Viable, an intelligent finance startup that helps consumer brands improve growth, profit and cash flow outcomes, announced the closing of its €2.8 million seed funding round with participation from Episode 1, Haatch, Portfolio Ventures and a group of angel investors led by Martin Brailsford, former founder & CEO of e-commerce group Internet Fusion. This round follows an earlier pre-seed in 2023 led by the same group of angel investors.
The company is building verticalised finance technology for a new breed of online and multi-channel merchants to streamline finance operations and optimise their working capital, leveraging recent developments in open banking, payments and AI infrastructure.
The growing number of merchants that sell products via Shopify, Amazon, TikTok and other emerging platforms have seen dramatic post-covid changes in the equity, debt and credit landscape, combined with rising costs and increased competition. All adding pressure to their financial performance and optimisation.
Viable launched the first version of their technology last year to address this growing finance challenge, seeing early adoption across fashion, beauty and health & wellness verticals. The seed funding round will accelerate the company’s development of embedded finance products, increasing accessibility for merchants.
Viable was co-founded in 2023 by Franklyn Martin, Henry Young and Steven Haynes to streamline finance operations and optimise working capital for the next generation of online and multi-channel merchants.
Simon Murdoch, managing partner of Episode 1, said: “Given my background at Amazon and then as an investor in a number of e-commerce businesses I understood how hard it is for them to predict their cashflow and decide what strategic moves to make to improve profits and cashflow. It’s also really hard to get expert finance advice cost effectively. Viable makes it easy for business owners to plan ahead and achieve commercial success.”
Reece Williams, co-founder of beauty-tech brand mdlondon, commented: “Viable connects our daily changes in business performance with forward-looking finance projections. This has meant we could launch new products, expand into new markets and develop sales channels while optimising for growth, profit and cash flow. Our exponential growth rate has been underpinned by Viable, as well as enabling us to sleep easy at night!”
Viable co-founder and CEO Franklyn Martin, added: “There’s a growing disconnect between traditional financial management processes and how early-stage brands need to operate. The next generation of DTC success stories need to scale with leaner teams and exceptional early finance performance. We’re building an intelligent finance product that gives merchants that capability – to process transactions, report finance measures, adapt budgets, visualise scenarios, access funding and ultimately improve finance outcomes”
