附近上门

Israel-based closed an $18.5 million Series A after pivoting the business from a data integrity and compliance platform into a financial planning tool early last year.

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The new funding was led by the , with participation from existing investors including , and additional private investors. The 60-person company now has raised a total of $28.5 million.

Founded in 2015, DataRails began its life trying to position itself as a data compliance solutions platform for the financial services sectors. Then early last year, the company realized it could use its data technology as a financial planning tool for the small and medium-sized business segment of the market 鈥� where most rely on simple spreadsheets to keep track of financial reports, budgets and forecasts.

鈥淭hey are serving a segment of the market that was underserved or not served at all,鈥� said , founding partner at Zeev Ventures Fund.

Growth

The company鈥檚 pivot allowed DataRails to grow from a handful of clients to 鈥渉undreds of customers鈥� in just about a year, said founder and CEO . In addition to the growing customer base, the company grew its ARR fivefold in last year after the launch of their new product.

Part of that growth is due to the low barrier for adoption, Gurfinkel said. The DataRails platform allows SMBs to continue to use spreadsheets, but it stores the data in the cloud 鈥� making it easily accessible and user friendly, he said. When the user needs to update the financial data, it can be downloaded back into a spreadsheet such as Excel.

鈥淚nstead of replacing the spreadsheet, we put Excel into more of an enterprise structure,鈥� he said.

The 鈥渧ery low friction鈥� for adoption of the product was one of the main reasons he wanted to invest, Zeev said.

A wide open market

Zeev added that he was intrigued by how much of an 鈥渙pen blue ocean鈥� the market is in the SMB sector, as large financial planning platforms such as 鈥� which was bought by in 2018 for $1.55 billion 鈥� and typically serve large enterprises and require companies to overhaul their current financial planning process tools.

Gurfinkel said with more than 300,000 SMBs using Excel to manage their financial planning tasks, the market is unlimited for DataRails. The company will use the new funding for sales and marketing, looking to grow in both of its main markets 鈥� the U.S. and U.K.

Zeev said while no one can tell the future, he has significant faith DataRails can become a dominant player in the sector.

鈥淚 would have no interest if this were something I thought we were just going to turn around and sell,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he objective is always to build a big company.鈥�

Illustration: .