ScaleFactor, the Techstars alumnus that’s selling accounting and payroll management software as a service, has raised $10 million in a new round of funding as it looks to scale up its sales and marketing efforts.
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.
Rathmann, a former KPMG employee, started ScaleFactor after seeing the lack of innovation in the backoffice functions that are really the engine of any small business.
“Around the tech stack, accounting and financials were lacking the most,” Rathmann says. So he left his job at KPMG and started ScaleFactor Consulting out of his garage in Austin in 2014.
After a few years of basically going door-to-door (a throwback to Rathmann’s first company as an 18-year-old selling outdoor lighting in suburban Dallas) to find out what small businesses needed from an accounting software solution, ScaleFactor developed the API toolkit and management software that would become the services it’s pitching today.
After graduating from TechStars’ Austin accelerator, the company was able to nab $2.5 million in a seed financing round that included TechStars Ventures, NextCoast Ventures, and two Kansas City-based investment firms — Firebrand Ventures and Flyover Capital.
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.
With the window that the company has into the operations of small businesses around the country, ScaleFactor can serve as an unimpeachable source of information for small business lenders.
With insight of (and control over) payroll management, billpay, cash approvals, cash accounting, and an ability to project forward cash flows (along with invoicing and tax management for part time employees), ScaleFactor will be able to offer lending services to smooth bumps in a company’s progress.
“Bookkeeping and accounting is really the nucleus,” says Michael Gilroy, a principal with Canaan Partners.
While Square has moved into lending services (and now is on the hunt for a banking license) through its window into a company’s revenues through point-of-sale devices, a company like ScaleFactor has a more holistic view of the health of a business, says Gilroy.
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.
“With our foundation established, a big part of our Series A is how do we power the business owner past bookkeeping & accounting? We see many opportunities to help further and our next steps will include things like lending, payments and many other activities that take a business owner/operators focus away from driving their business forward,” Rathmann wrote in an email.
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