Alumnae-founded Fintech Startup Secures $29M in New Financing

18 Oct 2021

Alumnae-founded Fintech Startup Secures $29M in New Financing

Lara O’Connor Hodgson (MBA 1998) and Now are helping small businesses get faster access to capital

Re: Lara Hodgson (MBA 1998)

Topics: Entrepreneurship-General Finance-Capital Innovation-Technological Innovation

Photo via Harvard Innovation Labs

Lara O’Connor Hodgson (MBA 1998), cofounder of Now, recently spoke to Yahoo Finance Live to discuss its recent $29 million funding round.

Hodgson cofounded Now in 2010 with former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams as a way to help small businesses more easily gain access to capital. “What we find is when a small business starts using NowAccount and they start getting paid in just a couple of days, it completely changes the way they do business. And it accelerates their growth,” Hodgson tells Yahoo Finance. “So in addition to serving more clients with this new capital, we'll be able to continue to scale and serve our existing clients as they grow exponentially.”

Asked about the confidence of the small business community in the economic recovery, Hodgson expressed optimism. “(T)his is an incredible opportunity for small businesses to really drive innovation coming out of this crisis,” she said. “And so I take that as an awesome opportunity, and an awesome responsibility quite frankly, to support them in their goal of taking on some of this opportunity.”

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