Software <\/p>\n
Flex, a startup that offers personal finance software for business owners, has acquired Maza, a finance app aimed at Spanish speakers in the U.S., for $40 million, the companies told TechCrunch exclusively.<\/p>\n
At first glance, the pairing may seem a bit curious. Flex\u2019s software and payments infrastructure is to help business owners have a single app to conduct all their finances. Maza started out helping Spanish-speaking consumers \u2014 immigrants included\u00a0 \u2014 do things like open a bank account, get a debit card, and provide those who needed it with an individual tax identification number (ITIN).<\/p>\n
So how did the mission of these two companies intersect? Over time, Maza realized that many of the users of its app and services were actually small business owners, or solopreneurs. So the startup focused on developing business software for its Spanish-speaking customers and their small businesses, running part of their operations on its tech stack. Examples included landscapers, cleaning services, and construction subcontractors, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2024, Maza said it was scaling revenue at a 290% year-over-year growth rate and had 250,000 customers.<\/p>\n
The scale that Maza experienced in the solopreneur segment caught the attention of Flex, which saw it as a gateway for Flex\u2019s own offering, noted Luciano Arango, co-founder and CEO of Maza.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over time, Flex has been building tools to serve the person behind<\/em> the business.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs both companies gravitated toward the same user \u2014 business owners with consumer needs \u2014 the lines between the two began to blur,\u201d said Flex founder and CEO Zaid Rahman. \u201cRather than build a parallel product, it made more sense to combine forces and scale from day zero to year ten.\u201d<\/p>\n As a combined company, the founders hope to \u201caccelerate\u201d their \u201cshared roadmap,\u201d said Rahman.<\/p>\n Maza will rebrand as Flex Consumer, and Maza\u2019s founders \u2014 Arango, Robbie Figueroa, and Siggy Bilstein \u2014 will take on executive roles within the combined entity.<\/p>\n \u201cAs founders, we\u2019ve felt the pain of fragmented financial tools. Maza and Flex were building from opposite ends of the same problem,\u201d Arango said. \u201cJoining forces was the logical next step.\u201d<\/p>\n Maza\u2019s pivot was a natural one, according to Arango.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat surprised us most was how durable the customer base became,\u201d Arango added.<\/p>\n So Maza continued building in that direction, using the proceeds of a previously undisclosed $15 million Series A round of funding that it raised in 2024. Wellington led that round, which included participation from existing and new backers such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tusk Venture Partners, and Titanium Ventures, as well as singer Anderson Paak and the former CEO of Amex Bank, Anr\u00e9 Williams.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since its 2022 inception, Maza has raised a total of $24 million in equity. Also founded in 2022, Flex has secured $45 million in equity and $300 million in credit facilities with the debt exclusively funding its credit card offering. Flex was valued at $250 million as of March. Titanium Ventures led its last raise, a $25 million equity round announced in March.<\/p>\n Ninety-five percent of Maza\u2019s 22-person team has been integrated into Flex, which had 64 employees at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n Merger-and-acquisition deals in the fintech sector have picked up in the last two quarters, according to CB Insights\u2019 State of Venture Q1 2025 report. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the sector saw 191 global M&A transactions. And in the first quarter of 2025, it saw 184 M&A deals. By contrast, there were 143 fintech M&A deals reported in the third quarter of 2024.<\/p>\n More recently, embedded finance platform Pipe acquired Glean.ai, which marketed itself as \u201caccounts payable with a brain,\u201d for an undisclosed amount. Checkr also recently signed a definitive agreement to acquire Truework, an income and employment verification startup.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\tMary Ann Azevedo has more than 20 years of business reporting and editing experience for publications such as FinLedger, Crunchbase News, Crain, Forbes and Silicon Valley Business Journal. Prior to joining TechCrunch in 2021, she earned numerous awards including the New York Times Chairman\u2019s Award and others for breaking news coverage. She holds a Master\u2019s degree in journalism from the University of Texas in Austin, where she currently lives.\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\tView Bio