Founder and former CEO of Plenty Of Fish Markus Frind has become an angel investor in a new finance startup that is helping people who are struggling to pay their bills.
Symend is a Calgary-based company that builds behavioural analytics into customer products to identify people having trouble with payments. It suggests alternate plans and schemes to help them be better with their money.
It has just closed a funding round that has raised a total of $52 million. The money will be put towards helping the company deal with its increased business as more people are facing unemployment.
The round was led by Inovia Capital, and included contributions from a number of other venture capital firms, as well as the Plenty of Fish founder.
Co-founder of Symend Tiffany Karminsky told TechCrunch: “The economic impact of COVID-19 is leaving a lot of people in a bad financial situation. While some utilities may have their own initiatives or are supported by government efforts to offset people unable to pay bills, this doesn’t cover all businesses or scenarios.
“Tell us what you have and we’ll see what we can bring to bear. We have a degree of flexibility depending on what a customer can provide.”
The company was first founded in 2016 and had previously raised a total of just $8 million.
Frind has been working on several different ventures since he left the dating company, including experimenting with his own brand of wine 12 months ago.
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