Fluidly, a London-based fintech startup aiming to revolutionise cashflow management for SMEs, has completed a £2M seed investment, bringing the total amount it has raised to £2.375M ($3.2M).
Fluidly helps SMEs predict and optimise their cashflow, starting with collecting cash faster through intelligent credit control. The SaaS platform integrates with cloud accounting packages and, from 2018, will integrate with the Open Banking APIs.
This seed round has been led by Octopus Ventures, with other investors including specialist fintech VCs Anthemis and Nyca Partners. The new funding will be used to expand the team of engineers and data scientists working to advance the product, and also to build sales and marketing capacity.
Fluidly has been in private alpha with a number of customer and accounting development partners. A full market launch is planned with leading cloud-accounting package Xero at Xerocon in October.
The business was founded last year by Caroline Plumb, a serial entrepreneur who has personal experience of the painpoint – “After running businesses for over 15 years I know one of the most time-consuming and stressful aspects is forecasting and managing cashflow, most of which is highly manual and uncertain. Fluidly is about helping businesses sleep more soundly by getting them paid faster and providing certainty and peace of mind over finances”
Will Gibbs, Investment Manager at Octopus Ventures said: “We see SMEs succeed or fail as a result of cashflow management, and Fluidly provides the tools to address this significant pain point. The implementation of the second Payment Services Directive next year will unlock innovation in the payments sector, and Caroline and the Fluidly team are capable of leading the way in this space for UK fintech.”
Gary Turner, UK co-founder and managing director at Xero said, “Fluidly is one of the true disruptors of the Fintech industry, so we’re really excited about working together. It’s these types of innovations that allow small businesses to compete on a much larger scale and further contribute to the UK economy.”
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About Fluidly:
Fluidly is an Intelligent Cashflow Engine which uses machine learning to automate and optimise cashflow for businesses who care deeply about their finances.
Fluidly has built a team of financial professionals, engineers and data scientists with previous experience at Entrepreneur First, Lloyds, Tandem and MarketInvoice. The team is led by Caroline Plumb, who previously co-founded recruiting and consulting business FreshMinds. Caroline is one of the Prime Minister’s Business Ambassadors and received an OBE in the 2016 Birthday Honours list.
An estimated 1,300 hours a year is spent by the average small business owner chasing late payment and managing cashflow effectively is the single biggest area SMEs spend their time on.
About Octopus Ventures
Octopus Ventures is a London and New York based venture capital firm, focused on identifying unusually talented entrepreneurs. In recent years we have been fortunate to back the founding teams of over 60 companies, including Conversocial, graze.com, LOVEFiLM, Property Partner, Secret Escapes, Sofar Sounds, SwiftKey, Swoon Editions, Uniplaces, tails.com, Zoopla Property Group and Zynstra.
We can invest from £250,000 to £25 million in a first round of funding and will look to follow in subsequent rounds. We are proud to be known as one of the most entrepreneur friendly investors in Europe and a significant part of our portfolio consists of referrals from teams we have already invested in or serial entrepreneurs who we have previously backed.
Octopus Ventures is part of the Octopus group. Octopus is a fast-growing UK fund management business
with leading positions in several specialist sectors including property finance, healthcare, energy and smaller company investing. Founded in 2000, Octopus manages more than £6 billion of funds on behalf of 50,000 investors.
About Xero
Xero is beautiful, easy-to-use online accounting software for small businesses and their advisors. The company has over one million subscribers in more than 180 countries, with more than 200,000 of those in the UK. Xero seamlessly integrates with over 500 apps and took home a record number of UK industry awards in 2016, including Client Software Product of the Year at the British Accountancy Awards and Technology Provider of the Year at the British Small Business Awards.
