So it’s pretty rare that a day goes by that Techstars or a Techstars company isn’t in the news. Yesterday Techstars announced a new $150M fund called Techstars Ventures and today alumni Bench.co raised a $7M Series A round led by Altos Ventures. Bench is disrupting a space that has been in long need of disruption, bookkeeping, a service that has been done by individuals who pour over Excel docs or become Quickbooks wizards.
I used to use a service called Outright which was acquired by Go Daddy back in 2012 however I have to say after taking Bench.co for a spin it’s clear they have built something very special. So what does Bench do different? Bench actually employs real people, yes, the bookkeeper you know and love isn’t going to be out of a job, but they are going to become a lot more efficient and cost-effective thanks to Bench.
“Our job is to ensure that the experience you have is easy and as painless as possible,” said cofounder Jordan Menashy. “We don’t want to effectively risk that relationship or that experience because we used a contractor or an overseas operation when this is ultimately what people are coming to us for. People think you can’t scale if you do the work yourself, but we’re in the business of proving we can actual scale this model.” (Source – Techcrunch)
Now Bench wasn’t originally called Bench, they started as 10Sheet.com but after pivoting their business to what it is today they decided a fresh new name was in order.
It’s no secret that domains like Bench.com sell in the six and seven-figure range but with the .CO Bench has been able to brand around the name they wanted at a fraction of the cost. Of course Bench isn’t alone in this branding move, massively successful companies like Vine, AngelList and many more have moved to one-word .CO domains to lock down their top choice brand without locking in a high price tag.
Huge congrats to the whole Bench team, looking forward to following along with the journey ahead and hopefully grabbing a beer together at the next Techstars Foundercon.
