2014-05-02
SANTA CLARA, CA, First and only platform to automate child support payments and related expenses, today announced that it has closed a heavily oversubscribed seed round.
SupportPay by Ittavi, the first and only platform to automate child support payments and related expenses, today announced that it has closed a heavily oversubscribed seed round. The startup raised over $1,100,000 from many of Silicon Valley's most well-respected Angel and corporate investment groups. Draper Associates, Tim Draper's angel investment fund, led the round, which was joined by TEC Ventures, Broadway Angels, Aspect Ventures, RPM Ventures and salesforce.com, as well as several other influential angel investors. The funding will be used to drive customer growth, brand awareness and referral network expansion, as well as internal team growth and continued platform improvements.
'TEC Ventures invests in disruptive businesses that will improve the lives of many,' Anna S. Dvornikova Managing Partner, TEC Ventures. 'We have been very impressed with SupportPay's concept and Sheri's dedication and leadership. She has taken her experience as a child of divorce and as a divorced mother, and generated a solution that solves a real pain in our society.'
SupportPay offers a private, secure, transparent and automated payment platform for sharing child expenses and managing child support. It fully standardizes the billing and payment process for child support, as well as provides parents the transparency necessary to reduce conflict when it comes to sharing the many expenses associated with raising a child including medical, child care, education or any other child expenses - most of which are typically not addressed by court orders or state-run payment platforms. With SupportPay, a parent can easily enter an expense, attach a receipt and then submit the transaction to the other parent. The other parent can quickly review the item, seeing immediately that the expense is for their child, and then make a payment, SupportPay does all of the calculations, tracking and reminders for parents, so they don't have to worry or fight about it. SupportPay is available as a web, Android and iOS application. Currently, there is both a free and a subscription service available. SupportPay is built on the Salesforce1 Platform, the world's only next generation customer platform to deliver the highest level of security and privacy for users' financial data.
'Since our public launch of SupportPay in late 2013, we've seen a remarkable adoption rate by parents seeking a solution to solve this conflict ridden process. In addition, we have thousands of family law professionals who are referring their clients to SupportPay because they also recognize the huge need for a solution to help parents manage child support and share expenses,' said Sheri Atwood, Founder and CEO of Ittavi. 'Until now, technology innovations have completely overlooked parents who are raising children in these modern families- even though there are nearly 300 million of us worldwide and we exchange over $990 billion dollars in child support and child related expenses every year.'
'I was impressed with Sheri's ability to identify a big hole in the market and her remarkable passion to solve a problem faced by so many families. We are proud to be able to help take SupportPay to the next level,' said Joel Yarmon, Partner at Draper Associates.
'We're passionate about the people and ideas in which we invest, and were blown away by what SupportPay has accomplished in such a short period of time,' said Sonja Perkins, Founder of Broadway Angels. 'SupportPay is a smart and simple idea addressing a tremendous market, yet it's the first of its kind - truly a game changer, which we're extremely excited to support.'
You can learn more about SupportPay at supportpay.com
About Draper Associates
Draper Associates is a seed stage venture fund in Menlo Park, CA. We invest globally, in great teams of people creating revolutionary companies in new media, gaming, SaaS, cloud, new finance, IOT, and mobile. Our portfolio companies are disrupting markets in the tens of $billions and are on a clear path to later rounds of fundraising. Big companies. Big ideas. We're here to help.
About Broadway Angels
Broadway Angels is an angel investment group made up of world-class investors and business executives who all happen to be women. We all have decades of experience investing in and managing the best technology companies in the world. All of us are or have been General Partners in venture capital firms or Senior Executives in top technology companies. For most of us, we have been the only woman partner or senior executive in our firm. All of us have built great careers and portfolios along with amazing relationships with entrepreneurs and executives.
About Aspect Ventures
Aspect Ventures works with entrepreneurs in the emerging mobile marketplace, bringing the benefit of their proven track records and fresh perspective to add a meaningful value across the arc of their companies' growth. Aspect Ventures invests in companies that leveraging data and interconnectivity to create breakthrough technologies, products and services for multi-platform environments.
About TEC Ventures
TEC Ventures is a boutique seed fund that invests in companies at the very early stage helping global entrepreneurs from around the world connect with Silicon Valley resources to grow their companies. Our areas of focus are: Internet and software startups with specific interest in social, e-commerce, media, mobile, education, enterprise, security, and consumer internet/mobile apps.
About RPM Ventures
RPM Ventures is an active seed and early stage venture firm, founded in 2000 and based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Firm is a lead investor nationally in its specific areas of expertise, including: Automotive Industry IT and Connected Car, E-commerce, Online Marketplaces, Middle Market SaaS, and Cloud and Social Media Infrastructure. RPM's combination of West Coast entrepreneurial experience and roots in the Great Lakes Region allows them to bring a unique perspective to investing, as is reflected in their integration of Silicon Valley culture and relationships with a Midwest work ethic and core values.
About SupportPay by Ittavi:
Based in Santa Clara, CA, Ittavi ('it takes a village') is on a mission to end family financial conflicts. SupportPay®, Ittavi's first product, is the first-ever automated child support payment platform, poised to transform the complex, time-consuming & stressful process that impacts nearly 300 million parents exchanging more than $900 billion in child support & child expenses worldwide. Submit child expenses, store receipts, and make payments quickly and securely, with automatic reminders, approve/dispute capabilities, and a complete archive of all transactions. With SupportPay, today's modern families can spend less time managing and arguing about child support, and more time focused on raising happy, healthy children. Available online in any browser, with accompanying mobile apps for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. Find out more about how you can streamline your child support payments at: supportpay.com, @supportpayapp or Facebook.com/SupportPay.
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