Three years ago, we launched Collective with the mission to empower Businesses-of-One with the technology and team that they need to enable them to focus on their passion, not their paperwork. Today, 39% of the U.S. workforce and growing are solopreneurs and Collective has created the first all-in-one back-office solution to help deliver this rising population financial peace of mind.
While our mission remains unwavering, technology continues to improve exponentially. AI technologies, in particular, are at a tipping point. OpenAI’s GPT-4 can now perform at 90% on nearly all standardized tests. AI technologies can not only be leveraged to build tools to help us better serve our community but will also revolutionize how independents work and deliver value to their clients.
Today, we’re excited to announce that Collective has raised $50M from Innovius Capital, Gradient Ventures, the General Partnership, Better Tomorrow Ventures, General Catalyst, QED, Expa, Sound and many others. This funding will be utilized to deepen our investment in our core platform and expand our AI implementation across the product suite.
Specifically, we will deliver internal AI co-pilots to help us better serve our members and add robust new AI-powered, member-facing capabilities – a new bookkeeping dashboard, task tracking, financial insights and more – to our all-in-one platform. We will also continue to scale our operations to better serve our rapidly growing membership base and waitlist.
In 2013, Instagram was sold for $1B. With just 13 full-time employees they demonstrated that with the help of technology, massive value can be created with a small team. With the advent of new AI tools that enable people to do more with less, this type of unprecedented growth and success will soon be within reach for everyone.
In a recent Collective member survey, 40% of self-employed workers expect AI tools to radically improve their productivity and profitability. At Collective, we’re excited to help fuel the productivity of solopreneurs and welcome the first billion-dollar Business-of-One.
A heartfelt thanks to all of our members that have helped us get here and move closer to realizing our shared vision. We’re excited to continue our hard work and build amazing things to drive your businesses forward.
Hooman Radfar is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and the co-founder and CEO of Collective. Hooman co-founded Collective to create a better world by supporting the largest and fastest-growing class of entrepreneurs in the world – Businesses-of-One.