US-based start-ups Growfin and PTO Exchange have raised $1.4 million and $5.4 million, respectively.
Growfin raises $1.4m
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) fintech platform Growfin has raised $1.4 million in a seed round from 3one4 Capital and a group of angels.
It has also announced its global launch “to transform how finance functions in business-to-business (B2B) companies track and collect payments from their customers”. Its flagship offering, it claims, is “the world’s first finance CRM for enabling B2B payments”.
Founded in 2020 and based in Wilmington, Delaware, the company says it is “seeing strong product market signals”. Among its clients are Intercom, Whatfix, Darwinbox, Airmeet, Locus.sh, and MonetizeMore, and it plans to increase its customer base tenfold over the next year.
“Collecting payments in B2B companies involve not only finance but also other stakeholders like sales and customer success, all of whom end up capturing payment information in their own formats and systems. This creates vacuums of information and countless workflow layers leading to a lot of inefficiencies in collecting payments,” says Aravind Gopalan, co-founder and CEO of Growfin.
“Instead of having to rely on disparate systems that do not talk to each other, we have created an easy-to-use no-code platform that invites everyone concerned with an invoice payment, including the customer, to collaborate in one place where they all see the same information and help solve payment issues faster.”
PTO Exchange raises $5.4m
Seattle, Washington-based PTO Exchange, which claims to be “the only platform that allows employees to self-direct the value of their unused paid time off (PTO) for other needs and causes”, has secured an oversubscribed $5.4 million second seed funding round.
The round was led by TTV Capital, with participation from Fin Capital, Manifold Ventures, CFV Ventures, SpringTime Ventures, Forefront Venture Partners, and WestRiver Group.
The latest round brings the company’s total funding to $9 million.
Rob Whalen, co-founder and CEO of PTO Exchange, says that only four out of ten employees use all their vacation each year, with the average employee leaving a week unused.
“The team at PTO Exchange is taking a thoughtful and creative approach to a big problem for both businesses and their employees,” says Sean Banks, partner at TTV Capital and board member of PTO Exchange.
“Every year, millions of vacation days are rendered worthless to the employees who earned them. While the first option should be for employees to use all of their PTO, the next best solution is to gain value from a benefit that would otherwise expire. PTO Exchange has a massive opportunity to change the entire mindset around unused paid time off and turn it into a real asset for companies.”
Employees can, for example, convert the value of their PTO into life planning (retirement funds), education (student loans), or philanthropy (offering days to a co-worker or charitable causes).
