Invoicing may not be something most people think about on a daily basis. But for businesses, especially those in the software sales industry, invoicing is extremely important. Invoicing systems help ensure customers pay on time and offer a variety of payment methods.
The problem is that configuring these systems can consume valuable engineering time.
Alvaro Morales and Kshiitj Grover know this from experience: Both programmers by trade, they worked together at Asana and frequently made changes to product packaging and pricing.
“Unlike all the tools available to us as developers, the billing system was rigid and inflexible,” says Morales. “We found it very counterintuitive that traditional billing tools didn't allow us to easily change our pricing over time.”
So Morales and Glover did what many engineers held back by frustrating software do: they built it themselves.
Image credit: Orb
Morales and Grover's billing platform, called Orb, is designed to be a “single source of truth” for finance organizations. Orb provides the infrastructure for different types of billing plans, including usage-based and consumption-based plans, as well as payment and invoicing workflows.
“We're consolidating billing and data into one platform,” Morales said. “Traditional billing tools are separate from the product and are centered around commercial constructs like 'subscriptions' and 'contracts.' Orb starts by capturing raw product usage and allows users to define pricing logic based on that.”
Orb has no shortage of competitors in the billing space, but business is booming, Morales said: Orb's revenue has grown nearly fivefold in the past year, and the company's customer base has tripled, adding brands such as Vercel, Replit, Pinecone and Perplexity.
Indeed, Orb still has the cash in the bank from its Series A round, which closed last March, but Morales and Glover weren't about to pass up the opportunity to raise more money.
This week, Orb closed a $25 million Series B round led by Mayfield, bringing Orb's total funding to $44 million and increasing its valuation “significantly,” Morales said. The funds will be used to build out features such as an AI-powered pricing recommendation engine.
“We've seen a particularly strong fit in AI, cloud infrastructure, fintech and developer tools, and the majority of our growth is coming from those areas,” Morales said. He added that Orb plans to hire about 15 people by the end of the year. The startup currently has 36 employees, most of whom are based in San Francisco.
Other participants in the round included Basecase, Greylock Partners, Menlo Ventures, Scribble Ventures, South Park Commons and Uncorrelated Ventures.