Last week I wrote a post about Networks and the Enterprise and I mentioned that we had made two recent investments in networks that engage the enterprise and that I couldn't mention one of them.
Well happily I can talk about the other one today. Pollenware announced yesterday that our firm had led a financing round for their company. Here's the USV blog post on Pollenware.
Pollenware is a really cool kind of funding marketplace. I've mentioned that we like peer to peer lending both for consumers and the enterprise. Pollenware operates a similar but different kind of funding marketplace. It is a marketplace that connects suppliers and their buyers and conducts real-time auctions for accounts payable and accounts receivable payments.
If you are a buyer and want to make a little more money paying your invoices a bit more quickly, visit this link. If you are a supplier and want to get paid more quickly, visit this link.
The thing I like most about this idea is the virality of it. If you are a supplier and you are participating in Pollenware to get paid a bit more quickly, you can invite your suppliers into the marketplace so you can pay them more quickly too. The whole thing trickles down from the biggest buyers to the smallest suppliers. Pollenware has some work to do to make their marketplace scale from the largest to smallest companies but our investment is a signal that we are highly confident they can get there and we plan to help them out along the way with things we've learned working with other marketplaces and funding markets.
Pollenware is located in Kansas City, our second investment in the midwest in less than a year. We are finding lots of interesting networks and marketplaces all around the country and all around the world. The opportunities are certainly not limited to the bay area, boston, and NYC these days.
