Durham-based ProcessMaker is announcing today that it has closed $45 million in Series A funding from Aldrich Capital Partners. The financing marks the first outside investment for the previously bootstrapped Durham-based technology company.
ProcessMaker is a leading no-code/low-code open source process automation platform founded during the dotcom boom and bust of 2000 by Bobby Vernon and Brian Reale. The two entrepreneurs failed early and quite often during their initial years, but in 2008 the team launched what is now known around the world as ProcessMaker – one of the first open source workflow software solutions in the industry at the time.
ProcessMaker bootstrapped its way from zero to 140 global employees, several million open source downloads, and hundreds of customers across 52 countries. ProcessMaker focuses primarily on applications for mid-market banking, higher education, and manufacturing. Customers include community banks, multi-nationals, and more than 150+ universities. In 2020, ProcessMaker was named a representative vendor by Gartner in its 2020 Market Guide for Intelligent Business Process Management Suites (iBPMS). ProcessMaker also clinched the 2020 CODiE Award for Best Digital Process Automation solution and was also most recently ranked an enterprise BPM momentum leader on G2 Crowd.
“At ProcessMaker our mission is to make every second count,” explained CEO and Co-Founder, Brian Reale. “This resonates in everything we do. At the most obvious level, it means empowering organizations to make their business processes more efficient. On a deeper level, it means giving customers a way to quickly build and deploy beautiful, engaging digital business processes that users love.”
In its mid-market banking vertical ProcessMaker offers an off-the-shelf commercial account opening process that can be deployed by community banks in just a couple of weeks. The result is that community banks can now deliver to their customers an experience that rivals the digital experience of banks 10x their size at a fraction of the cost. During COVID, this meant the banks were able to pivot from in-person commercial account opening to a fully digital, best-in-class experience while still focusing on building relationships with their customers.
In Higher Education, ProcessMaker automates student facing processes like transfer of credit approvals and grade change processes. At one of the largest public university systems in the US, ProcessMaker reduced the average time for approving transfer credits from 5 months to 19 hours.
“We make a huge impact on student lives,” explained Reale. “For students who were already struggling with the financial and emotional stress of the pandemic, waiting 5 months to know when or if transfer credits would be approved, often meant the difference between dropping out of college or staying to graduate.”
“This investment and partnership with Aldrich Capital marks a significant milestone for ProcessMaker, and I am very proud and excited for our team. Moving forward with Brian’s continued leadership combined with the experience and resources of ACP, our growth prospects could not be brighter,” said ProcessMaker co-founder Bobby Vernon.
“Aldrich invested in ProcessMaker because it is a highly capital efficient founder-run business that has a respected global brand. ProcessMaker is a market innovator that has proven that it knows how to be profitable and thrive even during a once in a century world-wide pandemic. At ACP, we love low-code process automation and fully expect hundreds of market verticals to be transformed in the next decade. Together with ACP, we expect ProcessMaker to continue to be a leader in this huge opportunity,” said Aldrich Capital Partners Managing Partner, Mirza Baig.
The global process automation market is expected to reach nearly $17 billion by 2023 with a CAGR of 5.8% according to a recent report. The investment from Aldrich Capital will allow ProcessMaker to continue to invest in its market leading digital process automation platform and build out its presence in community banking, higher education, and manufacturing.
About ProcessMaker
ProcessMaker is a no-code/low-code process automation solution provider focusing primarily on solutions in banking, higher education, and manufacturing. ProcessMaker makes it easy for business analysts to collaborate with IT to automate complex business processes connecting people and existing company systems. Headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, ProcessMaker has hundreds of commercial customers and an active open source community of thousands of users. Organizations rely on ProcessMaker to digitally transform their core business processes, enabling faster decision making, improved compliance, and better performance. Learn more at www.ProcessMaker.com
About Aldrich Capital Partners
Aldrich Capital Partners supports disruptive innovation in healthcare IT, fintech, and application software by investing equity capital in privately held growing companies. Founded by experienced investors and operators, who were also successful entrepreneurs, the founders of Aldrich Capital have been responsible for over $1 billion in technology investments since 1999. Both an operations partner and board-level advisor, ACP brings its portfolio companies strategic insight and access to a broad network of relationships built over 50 combined years of entrepreneurship and investing. Aldrich Capital Partners was founded in 2014 and has offices in Silicon Valley and the Washington, DC metro area. Learn more at www.aldrichcap.com.
