At Slope, we’re excited to announce our latest round of funding from J.P. Morgan, Notable Capital and others! We raised $65M of capital across equity and debt, bringing our total funding to $252M ($77M in equity and $175M in debt). As part of the round, James Fraser, Global Head of Trade & Working Capital at J.P. Morgan Payments, will join as board observer. Y Combinator, Jack Altman, and Max Altman’s new fund, Saga participated in the round as well.

As it hasn’t been that long since we last raised (read about our Sept ’23 round here) and we’ve remained extremely disciplined on headcount (our team is 24 people), there was no need to take in additional capital. As part of this announcement we wanted to take the opportunity to share some perspective on why we decided to work with J.P. Morgan, both as a referral partner and investor, and share some reflections on how we have approached building Slope over the past year — we’re beyond excited about where we’re headed!

Go-to-market progress. In addition to J.P. Morgan, we have signed enterprise partnerships with some of the world’s largest enterprises in the past 9 months (we will disclose publicly soon). These are all major undertakings where we are now able to provide a unique solution to our customers.

We view providing a consumer-grade experience to our customers is as important as growth. The best way to know if we are is by asking a simple question: “Do our customers use our product?” At Slope, the answer is without a doubt “Yes.” Utilization, an expression of what % of limits customers use in a particular period, is high and increasing.

Disciplined since inception. It’s a tumultuous time in the fintech world right now. Not a week goes by without news of a company going under, or regulators coming down on the industry.

We were born during the 2021 bubble but stayed disciplined and lean, which has paid massive dividends in today’s market. This has meant ensuring credit performance remains top-notch, being disciplined on hiring, investing early in compliance and risk, leveraging AI to drive down operating costs, and managing the business to both unit economics and growth goals. We believe that growth is imperative (and we are growing quickly), but particularly in financial services “growth at all costs” is rarely a good idea.

The decisions we make are directed towards the long-term and compliance is an area we wanted to focus on early. Earlier this year, we brought on seasoned legal and compliance executive Euna Kim as General Counsel, formerly General Counsel at Sardine, Head of Product and Payments Legal at Robinhood, and Vice President at Wells Fargo.

We want to build a large business that can endure for decades to come. Our target market, the entire B2B economy, represents a $125T opportunity. We truly believe we are uniquely positioned to own this market by keeping our eye on the discipline ball and quietly executing on world-class product and customer experience.

Combining the best of “Fin” and “Tech”. Lastly, we are rewriting the fintech playbook. We understand that it’s virtually impossible to disrupt and grow without best-in-class technology (“Tech”). We also believe it’s hard to build a large financial services company without selectively partnering with incumbent players (“Fin”). Our deep partnership with J.P. Morgan, one of the most important financial institutions on the planet with 150 years of legacy, is a great example of the latter. With this partnership, J.P. Morgan will facilitate a GTM partnership (referring Slope’s solutions to their rolodex of enterprise clients), provide a debt facility to help the business achieve unbounded scale, and offer expertise in risk and compliance.

On the Tech side, our products are built from the ground up. We always have the customers’ needs top of mind, and never release anything that doesn’t scale (at Slope it’s, not surprisingly, slope > Y-intercept). At the same time, as a result of having kept our team so lean we are able to move quickly. We disrupt workflows that are totally manual today, and use generative AI to power a wide range of solutions, including B2B checkout, customer and vendor risk assessment, payment reconciliation, and cash management. We’re grateful to be based in the heart of Silicon Valley (San Francisco) and backed by the top technologists in our generation — Y Combinator and founders of OpenAI, Doordash, Dropbox, Plaid, Unity, etc.

We are biased, but we think our investor and long-time advisor @Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and former CEO of Y Combinator, sums up our approach well: “I really believe in investing in slope, not Y-intercept. Slope embodies this concept; they move fast, execute well, and play the long game. They are well on their way to building a category-defining business, and I’m delighted to be along for the ride.”

A big thank you to our partners, investors, and network — I’m very grateful to all who have been with us throughout our journey, and look forward to what the future holds for Slope.

To stay connected and see more of what we’re up to, visit our website at www.slopepay.com and follow us on Twitter: @SlopePay and LinkedIn: Slope.

— LLM, CEO of Slope

It’s not where you start, it’s how fast you iterate. Slope is more important than the Y-intercept.

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