the modern age while bringing much-needed transparency, efficiency and speed to the industry. With this capital infusion, our team is excited to work with more SMB owners to solve their cash-flow challenges on a greater scale."
BlueVine was founded in 2013 as an invoice factoring company. That means its main business is to buy unpaid invoices from small businesses. By acquiring their unpaid invoices, the company help small businesses to bridge the cash gap because of slow paying customers.
According to Tech Crunch, different from bank operations, BlueVine choose a smaller operations by securing credit lines under $250,000. The company usually pays between 85% and 90% of invoice values and pay the rest of it, excluded of fee, once the customer pays the invoice.
The Palo Alto-based company plan to use the new investment to bolster its management ranks, develop new features and fuel expansion into new verticals. During 2015, BlueVine has experienced a twelve-times increase in funded invoices and aiming to fund over $200 million in working capital this year.
In 2014, BlueVine launched the first cloud-based invoice factoring service. With its new cloud-based infrastructure, the company is able to serve thousands of small businesses to obtain quick, easy access to funds they need. Enabling the small businesses to purchase inventory, cover expenses or expand operations without worry about late payment from their customers.
Following the investment, two of the key persons in Menlo Ventures and Rakuten FinTech Fund will join the BlueVine's leadership. They are Tyler Sosin from Menlo Ventures who will join board of directors, and Oskar Mielczarek de la Miel from Rakuten FinTech Fund to become a board observer and strategic advisor.
In regards to his joining the board of BlueVine, Tyler Sosin told Business Wire, "We're excited to partner with BlueVine to make working capital more accessible to the more than 20 million small businesses across the country."
While Oskar de la Miel said his appreciation to the company, "We are very impressed with BlueVine's disruptive technology and how it financially empowers the small business community."
Menlo Ventures and Rakuten Fintech Fund has raised $40 million in Series C funding BlueVine last Wednesday. So far, the company has acquired $64 million from six rounds of investment. Its other investors are Lightspeed Venture Partners, 83NORTH, Correlation Ventures and some private investors.
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