Novo

Overview

Novo is a Miami-based financial technology company that offers a free business checking account and a set of money-management tools to small businesses, freelancers, and gig-economy workers — built in-house from the ground up rather than assembled from third-party banking infrastructure (TechCrunch). Novo is a fintech, not a bank: the deposit and banking products on its platform are provided by Middlesex Federal Savings, F.A., which handles the banking licence, FDIC insurance, and access to payment rails (TechCrunch).

This profile covers Novo Platform, Inc., the US small-business banking fintech — not Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company, and not Novo Banco, the Portuguese bank. The company was founded in 2016 by Michael Rangel and Tyler McIntyre, launched its platform in 2018, and grew through a rapid 2021–2022 funding run into a two-time member of the Forbes Fintech 50 (Finovate; Delaware Prosperity Partnership).

Built from scratch, then a rapid funding run

Novo’s founding pitch was that small businesses were overlooked by big banks and underserved by consumer-style products, and that the answer was a purpose-built platform rather than a repackaged one. CEO Michael Rangel told TechCrunch the company built everything in-house, “starting from the underlying core processor that powers the bank to what is in the hands of our 150,000 business customers” — a choice made partly out of necessity, since in 2016 there were few banking-as-a-service platforms to build on (TechCrunch). The company launched in 2018 and, by mid-2021, had passed 100,000 small-business customers and $1 billion in lifetime transactions (Retail Banker International).

The funding followed the growth in quick succession. In June 2021 Novo raised a $40.7 million Series A led by Valar Ventures, with Crosslink Capital, Rainfall Ventures, Red Sea Ventures, and BoxGroup participating, and said it would more than double a 60-person headcount within a year (Retail Banker International). Just six months later it closed a $90 million Series B led by Stripes at a $700 million valuation, taking total funding past $135 million, with customers up to 150,000 and lifetime transactions at $5 billion (TechCrunch). In November 2022, GGV Capital added $35 million to the Series B, taking that round to $125 million and total equity funding past $170 million, as customers passed 175,000 and lifetime transactions passed $12 billion (Finovate). Finovate also noted Novo’s naming to Forbes’ “Next Billion-Dollar Startups” list for 2022 (Finovate).

What the platform offers and where it sits

At the centre of the platform is a free business checking account with free ACH transfers and incoming wires, a virtual card, and an application process completable in under ten minutes (Finovate). Around it sit tools aimed at the daily finances of very small firms: invoicing and budgeting features added around the Series A, Novo Reserves for setting aside funds for taxes and payroll, a Novo Apps marketplace of roughly 1,000 integrable apps and services, Novo Boost for same-day access to payments received through Stripe, and Express ACH for same-day or next-day ACH payments (Retail Banker International; Finovate; TechCrunch). Later additions included Novo Funding, a working-capital product that had issued more than $70 million by late 2023 (Delaware Prosperity Partnership).

Novo’s place in the wider fintech stack is visible in its customer relationships as well as its own product: Finovate named Novo among the customers of Alloy’s identity-decisioning platform, alongside Brex and HMBradley, with an automated customer approval rate above 80% (Finovate). By December 2023 the company had been named to the Forbes Fintech 50 in both 2022 and 2023, had passed $20 billion in lifetime small-business transactions since its 2018 launch, was headquartered in Miami, and had opened a Wilmington, Delaware office as part of that state’s financial-services hub (Delaware Prosperity Partnership).

What this profile does not claim

• Coverage of Novo variously gives its founding year as 2016 or 2018; this profile treats 2016 as the founding year and 2018 as the platform launch year, and does not resolve the discrepancy beyond that.
• The CEO’s first name appears as both “Michael” and “Michel” Rangel in independent coverage; this profile uses Michael.
• Customer counts, transaction volumes, and funding totals are as reported in 2021–2023 coverage; no current figures are claimed, and funding rounds after the November 2022 Series B extension were not verified in a fully-read independent source.
• No Novo first-party material was used, so product details beyond those in the independent sources above are deliberately left out.