Why Accel Led A Round For Fintech Startup Campfire For The Second Time In Under 4 Months

Campfire, an AI-powered accounting startup, has raised $65 million in a Series B round just months after closing on a Series A.

Accel and Ribbit Capital co-led the round, which brings the San Francisco-based startup’s total raised to $103.5 million since its 2023 inception.

Most founders count themselves fortunate if they go a couple of years between each venture round. However, in every cycle, there are a few outliers who raise funds much faster.

The past couple of years have offered plenty of examples of those types of companies. According to Crunchbase data, a sizable cohort of companies has progressed from Series A to Series C between 2023 and this year. Several have managed to scale all three stages in less than 12 months.

In Campfire’s case, a common history between Campfire CEO and founder John Glasgow and John Locke, partner at Accel, was a factor in the fast fundraising pattern.

The two first met when Glasgow was working at Invoice2go, a startup that was acquired by fintech giant Bill in July 2021 for $625 million. Locke was also an investor in Invoice2go, where Glasgow was a vice president of business development and partnerships before the acquisition.

Glasgow eventually left Bill, which he joined after the buyout, to start Campfire with the goal of building an AI-native ERP, or enterprise resource planning software, for “modern” finance and accounting teams at mid-sized and enterprise companies.

Campfire participated in startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Summer 2023 batch.

“We went our first two years since YC with just $3.5 million in funding,” Glasgow said in an interview. “And we still had about half of it. But then we felt an intense market pull, so we raised a Series A.”

The startup went on to raise $35 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel this past June. Since that round, Campfire has quadrupled its team from 10 to 40 employees, according to Glasgow.

After Campfire’s last raise, several Accel portfolio companies reached out to demo Campfire, in addition to other companies that had generally heard about its offering for the first time, according to Locke.

“The demand is quite a bit higher than what we even anticipated,” he said. “And we want to make sure that John and the team are appropriately enough capitalized to meet that demand.”

Campfire’s customers include Decagon, Replit, CloudZero, TwelveLabs and Tilt, among others.

Overall, the demand for new ERPs is high, and that’s evidenced by the amount of venture dollars flowing into the space.

DualEntry on Oct. 2 announced a $90 million Series A raise co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures at a $415 million valuation. And on Aug. 6, Rillet announced that it raised $70 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq Capital.

Meanwhile, for Locke, having worked with Glasgow previously was also another factor in his feeling comfortable in writing another check into the company so soon after his first.

“This is the second time that he and I have worked together, and I have a tremendous amount of confidence in John as a leader and recruiter,” he said. “And he’s added some really terrific people to the company in a short amount of time.”

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Illustration: Dom Guzman