FinTech News
Accounting Infrastructure Startup Teal Raises $8 Million
A FinTech offering accounting infrastructure tools for vertical SaaS businesses to adopt has announced its seed round.
About the round:
Today, Teal announced that it had raised $8 million. The seed round was led by Torch Capital, while Basis Set Ventures, General Advance, and Dash Fund also participated. Additionally, execs from Plaid, Brex, Gusto, and others are among the angel investors contributing to the round. This is the startup’s first publicly announced funding round.
About Teal:
With Teal, companies can build accounting offerings for small business customers. Among the tools end-users will have are real-time cash flow data, per-product profitability insights, support for tax filing, and more. Additionally, Teal’s “rapid implementation model” allow SaaS providers to add these solutions in as few as four weeks.
What they’re saying:
Speaking about the idea behind Teal and what they do, the company’s co-founder and CEO Ian Crosby stated, “Teal is building the Stripe for accounting. Just like Stripe provides the underlying infrastructure for Vertical SaaS companies to build payments products, Teal provides the infrastructure for Vertical SaaS companies to build and offer accounting features within their platforms.” Crosby continued, “Having led Bench Accounting, the largest bookkeeping service for SMBs for a decade, I saw firsthand the limitations of standalone accounting software that is not integrated into the rest of a business’ core platform. We built Teal to address this problem.”
Commenting on Torch Capital’s investment, the firm’s partner Katie Reiner said, “We’re thrilled to be supporting Teal in its mission to revolutionize the accounting space for SMBs. There are 30M+ SMBs in the US, and at Torch, we invest behind the tools and platforms that help their businesses thrive. There’s a huge, dire need for streamlined and intuitive accounting tools, and Teal’s embedded approach, coupled with Ian and team’s proven track record of building standout financial software will address these long standing pain points. Teal’s rapid growth and early success are a testament to this.”
My thoughts:.
I imagine that the term “Stripe but for…” has been uttered in many a VC conference room or TechCrunch interview, but it’s not as often that you see such direct comparisons put into press releases. Given the success of Stripe, it’s really no wonder why Teal would want to put their startup’s name alongside it. Of course, the difference is that this $8 million seed round is Teal’s first whereas Stripe has funding totaling $9.4 billion.
Lofty comparisons aside, Teal does sound like a solid platform. Thus, this seed round seems poised to be just the beginning for this blossoming FinTech.