What do you call the grey area between a Series A and a Series B? In 2020, when the money is taken on opportunistically, you call it a Series A-1 extension, according to Teampay. Even if the new capital was raised at a new, higher valuation.
At least that’s what Teampay CEO Andrew Hoag has done with his company’s new $5 million investment, adding it onto its September, 2019-era Series A. TechCrunch covered that round, and the company’s $4 million seed round in 2018, keeping tabs on the corporate spend-management company as it grows.
Indeed, Teampay has posted big growth since its Series A was announced, pushing its annual recurring revenue (ARR) up by 320% and its total spend managed up by 800%. The first number implies that it has managed to monetize well as its usage, the second number, has spiked.
Tribe leads $12M Series A into Teampay to make managing employee expenses painless
Teampay, Hoag said in an interview, wants to help companies control their bank accounts. This has gotten harder in 2020, as companies went from having an office with many employees to many employees in home offices. The rising complexity of running companies in the aftermath of COVID-19 and its economic disruptions has been a boon for the startup, with Teampay seeing its sales cycle cut in half, the CEO said, and bigger companies coming to its door, looking for help.
The startup targets the midmarket with its spend software, helping companies control what Hoag views as a business process problem, not merely an ability-to-spend issue. Teampay doesn’t want to reinvent the corporate card, but instead provide a set of tools to help companies manage their outflows, no matter what format they take (ACH, virtual cards, etc.).
So unlike Divvy, say, or Brex, Teampay generates most of its income from software fees instead of interchange revenues, though the company did tell TechCrunch that it has room to derive more revenues from spend over time. On the topic of competition, Teampay has lots in various forms. Brex and Ramp and Divvy and Airbase, not to mention old-guard products like Concur and Expensify, are in the market.
But with a fresh $5 million led by Fin Venture Capital and participated in by prior investors like Crosscut, and Tribe, and the ubiquitous Precursor, Teampay has new ammunition with which to go hunting.
With this raise, Teampay has now raised $21 million in known equity financing to date. I asked Hoag why the new round is not simply called a Series B. He said that the letter-series round demarcations have lost some of their specificity in 2020 (true), undercutting the main thrust of my quibble, and that this round was too small to be called a Series B (also true).
Instead, he said, Teampay pulled forward a bit of its future Series B on the back of big growth, presumably to help the company do more today in anticipation of its later, more traditionally sized next round.
TechCrunch has covered aggressive extension rounds in recent months, putting Teampay in good company with firms that are doing well, leading to their taking on more capital to go even faster. Let’s see how much further it can amp its ARR before its real Series B.
Extension rounds help some startups play offense during COVID-19
Comment