Cash flow can make or break a small business; in fact, this aspect accounts for 82% of small businesses failaccording to Bank of America data.
Robbie Bhathal, co-founder and CEO of Brightflow AI Image Source: bright stream
Bright flow artificial intelligence Technology is being injected into this problem with its forecasting and analytics tools so that small businesses can assess their cash flow and make data-driven decisions in real-time. Brightflow also has a capital lending program that can help during times of traditional capital volatility or high interest rates.
The San Francisco-based company’s cash flow calculator pulls in financial data from platforms like Shopify, Amazon, QuickBooks, Facebook, and Google Ads, then sees cash flow in real-time.
If this sounds familiar, you’re correct, Brightflow isn’t the only company helping companies sell more online. For example, Bainbridge Growth, which announced $4 million in seed funding this week, is also providing data and analytics for e-commerce companies.
However, Brightflow founder and CEO Robbie Bhathal told TechCrunch that the company differentiates itself by focusing on automating financial services and disseminating that information in a way that business owners can understand.
Before founding Brightflow in 2019, Bhathal was the co-founder of the hotel booking site Suiteness. He said his involvement in growing the company was actually what led him to start Brightflow with Jeffrey Priebe.
“The personal pain point is how fast your business is growing and how difficult it is to manage, especially when it comes to accounting, finance and forward-looking status,” Bhathal said. “And general access to information. I’m not coming from too much money, so To get capital, you try to find the best place, whether it’s through Y Combinator or the accelerated equity capital market.”
The product seems to resonate with users. In the past year, the company has grown 10-fold, bringing in more than $60 million in growth capital to clients, Bhathal said. During this period, there were 1,200 customer connections on its platform and more than 49,000 transactions were synced daily, generating billions of dollars in revenue for the system.
To keep the momentum going, the company recently closed a $15 million Series A round led by Haymaker Ventures, which also included a $100 million debt round from i80 Group. The new investment brings Brightflow nearly $20 million in total funding to date.
Bhathal said the capital injection plan includes hiring more staff to join the 40 already in place and working on product development to provide customers with additional growth opportunities.
Mark Mullen, co-founder of Bonfire Ventures, the company that led Brightflow’s seed stage, said the company’s initial customers were e-commerce, which made it easier to understand the pain points.
“The potential that Robbie and his partner Jeffrey are able to express is a much bigger vision that they’re starting to execute now,” Mullen told TechCrunch. “What they are trying to start, we feel, is the democratization of finance. Customers have been able to take advantage of fintech opportunities by lending and generating different income streams.”
Next, Bhathal said, the company will focus on further automating its fundamentals and scale so that there are more opportunities to forecast, while also having man-in-the-loop capabilities that provide expertise on top of the infrastructure.
