Caroline Plumb OBE raises £2m to revolutionise small business cashflow management

Growing Business Young Gun Caroline Plumb OBE has closed a £2m seed round for her new business Fluidly, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) start-up which automates the forecasting and management of cashflow for UK small businesses.

Octopus Ventures led the round in the fintech start-up while Anthemis and New York-based investment house Nyca, as well as angel investor Hank Vigil, participated in the round.

Founded in October 2016, London-based Fluidly combines machine learning, financial modelling and workflow tools to help small and medium-sized companies predict and optimise their cashflow.

The platform – which previously secured £375,000 in an angel round in December 2016 involving investors such as Simon Murdoch and the AllBright fund – integrates with cloud accounting packages and, from 2018, will integrate with the Open Banking APIs.

It will use the investment to expand its team of engineers and data scientists working to advance the product which has been in private alpha, and also to build sales and marketing capacity.

A full market launch is planned with cloud accounting service Xero next month.

Fluidly marks the latest business venture for Plumb, who previously founded recruitment and innovation consultancy FreshMinds with fellow Young Gun Charlie Osmond.

In January 2016, Plumb and Osmond were awarded OBEs for their services to business and charity while Plumb has also been appointed as a UKTI business ambassador.

Plumb commented:

“After running businesses for over 15 years I know one of the most time-consuming and stressful aspects is forecasting and managing cashflow, most of which is highly manual and uncertain.

“Fluidly is about helping businesses sleep more soundly by getting them paid faster and providing certainty and peace of mind over finances”

Will Gibbs, investment manager at Octopus Ventures, has said that “Fluidly provides the tools to address this significant pain point [of small business cashflow]:

“The implementation of the second Payment Services Directive next year will unlock innovation in the payments sector, and Plumb and the Fluidly team are capable of leading the way in this space for UK fintech.”