Check out a 15-page pitch deck that went viral and helped a credit-card debt collection startup land a $2 million seed round
- Relief just raised a $2 million seed round led by Collaborative Ventures.
- The startup automates the debt relief process, negotiating consumers’ outstanding credit card debt on their behalf.
- Here’s the 15-slide pitch deck that went viral, and led to Relief’s seed round.
For lenders, debt collection is largely automated. But for people who owe money on their credit cards, it can be a confusing and stressful process.
Relief is looking to change that. Its app automates the credit-card debt collection process for users, negotiating with lenders and collectors to settle outstanding balances on their behalf.
The fintech just launched and closed a $2 million seed round led by Collaborative Ventures.
Relief’s fundraising experience was a bit different to most. Its pitch deck, which it shared with one investor via Google Slides, went viral. It set out to raise a $1 million seed round, but ended up doubling that and giving some investors money back to make room for others.
Relief isn’t collecting debt directly from consumers. With a banking partner, it issues loans to users, then negotiates and settles debts on their behalf. Its users pay interest on the loans, but there are no fees for the service. And part of Relief’s pitch is its ability to settle multiple debts with lenders at once.
“We found that one of the biggest components to this is collective bargaining,” Relief founder and CEO Jason Saltzman told Insider.
Relief initially planned on charging merchants a 10% service fee for settled debts, as stated in the pitch deck, but it decided not to charge those fees during its fundraising, Saltzman said.
As it looks to de-stigmatize debt collection, it’s hoping that word of mouth will help it grow by offering referral credits to its users.
“We want to promote the de-stigmatization of the problem by sharing it with your friends and family, because everybody knows somebody who’s going through this,” Saltzman said.
It’s a mobile-first service, meaning users generally don’t interact with a customer service representative. Instead, everything is managed through its app. In part, that’s because of the existing stigma around debt.
Relief has 10 full-time employees, and is headquartered in Miami.
Here’s the 15-slide pitch deck Relief used to raise its seed round.
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