Treasury4 secures more than $3.5M in seed funding

Treasury4 Inc., a Spokane-based fintech startup formed last year, has secured more than $3.5 million so far in its second round of fundraising. The money will be used to launch the commercialization phase of the company’s software products.

Nathan Brown, co-founder and chief analytics officer of Treasury4, said the company launched its latest funding round on Oct. 26. The round will be completed Jan. 24, so additional investment in that round is possible, he said.

Investors include the Kickstart seed fund and Cowles Ventures LLC.

Treasury4 has put together a total of about $8 million in funds since the company was founded, Brown said, adding that most of the investors in the second round of funding also contributed to the first funding round, which was held last year.

The founders describe Treasury4 as a software platform that helps corporations manage treasury operations. They compared a corporate treasury to a central bank of a corporation.

“The target market is professionals in corporate finance and corporate treasury,” Brown said. “It’s a bit of a niche market. It’s not something that an individual is going to go find on the app store.”

Treasury4 is targeting companies with complex needs, which are defined as companies that can handle two-to-10-plus different currencies from customers, include more than four legal entities, and participate in activity such as mergers and acquisitions.

Those types of companies typically have annual revenue of between $50 million and more than $1 billion, but Brown said smaller companies can have needs complex enough to hire Treasury4.

Brown said that Treasury4 has pivoted from market validation to commercialization. He confirmed that the company is generating revenue, though he declined to disclose those figures.

“We have a handful of customers that are using them to great effect, and the reviews are positive,” Brown said. “We’re starting to broaden our reach beyond early adopter customers.”

To serve more customers, Treasury4 plans to hire about 10 employees over the next year. The company currently has 25 employees, 21 of whom are local.

“We’re not planning to double the company over the next year or anything like that, but we have some strategic hiring plans we’re trying to execute,” Brown said.

He said Treasury4 sells to one company at a time.

“We’re not trying to bring in dozens of customers every day,” Brown said. “We work closely with a prospective customer to help them understand the value we’re creating.”

Treasury4 provides a set of software tools, as well as treasury services outsourcing.

Two software modules are currently offered: a legal entity management module called Entity4, and a daily account-balance and transaction-management module called Cash4.

“Entity4 is a little further along; Cash4 is still in the minimum-viable product stage,” Brown said. “We have customers that are using both of those.”

Other modules under development include Payments4, a secure payments platform for data-heavy transactions, a foreign currency exchange management system called Forex4, and a tool called Forecast4 for managing and improving short-term treasury forecasts.

Brown said the company is responsive to customer needs and typically aims to get a new customer working with Treasury4’s products within days to weeks.

“We’re actively seeking feedback on … what additional features and functionality are important to our customers,” Brown said. “We’ve already made some modifications.”

As an example, Brown said Treasury4 fielded a request from a Silicon Valley technology company for a new feature.

Treasury4 had already been planning to create the new feature but moved the development timeline up by about a year to accommodate the tech company’s desire.

Treasury4 leases office space in the Wonder Building, at 835 N. Post, on the north bank of the Spokane River.

Brown said the company subleases additional space in the Wonder Building from other businesses to accommodate its growing staff.