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Funding news: Xendoo raises $3.54 million in seed+ round

Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg
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The Fort Lauderdale-based company will be ramping up hiring and moving into expanded offices next month.

By Nancy Dahlberg
Laying the groundwork to scale, South Florida fintech startup Xendoo raised $3.54 million in an oversubscribed  seed+ round. 
The financing was led by Malachi, and included Orlando-based DeepWork Capital, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and Jason Calacanis’ LAUNCH Syndicate. Including seed funding raised in 2017, Xendoo has raised $4.8 million in venture capital to date. 
The Fort Lauderdale-based startup offers a cloud-based monthly subscription providing bookkeeping and tax services for small businesses. Xendoo was founded by Lil Roberts, who is also CEO. She has been a small business owner herself and when she exited her last businesses in print manufacturing – a sector that was disrupted – Roberts said she looked for an opportunity that was scalable, that helps small business owners and that can change an industry.
“We are super passionate about what we do, which is delivering financial peace of mind to small businesses, but we are equally excited about the technology that we have and that we are continuing to build and how that delivers critical insights to small business owners to help them grow their companies,” Roberts said in an interview with Refresh Miami on Tuesday.
Xendoo, launched in 2017, currently has about 600 client businesses, typically with revenue of $500,000 to $10 million. 
Xendoo employs 14 and plans to be a 50-person company by the end of 2020. Currently it is looking to hire a high-growth HR professional, a marketing strategist, a digital marketing coordinator and bookkeepers.
“We are positioned for growth,” Roberts said. “We proved product market fit, we have customers in 45 states and 8 or 9 countries, and now this is about the early days of scaling.” 
Mitchel Laskey, co-founder and managing partner of DeepWork Capital, agrees. DeepWork has 17 portfolio companies in Florida and was recently cited as the state’s most active VC by CB Insights.
“I think Lil Roberts is a super talented entrepreneur. She is in a space that is interesting to us because we like SaaS software. We like on-demand services and we think attracting services to small and medium businesses, particularly fundamental services like accounting and bookkeeping, is quite interesting and from our research there seems to be a great appetite for growth,” Laskey said.  “Lil has already demonstrated that she can start to attract customers at unit economics that make some sense so the thought is if we can capitalize this business correctly it can start to scale.”
Xendoo is moving to 10,000 square feet of Class A office space off Cypress Creek and I-95 in January, from its current 1,600-square-foot office, and will begin growing out an inside sales team then, Roberts said.
“We want to grow to be a really large company here in our hometown, the tri-county area. We will be right by the Tri-rail station, and there’s a lot of tech right in that area with Microsoft and Citrix. We can draw from South Miami through the Palm Beaches.”
Winning eMerge America’s Startup Competition in April 2018 opened doors for Xendoo and kicked off a big year and a half to come. After that win, Xendoo participated in the Silicon Valley LAUNCH accelerator of Jason Calacanis, who was an eMerge judge. In May, Xendoo won the Rise of the Rest Miami pitch competition and took home the big check – a $100,000 investment. 

“Part of what put us on the map is Melissa Medina at eMerge Americas and the opportunities  that eMerge Americas brought for us,” Roberts said.  “Everyone in the ecosystem is working hard in South Florida. It’s a journey we are all taking together. We are extremely grateful for all the opportunities and support we have in South Florida and we want to build a world-class company here alongside others that are already here.”
Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter and email her at [email protected]
 READ MORE ON REFRESH – #MiamiTech Startup Spotlight: For small businesses, Xendoo delivers the numbers – and ‘peace of mind’
 

Nancy Dahlberg
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