Finxact, a Jacksonville-based banking platform startup, led the Sunshine State in first quarter venture capital funding.
Of the 20 deals across the state, Finxact hauled in $30 million of the $107.1 million secured by Florida companies.
Both new and existing investors participated in the company’s latest round of funding. The new investors included the American Bankers Association, Accenture Ventures and SunTrust Bank. Existing investors included First Data, Live Oak Ventures, T.N. Incorporation Ltd. and Woodforest National Bank.
According to Finxact CEO and founder Frank Sanchez, the funds will be used to help scale Core as a Service, the company’s flagship product.
“We’ve developed a platform that is functionally robust, reliable, scalable and highly efficient. We have multiple customer implementations currently underway and have raised capital to expand our capacity to go to market on a broader scale,” Sanchez said in a press release. “We also plan to expand our integration activities with the financial services ecosystem, and to mitigate the risk and complexity historically associated with core system migrations.”
Finxact’s Core as a Service is a “digital banking system of record for secure record keeping and processing of rich transactions.” The product aims to help banks break away from maintaining legacy systems, which are expensive and inflexible.
“Bankers know that innovation is essential to remaining competitive, yet I’ve heard time and again that their relationship with their core provider can make it difficult to be agile in selecting products and partners,” said ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols. “We are confident that the impressive team at Finxact will challenge the entire industry, including banks and their providers, to think differently about the way a core platform enables a bank to innovate.”
While Finxact may have pulled in the most funding, other companies across the state didn’t do too shabby.
Peerfit, an Orlando-based digital health company, secured $18 million in Series C funding from Virgo Investment Group.
“Peerfit has identified a unique need in the employer wellness and Medicare space, building an offering that appeals to employees, seniors, employers, and health plans,” said Pooja Goel, Virgo’s managing director and healthcare practice lead, in a press release.
The company said some of the funding will go toward its expansion into the Medicare space with its Peerfit Move product.
Mosyle, another Orland-based company, was right behind Peerfit in funding. The 2-year-old startup, which creates mobile device management solutions for Apple devices, raised $16 million in Series A funding.
The funds from investors Elephant and Peak Ventures will be used to expand Mosyle Business, which “streamlines workflows to manage, deploy, and scale Apple deployment in companies.”
“Apple devices have been gaining market share in enterprise environments as companies increasingly deploy iOS and macOS as their official workplace platforms as well as provide support for employees who prefer to use their own Apple devices,” said Jeremiah Daly, founder and general partner at Elephant, in a press release. “We’re excited to invest in Mosyle as it continues to emerge as the leading Apple MDM vendor in education and leverages its product expertise to solve the needs of the enterprise market.”
While the $107.1 million over 20 deals is certainly a lot, it’s nowhere near what Florida companies secured a year ago. In the first quarter of 2018, Florida companies secured $511 million across 21 deals.
The issue isn’t isolated to Florida. According to a new PwC/CB Insights MoneyTree Report, VC funding across the United States fell 36 percent and global funding fell 22 percent in Q1 of 2019.
Chris began his writing as a hobby while attending Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. Today he and his wife live in the Orlando area with their three children and dog.
