Slash, a US banking startup that bridges the gap between personal and business banking for entrepreneurs, has emerged from stealth on the back of a $19 million funding round led by NEA.
The seed and Series A rounds included additional participation from Menlo Ventures, Connect Ventures, Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Global Founders Capital, and from angel investors William Hockey, the founder of Plaid, and Justin Mateen, co-founder and former CMO of Tinder.
Co-Founders of Slash, Victor Cardenas and Kevin Bai, are college dropouts from Stanford University and The University of Waterloo.
An early iteration of their product provided a way for consumers to create shareable virtual cards to split recurring expenses.
The product became popular overnight among teenage dropshippers on Discord, who flocked to Slash because its virtual cards were debit-based, available to users 13 or older, and did not limit spend based on credit history. But rather than using Slash to split expenses like Netflix and Spotify - the product’s intended use case - the target audience instead generated creative business ideas to monetize the cards.
A study from Microsoft shows that almost two-thirds (62%) of the Gen Z population have mentioned wanting to start their own business, and 48% have multiple side hustles.
Slash's 20,000 users span from teenagers under 18 just starting their first side hustle to large e-commerce businesses that spend millions of dollars per month.
“There’s a rapidly growing group of very young entrepreneurs that’s been completely overlooked by traditional financial institutions and every other fintech company,” says Victor Cardenas, co-founder of Slash. “For people with side hustles, having a dedicated business bank account that is separate from their personal one is helpful. However, constantly sending money between accounts at different banks can be a hassle. Our product lets you easily create and manage both a personal and business bank account in one place, making it a great choice for self-employed people.”
Alongside banking, Cardenas says Slash aims to become a legal and financial one-stop shop to help young entrepreneurs run all aspects of their business—including incorporation, invoicing, automated bookkeeping, and tax management.