Embarking on the Next Phase: Helcim Raises Series B

I’m thrilled to announce that we've just raised a CA$27 million Series B financing round, following our Series A raise in 2022. In addition to sharing our excitement, I wanted to highlight some of our experiences through this process and what it means for the future of Helcim and our merchants.

Helcim has been fortunate to have grown significantly in the past two years, with our business expanding nearly 5 fold since our Series A. We have big dreams to be the world’s most loved payments company and ultimately service millions of small businesses, and those dreams require additional capital to continue to expand our technology investments and distribution channels. So last year we decided it was time to get back on the fundraising train and find a new partner to help us accelerate that vision.

The advice that I received during our first fundraising round very much still held true; find investors that truly believe in you, your team, what you're building, and most important - how you're building it.

Hello San Francisco

That advice ultimately led us to Headline, a venture capital firm with portfolio investments in well known companies like Bumble, Recurly, SEMrush, Sonos and many others. Headline is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Berlin, Paris, London, São Paulo, Taipei and Tokyo. The Headline team stood heads and shoulders above the other investors we met in terms of their understanding of our market, the size of our ambitions and ultimately the culture that we are building with our team, our partners and our merchants. I genuinely can’t say enough good things about our experience with the Headline team, and we’re absolutely thrilled to be partnering with them.

Along the way, we also met other fantastic partners that decided to join us on this journey, including Vesey Ventures, ClockTower Ventures, and SilverCircle. We were also honored to have follow-on investments from our existing partners including Information Venture Partners and Aquiline, and the Alberta Accelerate Fund.

Raising capital is never easy

To all of the founders and entrepreneurs out there navigating their own fundraise, know that even when successful, raising capital is never easy, especially in this tough capital and interest rate environment. We experienced plenty of false starts and disappointing rejections, even with all of the growth that our business has been fortunate to have.

Remember that beyond the data models and cohorts analysis, in the startup and scaleup world, fundraising is ultimately about finding investors that believe in you as the founder. It can take time, but it is a big capital world out there and there is a group of investors that will see the world the way you do, and will want to help you achieve that bold vision.

Focusing on our merchants

None of this is possible without the thousands of small and medium sized businesses that put their trust in Helcim everyday to power their payments. We’re still serving just a fraction of our market, and this capital will enable us to get Helcim discovered by thousands more SMBs so that they can also feel good about their payments. We’re extremely fortunate to have a cap table full of fintech rock star investors to help us reach every corner of our market and find more ways to share the Helcim story.

Getting to this point also takes an amazing team of passionate and hard working people who believe in what we’re doing. So a giant thank you to all of Helcim’s amazing folks for all that you bring to this company each and every day. We’re building a generational company together right here in snowy Calgary, and I’m just thrilled for our bright future ahead.

Onwards, upward and forward. 🚀

-Nic