A record year for Lincoln startup investment in 2021 apparently was even bigger.
BasicBlock, a financial technology company that makes it easier for truckers to find financing and get paid, announced Monday that it received $78 million investment that is a combination of debt and equity.
Among the lead investors in the round were Autotech Ventures, Clear Haven Capital Management, Emergent Ventures and Nelnet. Previous investors Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, SaaS Ventures and TNT Ventures also participated.
While the investment was disclosed on Monday, it actually was finalized in November, which means BasicBlock's pot of money, one of the largest ever for a Lincoln-based company, likely pushed last year's record-breaking venture capital haul to close to $300 million.
BasicBlock's investment follows three other very large ones last year: $120 million for Monolith, $46 million for Virtual Incision, and $30 million for CompanyCam.
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The company got its start in 2018 as an app that allowed truckers to do factoring of their invoices and get paid faster with less of a discount. Factoring involves having an investor pay upfront for the value of outstanding invoices, for a discounted rate, and BasicBlock facilitated the factoring at a low rate of 2-3% of the invoice value.
The company has since "evolved to provide critical working capital to fleets who cannot secure it through traditional financial institutions," said Taylor Monks, BasicBlock CEO and co-founder.
Monks said research he did prior to starting the company showed that 96% of all trucking companies have fewer than six trucks "and one of their biggest pain points is access to capital."
The company said in a news release that the $78 million investment will allow it to continue focusing on factoring while adding and expanding services to help carriers grow their fleets. One of the company's goals is to eventually be able to offer 0% factoring.
Some of the investment also will be used to open and staff a new office in Chicago. Just since November, BasicBlock has seen a 50% increase in the number of drivers it serves and a 60% increase in the amount of factoring volume.
"Establishing an office in Chicago, one of the leading freight-tech cities in the U.S., will enable us to meet the needs of our increasing national customer base and improve upon our already industry-leading customer service," said Brett Byman, the company's chief operating officer.
Burak Cendek, a partner at Autotech Ventures, one of the lead investors, said traditional financial institutions are not meeting the needs of small trucking firms, and BasicBlock has "developed a solution to enable this critical piece of the supply chain access to financing."
"Autotech Ventures sees great potential in BasicBlock's current offering as well as its plans for the future," Cendek said.