San Diego’s Mosaic reels in $25M from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund for strategic finance tech
San Diego startup Mosaic, which makes “command center” software for corporate finance departments, has raised $25 million in a second round of venture capital led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.
The round brings the total amount raised by Mosaic over the past 14 months to $46 million. Launched three years ago, the startup’s platform helps chief financial officers at fast-growing companies deliver what Mosaic calls strategic finance.
“In many cases, folks see finance as a back-office function — something that is more of the anchor off the back of the boat slowing it down rather than a catalyst that’s propelling it forward,” said Chief Executive Bijan Moallemi. “When we think of strategic finance, we believe the role of the CFO, when you do it properly, can be one of the most strategic and most important functions across the business.”
The funding reunites Mosaic co-founders Joseph Garafalo, Brian Campbell and Moallemi with Thiel, managing partner at Founders Fund and co-founder of Palantir Technologies and PayPal.
Garafalo, Campbell and Moallemi worked in the finance department at Palantir, helping to build financial systems at the company from startup stage through 2,500 employees.
They eventually left to take CFO roles elsewhere. “That’s when we realized everything we did at Palantir, which was more out of necessity, it turned out every company needed this,” said Moallemi.
Mosaic will use the new capital to expand sales and product development — including a new topline planning component that’s slated to debut later this year. The startup employs 100 workers across the country. About 30 are based at its San Diego headquarters.
Along with Founders Fund, existing investors General Catalyst, XYZ Venture Capital, Fifth Down Capital and Friends & Family Capital participated in the round.
“Strategic finance is still trapped inside of Excel,” said John Luttig, principal of Funders Fund, in a statement. “Mosaic recognized that a shift to Google Sheets wasn’t going to drive the future of finance. Its platform brings financial planning into the modern era.”
Over the past two years, Mosaic has rung up triple-digit percentage gains in its customer base, which includes high-growth companies such as Pipe, Kandi, Drata, Fivetran, Soucegraph and Crossbeam. While there are competitors, Moallemi contends none offer the comprehensive range of tools that Mosaic delivers.
“We are trying to create a category,” he said. “When we think about the space, we really do think of it as greenfield.”