Moonshots Capital Invests in Able’s $3.29M Seed Round to Help Creators Stay Focused on Creating
From our first few meetings with Able Co-Founders Vince Cortese and Angelo Pullen, their vision for Able was perfectly clear: to enable the massively growing independent worker community to easily manage their non-traditional financial lives in an elegant mobile-first platform. What was also very clear is that they were the right leadership team for this endeavor having started and exited their last company together, bringing especially strong domain expertise to bear, and sharing an unrelenting passion for the work at hand. Given that our investment thesis at Moonshots Capital is: “We invest in extraordinary leadership,” we moved quickly to secure an allocation and partner with Vince and Angelo.
The share of freelancers in the US economy has increased drastically over the past five years, with up to 35% of the US workforce freelancing at least part time in 2019. Disruptions from COVID in 2020 further pushed professionals to take on freelance work. According to NPR, in late 2020, 36% of professionals were freelancing full time. In total, over 57 million Americans have an income stream without a W2 or a formal employer. (Sources 1, 2, 3, 4).
Able starts by tackling the things that worry freelancers the most: What to set aside for taxes after finishing a large project? How to invest for retirement from multiple irregular income streams? Further, Able’s platform helps freelancers exist in a world that largely expects everyone to have a traditional 9-to-5 job. Aggregating multiple income streams, Able’s platform helps them prove their income for loan or rent applications, or when paying taxes.
We love backing entrepreneurs when they grip hands to start another venture together. Vince and Angelo are serial entrepreneurs with experience from multiple startups. Previously, they co-founded 3BlackDot, a platform which helps creators engage with their followers and build their brand across digital and physical platforms. They exited 3BlackDot in a multi-million dollar sale to a leader in the video game and eSports industries. Overall, Able’s team combines extensive domain expertise in the freelance and financial space with previous startup success.
We are excited to invest alongside Elefund, who led the round, and also alongside Next Coast Ventures, Signal Peak Ventures, and U.K.-based LocalGlobe. We look forward to rolling up our sleeves with Nate Rodland, GP of Elefund and former COO of Robinhood, to help Vince and Angelo. We are also pumped to have an incredible group of creators join this round as investors, to include YouTube co-founder and former CEO Chad Hurley, Twitch co-founder and former COO Kevin Lin, TikTok sensation Kris Collins (@Kallmekris), and YouTube superstars Evan Fong (VanossGaming), Phil DeFranco, Casey Neistat, and Arif Lopez (Azzerz). This is an especially strong team that brings an especially large number of followers (200M+).
Congrats Vince, Angelo and the entire Able team on the very successful fundraise! To the moon we go!
Moonshots Capital is a veteran-founded venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups with extraordinary leaders.
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