Finally takes in $95M in equity, debt to roll out lending for small businesses

Originally published on TechCrunch here by Christine Hall (@christinemhall).

Felix Rodriguez’s family is from the Dominican Republic, and he watched his aunts and uncles come to the United States and create their own businesses. However, he noticed that not all small businesses were on a level playing field when it came to bookkeeping and working capital.

In 2018, after a career as a network engineer, Rodriguez and his wife, Glennys Rodriguez, began helping small and mid-sized businesses manage their finances, and after joining with Edwin Mejia, founded Finally.

“There are all of these apps, and with most solutions, the founder is expected to deal with the tools,” CEO Felix Rodriguez told TechCrunch. “We want to help them automate their finances so they can have a strong grasp on their numbers and build a better community and company for everyone involved.”

Originally called Back Office, Miami-based Finally is collecting data points on bookkeeping, invoicing, bill payment and payroll, and leveraging artificial intelligence and automation to put together a financial picture for their clients. Today, the company works with over 1,000 small business clients and is managing close to $2 billion of transactions.

After hearing from clients that they want to tap into the capital markets, but find it challenging to rely on banks and credit cards, Rodriguez says the second step of Finally is to unlock a credit opportunity.

In the works is an all-in-one product that starts with a corporate card and will add additional credit products with plans to make over $1 billion in credit available.

To get that off the ground, the company secured $95 million in Series A capital that includes $11 million in equity and $85 million in a credit facility, which is going to be used for lending to SMBs. The round was led by PeakSpan, with participation from Active Capital, 500 FinTech, and GTMfund. Individual investors include GeoCities founder David Bohnett and SessionM founder Scott Weller. Clear Haven Capital provided the debt facility.

In addition to the lending, the company is using the new funding on hiring, including expanding both the engineering and sales teams. Finally also recently brought on a head of lending and will also hire to support that side of the business.

Finally is a SaaS platform so clients pick a package depending on the amount of apps they have and pay a monthly fee. With the credit product, it will be free, and the company will make money from the interchange and other fees associated with the credit card.

In the past two years, Finally grew from 12 employees to now more than 100, and has experienced triple-digit revenue growth.

“Before COVID, we were preaching that you have to know your numbers, and when COVID hit, they really had to know their numbers to get PPP loans and then apply for credit,” Rodriguez added. “Access to credit is something everyone is excited about.”

‍