GroupMe co-founder raises $3.4 million to help small businesses get loans

Businesses require spending money to make money, but finding that cash is often a challenge. Fundera launched its platform today that connects small businesses with lending alternatives to banks. The startup also revealed backing by $3.4 million in venture capital. Jared Hecht is one of the cofounders. He helpd start GroupMe, which Skype bought in 2011 for upward of $50 million.

When serial entrepreneurs jump from company to company, they tend to stay in a similar, or at least a related, category. But the founders of GroupMe, a messaging app which sold to Skype for around $80 million in 2011, have each gone in totally different directions. GroupMe’s co-founders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci (who previously worked at Tumblr and Gilt Groupe, respectively) are applying their experience in the consumer web to the B2B world. In August, the pair left GroupMe, exactly two years after the sale to Microsoft (MSFT). Shortly after, Martocci launched Splice, a music collaboration app to help musicians and producers edit, share, and manage digital music files. He raised $2.75 million in venture backing for the company.