Vancouver-based startup Hubly has secured $1.7 million CAD ($1.3 million USD) in seed financing to fuel the growth of its software solution for financial advisors.
Hubly’s product helps financial advisors and their teams build custom workflows, collaborate, and automate repetitive tasks. The startup’s seed round was co-led by Mucker Capital and OCA Ventures. Including the new financing, Hubly has raised $2.2 million in funding to date.
Since launching its product a year and a half ago, Hubly has seen significant demand from financial services firms.
Since launching its product a year and a half ago, Hubly claims to have seen significant demand from financial services firms looking to digitize and improve their operations amid the shift to remote and hybrid work environments.
Founded in 2019 in Vancouver, Hubly graduated from the Barclays/Techstars Fintech Accelerator Program in New York later that year.
But when COVID-19 hit, Hubly’s investors “receded” due to pandemic-related uncertainty, and the startup reduced its team to two: co-founders Louis Retief (CEO) and Ron Gorodetsky (COO).
Retief called this period “a difficult time” for Hubly, adding that while investors were saying no, its customers were still interested, and the latter gave the startup the “motivation to keep going.”
Hubly pushed through, launching its product in July 2020 and onboarding over 500 users within its first 18 months in-market. The company’s service is currently available across the US.
“Hubly is at the forefront of a wave of vertically-integrated B2B SaaS companies that are leveraging technology to center the ‘service’ aspect of financial services,” said Mucker Capital co-founder and Partner William Hsu.
Mucker Capital focuses on seed and Series A-stage software companies based outside of Silicon Valley. According to Hsu, the California-based VC firm decided to back Hubly because it believes in the startup’s team and its mission of “empowering a new generation of financial service professionals with the tools to collaborate with their clients better.”
COVID-19 has reportedly accelerated the wealth management industry’s digital transformation, benefitting startups like Hubly and Montréal-based Mako Fintech, which helps wealth management professionals bring their operations online, enabling them to digitize and automate many of their manual processes using its software.
After seeing significant pandemic-fuelled growth, Mako closed $2 million CAD in seed financing earlier this year.
According to Hubly, the Vancouver-based firm intends to use its seed funding to “further invest into the solo-entrepreneur and small firms where they have established a foothold,” while also continuing its work with enterprise firms.
To tackle these goals, Hubly plans to double the size of its team (currently nine employees) and hire for sales, customer support, product, and engineering roles.
Feature image courtesy Hubly.
