{"id":34484,"date":"2020-10-22T18:29:41","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T13:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=2064544"},"modified":"2020-10-22T19:16:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T13:46:26","slug":"freelancer-banking-startup-lili-raises-15m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/freelancer-banking-startup-lili-raises-15m\/","title":{"rendered":"Freelancer banking startup Lili raises $15M"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s only been a few months since Lili<\/a> announced its $10 million seed round<\/a>, and it\u2019s already raised more funding \u2014 namely, a $15 million Series A.<\/p>\n

The startup, founded by CEO Lilac Bar David and CTO Liran Zelkha, is creating a bank account and associated products designed for freelancers, with features like early access to direct deposit payments and the ability to set aside a percentage of income for taxes.<\/p>\n

The account (and associated Visa debit card) is free of overdraft fees or minimum balance requirements; Bar David said the company only makes money from card processing fees.<\/p>\n

She also said that the platform has seen rapid growth this year, with transactions up 700% since the beginning of the pandemic and nearly 100,000 accounts opened since the launch in 2019.<\/p>\n

Bar David suggested that the economic turmoil caused by COVID-19 has prompted (or forced) more skilled workers \u2014 such as programmers and digital marketers \u2014 to turn to freelancing. Meanwhile, she\u2019s also seen \u201ca big shift from part-time freelance to full-time freelance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Bar David predicted that the recent growth of the freelance economy won\u2019t simply disappear once the pandemic is over, because workers are discovering the benefits of freelancing.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIf you have a 9-to-5 job, you\u2019re dependent on one employer,\u201d she said. \u201cIf something happens you\u2019re out of a job \u2026 If you\u2019ve got a diversified customer base, you\u2019re not dependent on just one source of income.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent months, Lili has added new features like automatically generated quarterly income and expense reports, a digital debit card (which customers can use before the physical card arrives in the mail) and the ability to send and receive money via Google Pay (Lili already supported Cash App and Venmo).<\/p>\n

Bar David said the startup decided to raise more funding to expand its engineering team and further accelerate its growth. Apparently she was preparing for a traditional Series A fundraising process (albeit one that was conducted in the middle of a pandemic), but \u201cour current investors were so tremendously impressed by the product-market fit and the growth\u201d that they were willing to fund almost all of the new round.<\/p>\n

So the Series A was led by previous investor Group 11, <\/a> with participation from Foundation Capital, AltaIR Capital, Primary Venture Partners and Torch Capital \u2014 along with new backer Zeev Ventures.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the global workforce evolves at a rapid pace, we are excited to lead another round of funding to help Lili capitalize on unprecedented demand and offer an entirely new solution to help freelancers seamlessly save time and money,\u201d said Group 11\u2019s Dovi Frances in a statement.<\/p>\n

By TechCrunch Source Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s only been a few months since Lili announced its $10 million seed round, and it\u2019s already raised more funding \u2014 namely, a $15 million Series A. The startup, founded by CEO Lilac Bar David and CTO Liran Zelkha, is creating a bank account and associated products designed for freelancers, with features like early access […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[314],"tags":[14253,14248,14280,16352,16353,231,14178],"class_list":{"0":"post-34484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-startups-stories","7":"tag-finance","8":"tag-funding","9":"tag-fundings-exits","10":"tag-group-11","11":"tag-lili","12":"tag-startups","13":"tag-tc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyforyou.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}