Announcing Flatfile’s Series A: Investing $35m in you

Two years ago, Flatfile launched as a labor of love. Our first small team, Randy, Eric, JP, Liz, Daniel and I dedicated our evenings, weekends and holidays to crafting a salve for a painful experience we’d all had and cared about. In the last two years, the obsession this team has for our customers has not only blown my mind but also pushed the company into hyperscale mode.

When Eric and I first decided it was time to raise capital, we spent three months traveling around the country, talking to any investor who’d listen about why we thought data onboarding - we didn’t even know to call it that - was a huge opportunity. We learned so much about fundraising, and more than we wanted about each other. Pinching pennies on hotel rooms and Airbnbs. Eric had to wear earplugs so he could sleep through my snoring. At least once we had to run a pitch call from an Airbnb bathroom with the only working outlet. And iterating on our pitch over and over, at least 50 times. With an aggressive bet from Afore and our incredible pre-seed investors, we finally were off to the races. 

Fast forward 16 months, an extra $7.6M from Frances at Two Sigma and sustained 1500% YoY growth: we found ourselves in a unique situation - pushing back on some of the best investors in the world, looking to bet more capital on our team, a mere six months after our previous round. When those investors started stealthily doing their diligence, they learned how much our team had cracked the code on data onboarding. “We’ve never seen customers who are so clearly in love with a company as they are with Flatfile. Consistently ranking their experience with Flatfile a 10/10.”

Those investors soon were reaching out, and Eric and I had a decision to make: should we keep pushing back or lean into the strong demand signals coming from the market.

When we landed our first Fortune 500 client, and earned our first paying contracts for our second product, we realized we could start deploying more capital and keep this momentum going. Within just a couple weeks of opening the door to investor interest, we had signed a term sheet. 

I’m excited to welcome Scale Venture Partners to the Flatfile family, and Rory O’Driscoll to the Flatfile board. With early bets on companies like Bill.com, Box, Docusign, and OneLogin Rory brings a wealth of experience to the team.

With $35M in fresh capital, some might stop to throw a party. For us, we realize that this signals a new challenge, one more significant than any we’ve faced before. With nearly 100 open roles on the hiring roadmap for the next year, we’re eager to Scale - no pun intended - not only as a company but as leaders and operators. We're also thankful have Workday Ventures, Afore Capital, Gradient Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, and HNVR involved in this round.  

That’s precisely how we’re going to deploy this capital. I’m humbled by the unequivocal confidence our investors have expressed in this company and deeply proud of the work our team has done to earn this trust. This company is nothing but the grand sum of the best of each of us.

Today I’m announcing a commitment to approach every hire on our team like we’re investing a million dollars in your success. Because we are. When we succeed together, that’s just table stakes.

With our million dollar roles, we’re going to invest in you and help you scale alongside the company. We’ll deploy both equity and capital to enable your success. We’ll approach every new role with a thoughtful commitment to your ideal path at Flatfile, enabling you to constantly learn and grow. Working at a startup can not just be a job, but a career. 

Too many companies see their people as “resources” to be traded for outcomes. We’ve banned referring to people that way. We demand the absolute best from you, and we will give everything for that to happen. If you’re ready to do the best work of your life, and you’re missing that commitment, come talk to me.

Some people might look at this commitment with disbelief. But let me explain why.

On the rarest of occasions, an opportunity emerges to create a new category. There are no competitors. There’s a huge problem. The right people, the right time, the right product. That’s where Flatfile is today. We’re tackling a blue ocean market worth hundreds of billions.

If you’re thinking “why does he think a data import widget matters that much?,” hold onto your hat.

In the next decade, you won’t be able to transact business without exchanging data. Flatfile will be where that happens. Today we have grocery stores, children’s hospitals, financial institutions, and Fortune 500 companies all using Flatfile on a daily basis. What do they all have in common? They need to exchange data. Farmers feeding the world, investment bankers driving strategy, researchers curing diseases, teachers adapting to a digital learning environment: they all realize the importance and need of seamless data exchange.

We’re a data company. You may have heard that data is the new oil. We disagree.

Data is the new sunlight.

Everything grows in the light.