San Francisco-based fintech platform Collective announced Wednesday that it raised $20 million in a Series A round led by General Catalyst.
Collective launched with an $8.65 million seed round in September of last year. Since then, the startup has seen revenue grow by more than 250 percent and its waitlist grow to more than 20,000 people.
Collective’s back-office platform provides self-employed people with the financial services necessary to run a business, including accounting, invoicing and taxes.
According to Collective’s estimates, self-employed individuals can spend as much as 30 days performing these administrative tasks in a given year.
“Building a business is hard. It’s even harder when you’re alone,” Hooman Radfar, co-founder and CEO of Collective, said in a statement. “We want to be the partner that empowers creators and builders to focus on their craft and enjoy the same benefits and tax savings as big businesses.”
Self-employed people are expected to make up 50 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2027, according to Collective, in part because freelancing has seen a surge amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think COVID is just accelerating an existing trend. You see now that remote work has become feasible in a way that I think people never thought possible,” Radfar said in an interview with Built In. “I also think companies are realizing that, because they can work remotely, contracting has become that much more appealing.”
The company plans to invest the additional capital in expanding its team as well as its core product. The 30-person company plans to nearly double in size by the end of the year, according to Radfar. Collective will focus on adding to its engineering and product teams as it continues to scale.
“There’s just been a groundswell of demand and we need to meet it,” Radfar continued.
Sound Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, also participated in the round.
“I would have loved something like this when I was getting started, so our team is excited to back this vision for all the future creators out there,” Kutcher said in a statement.
The fintech platform has received investments from other notable Bay Area tech leaders including YouTube founder Steve Chen, Substack founder Hamish McKenzie, Twitch founder Kevin Lin and Patreon founder Sam Yam.
Collective has raised $28.65 million in financing to date.
