Getting paid: How this Austin fintech side project amassed 20,000 customers

by Kelly O'Halloran
January 22, 2019
invoiced
invoiced cofounders jared king and Parag Patel.  

In 2012, Invoiced founder Jared King couldn’t have predicted that his side project, an online invoice generator, would transform into a platform that supports 20,000 customers and has processed over $40 billion in accounts receivable.

But that’s exactly what happened.

As a contract software developer in college, King created Invoiced as a free service for anyone who needed an invoice. Customers would fill out a form and receive their invoice in return.

“Pretty quickly, a lot of people showed up to use this MVP I had built,” said King. “But then users started providing feedback saying that, ‘If it did this — I’d pay you money.’”

It’s hard to ask for money.”

 

Ask and you shall receive. King, who had previously built a billing system from scratch for a contracting job, took that feedback to heart and began developing an accounts receivable automation solution in 2013.

“It was still a side project at this point,” said King. “Then I moved to Austin in 2014, met my co-founder and COO Parag Patel at a Capital Factory tech meetup, and we decided to take it on full time a year later after gaining lots of traction.”

Turns out, small business owners could really use a helping hand when it comes to chasing down unpaid invoices.

“What we see a lot of times with small businesses is that collections have been neglected,” said King. “It’s stuff that people don’t want to do, and it’s hard to ask for money. They’ve got large balances unpaid, and they aren’t doing anything. By coming to Invoiced, they start to see that money come in.”

For some clients, that money has made its way back in as fast as an hour after deploying Invoiced, King said.

“We take a lot off of their plates,” said King. “They no longer have to generate invoices, call customers, process payments, deposit checks and reconcile accounts. We do that all automatically.”

That time saved  — between 15 and 60 minutes per invoice — adds up fast.

Without raising any funding, Invoiced has quietly attracted more than 20,000 clients, and the company has no plans of working with investors anytime soon. Instead, King said they want to remain focused on their customers and grow their existing five-person team.

“This year, we’re looking to double the number of invoices we process as well as double the team,” said King. “We’re hiring across the board in sales, marketing, operations and product in Austin.”

The company will also make a big push in 2019 into the enterprise sector.

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