Bench and Shopify alumni announce $11M CAD to build “the Stripe for accounting” with Teal
Summary
Led by two accounting software veterans, Vancouver-based Teal has announced approximately $11 million CAD ($8 million USD) in seed funding to provide bookkeeping infrastructure to vertical software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses.Teal was founded last year by CEO Ian Crosby and design lead Adam Saint, who both previously co-founded another Canadian technology company in the spaceVancouvers Bench Accountingand spent some time working with Ottawa-based e-commerce giant Shopify.We know how [small to medium-sized business (SMB)] accounting needs to get solved, and all the little details that you dont really learn until youve done it for 10,000 [SMBs], Crosby told BetaKit in an interview, alluding to their work at Bench.With Teal, Crosby and Saint have set out to finish what they started. But we werent part of their suite.We werent actually in thereit was like were capturing the exhaust of this being a pain point for them, versus really being inside and solving it.With Teal, they have identified an opportunity to do just that and build what Crosby described as the Stripe for accountingnamely, the infrastructure for vertical SaaS companies to build and offer accounting features in their platforms.Teals all-equity, all-primary seed round was led by Torch Capital with support from fellow New York-based firms General Advance and Dash Fund, Silicon Valleys Basis Set Ventures, and undisclosed executives at large tech firms like Service Titan, Plaid, Brex, Unit, and Gusto.Crosby declined to share Teals valuation or when its seed round closed with BetaKit, but did note, however, that this marks all of the funding that Teal has raised to date. After nearly six years with Bench, Saint left the company in 2016 and spent some time working in various roles, including in user experience advocacy with Shopify and as a product designer for Quora. For his part, Crosby led Bench as CEO for 10 years until his departure in early 2022, six months after the accounting software scaleup closed $73 million in Series C financing.Crosby went on to join Shopify, first as product director of Shopifys business banking offering and then as head of financial services, before departing in April 2023 and teaming up with Saint to launch Teal. By helping SMB-focused software companies build accounting products, Teal also hopes to help those clients increase user engagement with their other embedded finance products.Teal provides out-of-the-box tools to help vertical SaaS companies launch their own accounting platforms in as little as four weeks, including fully functioning app code repositories and native integrations with external data sources.The goal is to help those businesses offer their SMB end customers the ability to more easily draw insights into things like real-time cash flow, per-product profitability, and access tax filing and support from live bookkeepers.Teal has already amassed a list of customers that includes Dripos, which caters to coffee shops, Flychain, which serves healthcare providers, and e-commerce-focused DayZero.