Cloud-based invoice chasing firm DueCourse has raised £6.25 million in funding, with backers including the founders of Zoopla and Lovefilm.
The successful round includes £1.25m of equity and £5m of debt for lending to UK SMEs.
Co-founder and CEO Paul Haydock was motivated to develop the free software solution in 2014 when he found his previous SME myParcelDelivery.com was constantly dealing with late payments.
It allows businesses to secure access to the funds in their unpaid invoices to help with cashflow.
“We started DueCourse because we realised traditional methods of finance are completely out of sync with what today’s SMEs need,” said Haydock.
“We saw the opportunity for a company to disrupt the market and help SMEs get access to the cash they need to fuel their business, in real time.
“We want to be seen as a new kind of cash flow utility – once a business has linked their accounting package for free, DueCourse is simply there in the background for them to access the money in their unpaid invoices whenever they need it.”
Zoopla founder and CEO Alex Chesterman and Lovefilm co-founder Simon Franks are among the new investors, along with Global Founders Capital.
DueCourse is planning to raise a further £10-15m in funding over the next 10 months to facilitate worldwide expansion.
Haydock added: “This extended Angel round of investment was actually oversubscribed, which highlights just how much interest there is among investors around our scalable, data-led technology and its application around the world.
“The funding is a great boost for the company and will help us go from strength to strength as we continue to expand and improve our software.”
The firm recently recruited former Apple engineer Dylan Smith as part of a major recruitment drive.
The Manchester-based start-up was also the brainchild of fellow founders Jonathon Grove, head of product, and Tim Borden, who operates as CTO.The team initially funded prototypes of the software they developed themselves, before raising angel investment from an experienced financier in the City of London in November 2014 which allowed them to launch in August 2015.
DueCourse is Haydock’s third technology venture, having tasted previous success with courier services firm comparison site myParcelDelivery.com, which he founded with David Grimes, now the CEO of MPD Group, in 2009.
He exited myParcelDelivery.com in 2013 after growing it to a £3m turnover business.