Written by Alex Bredeen
Outfund has committed to invest £100m of lending to ecommerce and subscription-based businesses in the next 12 months, making it the UK’s largest revenue-based fintech lender.
Outfund, the fintech company changing the way online businesses raise funds, today announces the close of a £37million late seed round of capital, including debt and equity. The round was led by Fuel Ventures and TMT investments alongside key industry angels such as Chris Adelsbach. The funds will be used to offer bigger lending rounds to more businesses, as well as for internal new products and team growth.
The pandemic has accelerated the trend of people shopping online, with numerous businesses migrating their presence to digital. Many businesses have totally pivoted their strategy to a more digital approach in order to make strides in revenue and profit. With the largest quarter for retail already underway, we have seen records been broken for Singles’ Day in China with $56bn being spent and Black Friday.
Businesses are now investing more capital into their inventory and digital marketing efforts than ever. However, funding is all the more challenging to secure lending and the traditional financing routes offer an unfair deal to founders and directors, with bank loans offering high interest rates. Outfund is an alternative financing channel where online-based businesses can get the funds they need faster and easier based on their future revenue projections and on significantly fairer terms.
With this round of investment, Outfund is pledging to invest more than £100m of lending to over 5,000 businesses in the next 12 months and will increase its lending limit to £2m.
As well as using the funds to lend more to more businesses, Outfund also plans to make investments into new products, such as working capital and revolving credit, and team growth. Today’s seed round and highly ambitious growth plans means that Outfund will now be the UK’s largest revenue-based finance company.
Outfund’s technology takes the bias out of lending and improves the terms for financing based solely on businesses revenues and performance. It’s advanced algorithm pulls information from numerous data sources to determine how a company performs and is then able to de-risk the proposition. Subsequently, making it possible to offer cheaper funding with longer pay terms and a flat fixed fee from 5%, making them the most competitive in the market.
Daniel Lipinski, founder and CEO of Outfund, said, “As a second time entrepreneur myself, I experienced first-hand the complex, timely and often imbalanced nature of the old-school financing routes. I knew there was another way and so decided to build it. Our ambition is for Outfund to be the place to go to to grow your business without compromising your equity or waste time fundraising. This is why we have spent time developing a way to make the process of securing money for growth easier, fairer and most importantly, faster. Our approach has been warmly received by the founders and directors so far and now we’re looking at how we can open this up to more businesses and continue to be part of their journey to success for a long time.”
Mark Pearson, founder and managing partner of Fuel Ventures, added, “Daniel and the team are pivoting the model of business funding, rebalancing the scales so that business owners don’t lose out financially while getting the capital they need to supercharge their online business’s growth. At Fuel we work with the most ambitious entrepreneurs building market leading companies. Outfund is a perfect example of this - a strong, passionate founding team creating an game-changing venture that is now a leader in its field.”
Firms looking for capital can apply for finance using Outfund’s simple online application. There is no need for business plans and only simple checks are required. Businesses will need to connect their revenue accounts and, with access to this data, Outfund will then build a funding offer with the money able to be deployed the very same day.
Outfund can deploy anywhere between £10,000 and £2million of funding. The funding criteria is available to any business that takes online payments, has a minimum of £10,000 monthly turnover and has been trading for at least six months.
Unlike conventional business loans, Outfund ensures the time taken to repay is based on each businesses’s circumstances and the revenue share agreement, making it incredibly flexible. Outfund’s repayment percentages are set to ensure each business maintains a healthy cash flow in its day to day operations, the better the company does the better Outfund does, so now for the first time the funding balance between a company and lender is equal.
If you are interested in investing in these types of businesses and would like some more information see https://fuel.ventures/investors/. Alternatively, if you are an entrepreneur looking for funding please complete our entrepreneur application form here.