Toronto-based FinTech startup Wave announced a $14.6 million investment today, led by BDC’s IT Venture Fund. HarbourVest and existing investors CRV and Social Capital also participated in the round.
Wave plans to use the funding to accelerate R&D and growth. The company also wants to grow the team to approximately 150 people over the next six months, as it looks to leverage mobile processes like allowing businesses owners to do accounting from their phones, and exploring automation.
“Today, we’re at a great point in Wave’s ongoing story. We have tremendous momentum, and a solid, broad base of products and services that’s nearly unrivalled in the small business space,” said Kirk Simpson, CEO and co-founder of Wave. “With this new investment led by BDC’s IT Venture Fund along with HarbourVest, we have the ability to ramp up the development of our product set. While we’re committed to ambitious improvements to the invoicing and accounting software that makes up Wave’s core, we also have an opportunity now to make a real difference to the cash flow of small business owners, with our payments and lending products, as well as other innovations on our horizon.”
This round brings Wave’s total funding to date to $62.3 million, and the company says it’s on track to reach $20 million ARR by 2016. In March, Wave raised $6.7 million from BDC Capital, and announced that it was looking into entering the lending space space for small businesses. The lending product soft launched to select businesses in the US and Canada. The company hasn’t completely rolled out the product yet as it explores how the product can help all customers.
“We’re excited to partner with Wave and help fuel its growth in providing cloud-based financial software and services to small business owners,” said David Zug, vice president at HarbourVest. “Wave has grown significantly over the past three years and we see a large, underserved market to support further growth, especially as the company expands its payments and lending capabilities to meet the capital needs of small business.”