Nav, a financial health platform for small businesses, has acquired Tillful, a startup focusing on modernizing business credit and cash flow insights for small- and medium-sized businesses by using better data. The acquisition should allow Nav to accelerate its data platform development and product roadmap while adding key personnel.
Nav combines cash flow tools and credit insights to help businesses understand what they qualify for before applying for funds from dozens of SMB lenders.
“Nav delivers an unparalleled financial health experience for small businesses when they need it the most,” said its CEO, Greg Ott. “At a time when financing options are tightening, Nav has built the only destination for businesses to find relevant and objective solutions for their specific needs.
“With Tillful, we saw the opportunity to bring on a strong data platform and categorization engine and a talented team who, like Nav, has empowered SMBs to make better financial decisions based on financial data.”
In a release, Nav said one in three small business owners struggle at best and fail at worst due to capital shortages. Throw in inflation and global political uncertainty, and those funds are more in need.
Nav’s response is to streamline access to capital by aggregating financing options and utilizing cash flow data. In a statement, the company said its acquisition of Tillful, especially its cashflow scoring engine, speeds up its ability to integrate and categorize cash flow data and create proprietary financial health scores for small businesses.
“We have always respected Nav’s leadership in the small business financial health space,” said Tillful founder and former CEO Ken So. “We’re excited that our shared mission will uniquely make the credit ecosystem much more accessible to the Main Street small businesses who have been traditionally overlooked.”
Nav will continue supporting Tillful subscription customers and cardholders inside the Nav platform while offering expanded financial health services. It now has more than 1.7 million small business customers and offers small business financing products like loans and credit cards. Customers can access accounting, tax, payroll, and other business services.
So leads the roster of Tillful employees moving over to Nav; he assumes the VP of Corporate Development position. Purchase terms were not disclosed.
Nav acquired Nuula, a Canadian fintech that provides small business loans, this January. Operating for two decades as BFS Capital, Nuula tried but failed to land a $5M Series A in October 2022.