Flex acquires a16z-backed Maza for $40M as fintech M&A heats up

Summary

Flex, a startup that offers personal finance software for business owners, has acquired Maza, a finance app aimed at Spanish speakers in the U.S., for $40 million, the companies told TechCrunch exclusively. At first glance, the pairing may seem a bit curious. Flex’s software and payments infrastructure is to help business owners have a single app to conduct all their finances. Maza started out helping Spanish-speaking consumers – immigrants included – do things like open a bank account, get a debit card, and provide those that needed it with an individual tax identification number (ITIN). So how did the mission of these two companies intersect? Over time, Maza realized that many of the users of its app and services were actually small business owners, or solopreneurs. So the startup focused on developing business software for its Spanish speaking customers and their small businesses, running part of their operations on its tech stack. Examples included landscapers, cleaning services and construction subcontractors, among others. In 2024, Maza said it was scaling revenue at a 290% year-over-year growth rate and had 250,000 customers. The scale that Maza experienced in the solopreneur segment caught the attention of Flex, which saw it as a gateway for Flex’s own offering, noted Luciano Arango, co-founder and CEO of Maza. Over time, Flex has been building tools to serve the person behind the business. “As both companies gravitated toward the same user—business owners with consumer needs—the lines between the two began to blur,” said Flex founder and CEO Zaid Rahman. “Rather than build a parallel product, it made more sense to combine forces and scale from day zero to year ten.” As a combined company, the founders hope to “accelerate” their “shared roadmap,” said Rahman. Maza will rebrand as Flex Consumer, and Maza’s founders – Arango, Robbie Figueroa, and Siggy Bilstein – will take on executive roles within the combined entity. “As founders, we’ve felt the pain of frag...