Palo Alto-based working capital lending startup BlueVine announced today the closure of a $40 million Series C round. The round was reportedly led by new investor Menlo Ventures, a company that has provided capital for multi-stage consumer and enterprise technology companies since 1976. Menlo Ventures was joined also by another new investor in Rakuten FinTech Fund, a Japanese firm that offers a wide variety of services for consumers and businesses, with a focus on e-commerce, finance and digital content. Other existing investors included the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners, Correlation Ventures, 83North and an undefined number of private individuals.
Founded in 2014, BlueVine enables businesses to get paid upfront on their outstanding invoices by providing them advances on the amount due. By providing an advance on invoices, the platform purchases the right to receive the proceeds of invoices from a small business’ customer, when the time of payment comes. Users may access the platform irrespective of whether they use invoicing or accounting software, as they’re able to easily create invoices in their BlueVine dashboard.
Eyal Lifshitz, CEO and founder of BlueVine, commented:
“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. 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.”
The fundraising brings the company’s total funds raised to date to $64 million. The Series C round follows on from an $18.5m Series B round, which was concluded last January 2015. BlueVine reportedly plans to use the proceeds to further expand its management ranks, develop new features, and fuel expansion into new verticals. In addition to the fundraise, BlueVine also announced excellent results for 2015, including having funded 12 times more invoices than had been financed in the previous year.
Tyler Sosin of Menlo Ventures added:
“BlueVine is bringing automation and a modern web experience to factoring, a massive market that has yet to be optimized by technology. We’re excited to partner with BlueVine to make working capital more accessible to the more than 20 million small businesses across the country."
