See the 13-page pitch deck for Decimal, a startup automating accounting ops for small businesses

Decimal founder Matt Tait
Decimal CEO Matt Tait. Decimal
  • There's no shortage of expense management, bill pay, and payroll tech solutions for SMBs.
  • Decimal is a fintech automating accounting operations for SMBs.
  • See the pitch deck Decimal used to raise a $9 million seed round. 

Small- and medium-sized businesses can rely on any number of payroll, expense management, bill pay, and corporate-card startups promising to automate parts of their financial workflow. 

Smaller firms have adopted this corporate-financial software en masse, boosting growth throughout the pandemic for relatively new entrants like Ramp and massive, industry stalwarts like Intuit. 

But it's no easy task to connect all of those tools into one, seamless process. And while accounting operations might be far from where many startup founders want to focus their time, having efficient back-end finances does mean time — and capital — freed up to spend elsewhere. 

For Decimal CEO Matt Tait, there's ample opportunity in "the boring stuff you have to do to survive as a company," he told Insider. 

Launched in 2020, Decimal provides a back-end tech layer that small- and medium-sized businesses can use to integrate their accounting and business-management software tools in one place.

On Wednesday, Decimal announced a $9 million seed fundraising round led by Minneapolis-based Arthur Ventures, alongside Service Providers Capital and other angel investors. 

Underpinning Decimal's automated accounting operations product are the startup's partnerships with major tech companies focused on business operations, from Intuit to Expensify, Bill.com, Gusto, and Shopify. 

"To run accounting operations for a small business, you need somewhere between five and 15 different software products," Tait said. And while those tools are necessary "point solutions," they also add up to "noise" and can create messy workflows and difficulties in connecting different systems and data sets, he added.

According to Tait, Decimal has been bootstrapped — and profitable — since it launched two years ago. While Tait is based in Indianapolis, the startup's 60 employees work fully-remotely across 13 states (included a recently onboarded hire in the US Virgin Islands). 

"We love being a remote-only company, because it means that we can hire anywhere," Tait said.  

Decimal spent little on marketing over the past two years as it grew. But Tait said that on the heels of its fundraising Decimal is now in a position to intentionally burn more cash. The startup now plans to focus on growing its sales and marketing teams, and targets a return to profitability within the next 15 months.  

Since launching, Decimal has found traction among three sets of customers: Professional services companies, like marketing and consulting firms; tech startups; and e-commerce players. Clients, Tait said, typically have annual revenues ranging from $500,000 to $12 million. 

Early-stage tech companies, in particular, have proved fertile ground for Decimal.

"We always joke that the hardest customer to onboard is the post-Series A tech customer," Tait said. "They've pivoted six or seven times. They can't lose the revenue they pivoted from, but they need to scale and they don't want to spend any time on this infrastructure." 

Tait added that he doesn't see Decimal moving farther downstream in terms of the average size of its customers, but does plan on pushing the startup to cater to larger companies who particularly face new, back-office problems as they grow. 

"Once you start to hire more and get more clients and you get more expenses, your margin for error and what your gut says on how your business is doing increases dramatically," Tait said. 

Check out the 13-page deck Decimal used to raise its $9 million seed round. 

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