Fuzey, a London-based company providing what it calls a “digital one-stop shop” for small businesses and independent contractors, raised $4.5 million in seed funding.
The round was led by byFounders with participation from Flash Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Ascension and a group of angel investors, including Index Ventures’ venture partner Stephane Kurgan and Amplo VC founder and CEO Sheel Tyle.
The latest round gives the company $5.2 million in total funding since the company was founded in 2020 by Henrik Lysgaard Jensen and Alex Boyce. As part of the investment, byFounders investor Sara Rywe and Flash Ventures partner Lorenzo Franzi have joined the company’s board.
CEO Lysgaard Jensen and COO Boyce met each other about two years ago and bonded over helping small businesses digitize. Targeting small business owners, like plumbers, electricians and mechanics, Lysgaard Jensen believes local businesses “are the backbone of every community,” but many of the tools developed for business management are either out of reach to businesses like this nor designed with them in mind.
Other startups are also calling attention to these types of businesses. In November, Puls Technologies raised $15 million for its mobile app connecting tradespeople with on-demand home repair services. There are also larger companies in the space, like Jobber, which announced $60 million in funding at the beginning of the year.
This area is also particularly personal for Boyce, who explained that his mother is a small business owner who ran much of her business out of a leather-bound notebook, always fearing that it might get lost.
“These are topics we are working through,” he told TechCrunch. “We thought about how we could become agents of change during the pandemic, which was a wake-up call as we saw shifting consumer demands, people wanting to get more technology-centric and engage with local merchants in different ways.”
As such, the company’s tools digitize for small businesses what was traditionally done manually and on paper, like invoices. It brings together communications, payments, marketing and calendars into one dashboard to manage their businesses and amp up their online profiles.
Users are able to communicate with their customers through a variety of methods, from messaging to social media, while also generating invoices for instant payment and insights into lead generation. Fuzey also offers document templates and one-click customer reviews to make the process of leaving a review easier.
“Response time is important, and we even have response templates with predefined questions or comments so you can get back to customers quickly,” Lysgaard Jensen said. “We are big believers in the 20, 30, 40-time impact of this.”
The company, which went live with its product in June, will utilize the new funding on product development and geographical expansion. It is already operating in select markets in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Fuzey has 10 employees right now and is seeing double-digit growth month over month in both customers and revenue.
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