- Lili — the fastest growing mobile banking service for freelancers in the U.S. — announced recently that it raised a $55 million Series B round. These are the details.
Lili — the fastest growing mobile banking service for freelancers in the U.S. — announced recently that it raised a $55 million Series B investment led by Group 11, bringing total funding to $80M following a record year of growth and revenue for Lili. Other notable investors included Target Global and AltaIR with previous investors re-upping.
The company — which was spearheaded by finance serial entrepreneur Lilac Bar David — offers relevant and timely features like expense management, effortless tax preparation, and no-fee accounts. And Lili has doubled its account base in the past 6 months as more users pursue new and entrepreneurial endeavors and turn to Lili as a reliable resource for their growing businesses.
On the heels of the company’s highest growth quarter to date, Lili is introducing several new features, including Personalized Tax Buckets to help freelancers and small business owners track their taxes and put away a certain percentage of deposits, based on the user’s projected income and expenses, to avoid any surprises come tax season. Plus Lili also provides an Emergency Bucket where users can set aside a set amount regularly for an emergency fund instead of having to open a separate savings account.
Freelancers are also able to take advantage of existing features like easy, built-in real-time expense management and net income and work income reports — which are automatically generated within the Lili mobile app, saving significant amounts of time for freelancers who may not have traditional W-2 statements. And the new $55 million capital injection will enable Lili to expand the platform to address existing pain points for freelancers with new features related to invoice and payment management, as well as expanding into credit products.
Lili had launched in late 2019 with a mission to empower freelancers and entrepreneurs by simplifying their personal and business finances with an easy-to-use mobile app. And Bar David expects the freelance economy to grow to more than 50% of the population by the end of 2021. In under six months, Lili has doubled its account base during the COVID-19 pandemic. And Lili’s popularity exploded across multiple freelancer communities, especially among female entrepreneurs and working women. Over 5 million women lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leading many to turn to freelance work. Out of Lili’s rapidly growing customer base, nearly 60% of these newcomers are women, signing up to benefit from the support this banking service can provide.
KEY QUOTES:
“Becoming an entrepreneur or freelancer — your own boss — is one of the most exciting life decisions you can make. We’ve created the tools you need to spend more time building your venture and less time on things that historically your employer would handle, sorting expenses, managing financials, and filing taxes.”
— Lilac Bar David, CEO of Lili
“Lili is currently the only fintech product designed to address the needs of this rapidly growing sector of entrepreneurs. We anticipate the freelancer economy will continue to grow robustly even beyond the pandemic tailwinds. Lili is poised to see exponential growth by continuing to offer this demographic effective and intuitive tools to manage a previously complex side of doing business.”
— Group 11 Founding Partner Dovi Frances
