Slope, a company that makes it simple for businesses to provide purchase now, pay later options, has had a busy six months. Given that the purchase now, pay later market was valued at $16 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand almost sixfold by 2029, this isn’t surprising. Its API system can qualify firms for the BNPL in seconds, allowing them to start selling installments right away. Customers select the payment arrangements that are most convenient for them throughout the checkout process. Slope is in charge of the lending, underwriting, and debt collection, and will pay the company once the product or service is delivered.
The company’s founders, Alice Deng and Lawrence Murata, believe the main thing that has happened is expansion, following an $8 million seed investment announced last November. Deng told TechCrunch that over that six-month period, they witnessed roughly 121 percent month-over-month growth and signed up enough business clients to increase more than 20 times in the quarter, while their waitlist grows every week. “We’ve gone from a minimal viable product to growing on enterprise partners,” she explained. “So we’re going to make a big push in recruiting, which we haven’t done previously, so we can build out things and onboard more clients.”
PlastiQ, Frubana, Meru.com, Blue Pallet, and Go4U are among the B2B merchant partners that offer financing to over 2,500 firms in the United States and Mexico. Customers’ average orders have increased by 168 percent, or over three times the basket size, according to the company. Deng described Slope’s take of roughly 26% of a marketplace’s total gross retail value as “extremely encouraging figures” and “an inflection point, which is why we want to prepare to grow.” They’re still seeing benefits from the worldwide epidemic in terms of companies transferring their payments online and people getting more familiar with that means of payment.
One of the ways Slope differs from other financial providers, according to Murata, is its concentration on a developer-centric strategy, whereas others have a finance-centric approach, which has resulted in “such awful integration and underwriting,” he said. Slope wanted a method where businesses didn’t have to fill out a 20-question form or wait days to get certified for purchase now, pay later from the start, according to them. Instead, the underwriting process is completely automated and takes only seconds, while technological integration takes only minutes rather than months.
In addition to its expansion, the company today announced a new round of funding, a $24 million Series A round led by Union Square Ventures and Monashees, with participation from Tiger Global Management, Global Founders Capital, and a group of founders and executives from companies such as Dropbox, DoorDash, Opendoor, Plaid, Rappi, Deel, Brex, Faire, Affirm, Adyen, and Checkout.com. The latest investment brings the total amount raised to $32 million. Slope wants to spend the majority of the additional cash towards recruiting and scaling, as previously stated. It now has an eight-person staff, with aspirations to expand to 30 in the next five months.
Ashish Jain, who joined as chief financial officer, is one of the new recruits who is already on the job. Jain was previously the senior vice president of C2FO, where he was in charge of capital markets, card products, and corporate growth. He started his career with Deutsche Bank in 2003 and was also the head of capital markets at SoFi. One of the things that drew Jain to the firm was that the founders were able to swiftly find product-market fit, and many of the marketplaces he spoke with were “glad and gushing” about the product during his due diligence.
“There is enough of data to study since the B2B business is expanding faster than the B2C market – it will be approximately $2 trillion by 2023, while B2C will be $1.2 trillion,” Jain noted. “The foundation and groundwork are in place, and they are eager to cultivate a fantastic culture and talent.” We’re solving for B2B with a purchase now, pay later offering that brings developing technologies to the market and gives businesses access to cash. Overall, we’re developing customer-centric technologies that will aid democratic participation in the digital economy.”
“We’ve witnessed a significant transformation of businesses coming online, particularly during COVID,” said Rebecca Kaden, managing partner at Union Square Ventures, of the investment. “We thought this was something that was missing in the B2B sector.” Slope also benefits from two-level growth, which means that when clients get larger, it scales with them and acquires new customers in the process. Slope’s solution is faster and easier to adopt, which is a category advantage, as seen by its rapid expansion.”
