Fuzey, a London-based company providing what it calls a “digital one-stop-shop” for small businesses and independent entrepreneurs, has raised $ 4.5 million in seed funding.

The round was led by byFounders with participation from Flash Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Ascension and a group of angel investors, including Index Ventures partner Stéphane Kurgan and Amplo VC founder and CEO Sheel Tyle .

The latest round gives the company $ 5.2 million in total funding since the company was founded in 2020 by Henrik Lysgaard Jensen and Alex Boyce. As part of the investment, byFounders investor Sara Rywe and Flash Ventures partner Lorenzo Franzi have joined the company’s board of directors.

CEO Lysgaard Jensen and COO Boyce met about two years ago and bonded to help small businesses go digital. Targeting small business owners, like plumbers, electricians and mechanics, Lysgaard Jensen believes that local businesses “are the backbone of every community”, but many of the tools developed for business management are either out. of scope for companies like this, nor designed with them in mind.

Other startups are drawing attention to these types of businesses as well. In November, Puls Technologies raised $ 15 million for its mobile app connecting artisans with on-demand home repair services. There are also bigger companies in the space, like Jobber, which announced funding of $ 60 million earlier this year.

This area is also particularly personal for Boyce, who explained that his mother is a small business owner who ran much of her business with a leather-bound notebook, always concerned that he might get lost.

“These are topics that we are working on,” he told TechCrunch. “We reflected on how we might become agents of change during the pandemic, which was a wake-up call as we saw the changing demands of consumers, with people wanting to focus more on technology. and engage with local traders in different ways. ”

Thus, corporate tools digitize for small businesses what has traditionally been done manually and on paper, such as invoices. It brings together communications, payments, marketing and calendars in a single dashboard to manage their activities and improve their online profiles.

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Users can communicate with their customers through a variety of methods, from messaging to social media, while generating invoices for instant payment and lead generation information. Fuzey also offers one-click document templates and customer reviews to ease the review filing process.

“Response time is important, and we even have response templates with predefined questions or comments so you can respond to customers quickly,” said Lysgaard Jensen. “We strongly believe in the impact of 20, 30, 40 times of that.”

The company, which launched its product in June, will use the new funding for product development and geographic expansion. It is already present in certain markets in Europe, the United States and Canada. Fuzey currently has 10 employees and is seeing double-digit month-over-month growth, both in terms of customers and revenue.