Bogotá’s ProcessMaker Raises $45 Million USD Series A Funding From Aldrich Capital

BPA firm ProcessMaker is announcing today that it has closed $45 million in Series A funding from Aldrich Capital Partners.  The financing marks the first outside investment for the previously bootstrapped technology company with operations in Bogotá, Colombia and a legal headquarters in Durham North Carolina.

ProcessMaker is a no-code/low-code open-source process automation platform founded two decades ago by Bobby Vernon and Brian Reale (above photo).  The two entrepreneurs failed early and quite often during their initial years, but in 2008 the team launched one of the first open-source workflow software solutions in the industry at the time, now known around the world as ProcessMaker.

ProcessMaker has bootstrapped its way from zero to 140 global employees, several million open-source downloads, and hundreds of customers across 52 countries, focusing primarily on applications for mid-market banking, higher education, and manufacturing.  Customers include community banks, multi-nationals, and over150 universities. In 2020, ProcessMaker was named a representative vendor by Gartner in its 2020 Market Guide for Intelligent Business Process Management Suites (iBPMS) and also clinched the 2020 CODiE Award for Best Digital Process Automation solution. ProcessMaker was also most recently ranked an enterprise BPM momentum leader on G2 Crowd.

ProcessMaker has bootstrapped its way from zero to 140 global employees, several million open-source downloads, and hundreds of customers across 52 countries, focusing primarily on applications for mid-market banking, higher education, and manufacturing.

“At ProcessMaker our mission is to make every second count,” explained CEO and Co-Founder, Brian Reale. “This resonates in everything we do.  At the most obvious level, it means empowering organizations to make their business processes more efficient.  On a deeper level, it means giving customers a way to quickly build and deploy beautiful, engaging digital business processes that users love.”

In its mid-market banking vertical ProcessMaker offers an off-the-shelf commercial account opening process that can be deployed by community banks in just a couple of weeks.  The result is that community banks can now deliver to their customers an experience that rivals the digital experience of banks 10 times their size at a fraction of the cost.   During COVID, this meant the banks were able to pivot from in-person commercial account opening to a fully digital, best-in-class experience while still focusing on building relationships with their customers.

In Higher Education, ProcessMaker automates student facing processes like transfer of credit approvals and grade change processes.  At one of the largest public university systems in the US, ProcessMaker reduced the average time for approving transfer credits from 5 months to 19 hours.

“We make a huge impact on student lives,” explained Reale.   “For students who were already struggling with the financial and emotional stress of the pandemic, waiting 5 months to know when or if transfer credits would be approved, often meant the difference between dropping out of college or staying to graduate.”

“This investment and partnership with Aldrich Capital marks a significant milestone for ProcessMaker, and I am very proud and excited for our team.  Moving forward with Brian’s continued leadership combined with the experience and resources of ACP, our growth prospects could not be brighter,” said ProcessMaker co-founder Bobby Vernon.

“Aldrich invested in ProcessMaker because it is a highly capital efficient founder-run business that has a respected global brand.  ProcessMaker is a market innovator that has proven that it knows how to be profitable and thrive even during a once in a century world-wide pandemic.  At ACP, we love low-code process automation and fully expect hundreds of market verticals to be transformed in the next decade.  Together with ACP, we expect ProcessMaker to continue to be a leader in this huge opportunity,” said Aldrich Capital Partners Managing Partner, Mirza Baig.

The global process automation market is expected to reach nearly $17 billion by 2023 with a CAGR of 5.8% according to a recent report.  The investment from Aldrich Capital will allow ProcessMaker to continue to invest in its market leading digital process automation platform and build out its presence in community banking, higher education, and manufacturing.