Fintech Finally 'Leveling The Playing Field' In SMB Finances After Raising $95M Series A

A good reason to build your own business is to improve the lives of others you work with and those for whom you provide products or services.

That’s according to Miami-based Finally founder and CEO Felix Rodriguez, who spoke with Benzinga about his company’s $95 million Series A, as well as his lifelong entrepreneurial journey, perspectives on what it takes and means to start a company, and leveling the playing field.

Check out the conversation below for more on how Finally helps put businesses in a better position to access and manage their capital.

Benzinga: Hi Felix, nice to meet you! Please tell us a bit about yourself and how you got to where you’re at now.

Felix Rodriguez: I’m a network engineer at heart who comes from a family of founders.

Growing up I saw my uncles and aunts start their own businesses and the impact they were having on extended families vis-à-vis their team members.

It was powerful and I remember thinking: “Wow, that’s really the American dream. To start your own business and have a say to help people get better and do better.”

Moreover, I’ve built and sold three businesses with my cofounder Glennys Rodriguez who I met at a bank we worked at. She’s an accounting and finance major, and the perfect combination to solve the problems we’re solving.

Before founding Finally, what were some of the problems you were noticing?

A reoccurring problem was the back office. It was constantly all these things around accounting, bookkeeping, finance, and payroll which were never at the core of any of these businesses.

We realized that there had to be a way to make things more simply because, in the end, all of these businesses want to prosper and grow.

That cannot be unlocked unless they have a strong sense of where they are financially.

What were the early days like? What was the experience of starting a business in fintech?

In late 2018, we got into 500 Startups as part of Batch 24. At the time we had less than a dozen customers and a few months later we ended up raising a seed round. That’s when we started being able to go after the opportunities we wanted.

So funding, you’d say, was the lifeblood? What were some of the biggest challenges you saw in this space, and how did you overcome them?

Yeah. Ultimately, the number one killer of small businesses is cash flow, but that’s directly correlated to the business owner not having a strong sense of where they’re at financially.

That’s what we’re going after. There’s a fragmented set of tools out there for these businesses, and they do not play well together. We’re creating a unique user experience where the user interface is all the same.

The simplicity is native to a business owner where they can manage everything from bookkeeping, understanding where their balances are, how much cash is coming in and going out, and then also, what credit is available to them to really help with cash flow.

Onboarding customers. How do you do that?

There are two ways to become a customer. First, you can come to us in need of a bookkeeping solution, for instance, and with that, you’ll speak with one of our sales representatives.

Over the course of a 10-to-15 minute conversation, we’ll see if we’re a fit and, if we are, we’ll get them access to our platform, and they’ll be able to start linking their bank accounts and credit card accounts – Intuit Inc-owned INTU QuickBooks or Xero Limited XROLF – to the platform so that their financial picture starts coming together.

It’s a human-assisted artificial intelligence platform that ingests all the financial data coming from financial institutions that the business uses, then, to be able to create reports and make sense of things like their profit-and-loss, balance sheet, and transactions.

All of this is viewable through a cool dashboard with all the major key performance indicators that are important to that business.

The second way? Our release of a corporate card.

So, we have businesses looking to automate, further. The way they do that is through spending. We’ve built an expense management platform and the only thing the business owner has to do is go to our website and apply in five minutes.

Once they fill out the application, within 24 hours they’ll hear back from underwriting. Approval, then, unlocks the expense management platform where they can issue physical and virtual cards tied to software that automates and helps close the books faster.

No business owner, then, has to worry about collecting expense reports and manually classifying transactions.

Why did the company change its name from “Back Office” to Finally?

The name is inspirational. It’s like saying: “Finally, somebody is putting all this stuff together.”

We felt that it better captured the entire vision of our mission, which is to automate the finances for businesses.

Raising a $95 million Series A sounds very challenging. Tell me about that process and what it means to you to raise that money.

The hardest part of the journey was getting customers.

Also, you want to focus on de-risking investments for investors; you have to get the team to execute the plan and that’s ultimately driven by the customer.

Eventually, as we were focused on launching our card, we received multiple term sheets, and we just picked on the best partners that we felt were aligned with our vision.

What did COVID teach you and some of the other owners you talk to?

Know your numbers is the cardinal rule number one. A lot of businesses suffered because they did not know where they stood. For us, though, we saw explosive growth; our team went from 12 to 100 and our customer count passed 1,000.

Going forward, what’s your focus?

We’re excited about leveling the playing field for small-to-medium-sized businesses and being able to put them in a position where they can get access to capital so that they can grow and manage their cash flow better.

The market’s pretty fragmented, and there isn’t a single, elegant place with a great name where you can get these things done.

How do you like Miami?

It’s a great place and there are a lot of raw resources, here – people coming from all over the place – and we were looking for a change in atmosphere.

Advice for founders or individuals on edge about starting a company?

You have to start. The real reason you do it is to make a bunch of people's lives better.

Remember, too, that business is war and not for the faint of heart. But, it’s fun and, as you upgrade through your journey, you’re wearing so many hats, and you get better.

Get the best people you can to take over those hats, and make sure they are better than you at any one of those hats. Find people way better and smarter than you.

Forming a team is like making a great Paella. You've got to find the best ingredients and, from there, it’ll be amazing.