A North East tech firm has secured £2.2m in seed funding to help it grow and expand its business.
Paid is a Darlington-based startup that aims to transformed the procurement process through its software platform.
Its system has been designed to take care of time-consuming administrative tasks and make the procurement process easier for both buyers and suppliers.
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The business has now received £2.2m in seed investment following an funding round led by early-stage tech investors Crane Venture Partners, along with participation from Seedcamp and Techstars.
A number of notable angel investors were also involved in the funding round, including former Microsoft head of corporate strategy Charles Songhurst, GoCardless and Nested founder Matthew Robinson, Outrun Ventures founder Chris Adelsbach, and Angel Invest Ventures’ Jens Lapinski.
Paid is attempting to make procurement easier and more flexible for businesses. The company is looking to expand after realising that 97% of businesses have suffered supply chain disruption since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Tom Howsam, co-founder and CEO of Paid, said: “Every SME who has ever dealt with large enterprises knows the pain and the time it takes to do even a simple thing like onboarding as a supplier, signing a contract, or getting paid on time.
“What they may not know is that that frustration is usually shared by the enterprise buyer, whose internal, one-size fits all process means they can’t move quickly.”
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Krishna Visvanathan, founding partner at Crane Venture Partners, added: “Paid offers an intuitive software-as-a-service platform that reinvents the procurement process. For enterprises and small suppliers alike, using Paid is a no-brainer, making it easier to manage a diverse supply chain through uncomplicated software.
“We are proud to back Paid as it builds a new category for supplier management in procure-to-pay transformation for enterprises.”
Paid was founded in 2018 and joined the Barclays London Accelerator, powered by Techstars, in January 2019.
The company currently has six members of staff, mostly based in its Darlington office. Using the new funding the company aims to double the size of its team by the end of the year. The business is looking to hire product, engineering and customers success team members.
Jeremy Roche, founder of FinancialForce and Paid’s new chairman, added: “What really excites me about Paid is the way the team has built a comprehensive platform to solve a complex, real-world problem that every enterprise faces - how to handle their long tail procure-to-pay process in a cost-effective way, allowing them to access the most innovative suppliers quickly and easily.
“This is the most intuitively designed solution I have seen to minimise effort for both enterprise buyers and their SME suppliers, removing friction from the procurement process and maximising benefits for both sides of the transaction.”