Willa, the fintech startup dedicated to helping freelancers get paid on time without the associated admin and hassle, today announces a $3 million seed round led by the EQT Ventures fund.
With the investment, Willa is set to launch Willa Pay to provide its community of creative freelancers with an easier way to get paid with no paperwork or risk. The Willa team is on a mission to ensure these creative communities can optimise their working conditions, spend less time on paperwork and, most importantly, get paid for the work they have done.
Willa is a distributed company co-headquartered in Venice, California, and Stockholm, Sweden, and was founded in 2019 by a team of serial entrepreneurs, many of whom were early members of the Spotify team and played a key role in the brand’s growth and US launch.
The Willa team most recently built marketing company Relatable, where the team collaborated closely with more than 10,000 freelancers and saw the issues faced by the creative community around late and missing payments, as well as challenging payment terms, first-hand.
“Freelancing is the future of work,” said Kristofer Sommestad, co-founder and CEO at Willa. “But most of our society hasn’t caught up with this. Freelancers still have a hard time getting the same support, benefits, protection, and access to financial services as employees.
“Too many freelancers put copious effort and faith in various tools and still end up being paid late or sometimes not at all, forcing them to max out their credit cards. We created Willa Pay to truly help our community, starting with the most important part: getting paid, without pain, and without paperwork. We’re excited to have our investors join us on this mission. The tech DNA of the EQT Ventures team and their experience scaling companies makes them an ideal partner for Willa. With the added value and experience from our team of angel investors, we’re set up for success.”
“EQT Ventures backs founders that have the determination and ambition to build global businesses that solve big problems using technology. The Willa team is doing exactly this by setting the foundations for the future of work,” said Lars Jörnow, partner and investment advisor.
“Freelancing is first and foremost a business, so it’s vital for global economies that this workforce — which provides the backbone of countless sectors — is equipped with all the tools needed to engineer this promising future.”
Willa is also backed by Nordic Makers (collective of U.S. unicorn founders), Mattias Ljungman (Atomico co-founder, now running Moonfire Ventures), Johan Lorenzen (angel investor and co-founder of freelancer bank Holvi) and Michael Hansen (angel investor and fintech entrepreneur).
Willa Pay is currently in beta and invitation only. The company will start to bring freelancers and creators on board in Q3 2020.