Tom Aronica, founder and CEO of Biller Genie, was lured to Miami from New York to attend college at The University of Miami and, like many, never left. Instead, he became a serial fintech entrepreneur and, as he said, has only ever worked for himself. As a computer science and math major at UM, he said “I knew I didn’t want to write code for the rest of my life, and I really enjoy sales,” which is what led him to start his own companies. On the heels of other finance companies founded, he started Sky Bank Financial, which is a credit card processing company, and then liquidated a portion of the company’s assets to bootstrap his next endeavor. He took $2.1 million of his own money and launched the Biller Genie MVP at the end of 2018.
Biller Genie is an accounts receivable automation company, which, as Aronica said, “is a fancy name for a software that helps businesses get their invoices paid faster.” Think of Biller Genie as your assistant who sends the invoices, follows up on unpaid invoices, and then, when you get paid, connects your banking to your accounting software – but all automatically, he said.
As a result of using Biller Genie, “our clients are getting paid 10-15 days faster,” Aronica said.
While running Sky Bank Financial, Aronica noticed a common pain point amongst his customers. “They were complaining that there was no way for them to connect their banking to their accounting software,” he said. So he built that functionality for his clients, but the functionality soon became a product in-and-of-itself. What was to become Biller Genie, had a broader audience than he had originally anticipated. That’s how Biller Genie started.
“What makes us unique is that we connect with existing accounting programs. We’re a turbocharger for the systems they are already using,” he said, adding that Biller Genie integrates with Quickbooks and other commonly-used accounting programs.
A portion of the product also works like Zelle or Venmo. For example, let’s say Sally wants to pay Joe, her landscaper, online rather than with cash or a check. She can download the Biller Genie app – which would be white-labeled for Joe’s landscaping business – and pay him there. Her payment will go to his bank account and show up in his accounting software.
“If I didn’t have Biller Genie, I would need a full-time assistant, and I’d tell them, ‘I want you to follow-up on every single invoice with this frequency and this language.’”
How’s Biller Genie doing now?
According to Aronica, Biller Genie now has about 400 paying SaaS customers, giving the company monthly recurring revenue. Biller Genie charges between $50 – $1,500/month. The price increases depending on how much a company uses the product.
Aronica discovered that the fastest and most efficient route for customer acquisition was to partner with institutions. He’s closing a deal with a “large Bank” (which he couldn’t disclose at the moment), and then the bank will be able to offer Biller Genie to their customers, and in return, the bank will increase its deposits.
The Details:
Website: https://billergenie.com/
Number of Employees: 26, 16 of which are full-time employees; 10 are contractors
Target market: Small to medium size B2B business market.
Tagline: Automated. Integrated. Simplified
Business model: monthly subscription service to businesses.
Recent milestone: Recent industry recognitions include 1st place winner of the 2020 Miami Herald Startup Pitch Competition (fintech category), 2019 CPA Practice Advisor’s Technology Innovation Award, 2021 eMerge Americas Startup finalist, 2020 NEAA Catapult Award, and participated in the 2019 Money 20/20 Startup Academy and the Electronic Payment Association’s NexTen program. The company recently secured national strategic partnership deals with ccounting startup Xendoo, and a national bank to be announced soon.
Hiring for the following positions:
Relationship management
Tech Support
Help Desk
Frontline Support
Photo at top of post is of Biller Genie CEO Tom Aronica and President Garima Shah; Photos provided by Biller Genie.
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