Become Closes Series A with $12.5 Million

Become, formerly known as Lending Express, has finished its Series A funding round with $10 million having been raised from Benson Oak Ventures and Magenta Venture Partners, among others, as well as an additional $2.5 million in venture debt from Viola Credit.

“We strongly believe it is time to disrupt conventional and ‘alternative’ lending practices,” said Become’s CEO and Co-founder Eden Amirav in a press release. “Become’s technology provides SMBs with the transparency and insights they need to improve their unique financial profiles to attract legitimate funders. This creates a new market for alternative lenders and opens opportunities for formerly ‘unfundable’ SMBs to be bigger, better and [sic] more successful. This funding will allow us to expand our global reach and change the industry for the better, as we ensure that every business that deserves funding has the tools to make it happen.”

The technologies being referred to here are Become’s LendingScore^TM, an analytics program that uses a host of variables to determine businesses’ chances of funding; and their new online marketplace that was launched last month.

Marketed as “Expedia for loans,” the marketplace allows all players in the alternative funding ecosystem, be they funders, brokers, or small business owners, to carry out their functions in one place. The draw being that all processes, such as the looking around for funders, the application for funds, and the approval, can be done through the marketplace. Beyond this, Amirav told deBanked that Become’s systems monitors the performance of those businesses who have signed up to the marketplace and makes recommendations of when to apply for funds, as well as how much to apply for, based on the data they accrue.

“There’s nothing like this in small business. The idea is to give small businesses the power, instead of sending them to lenders, where they’re applying for funding and each application hurts their credit score,” asserted Amirav. “Until today the only ways businesses would get money would be to go out and beg lenders. But now we’re giving the businesses the power.”

Brendan Garrett was a Reporter at deBanked.