Over the course of the COVID crisis, which presented particular challenges to small and mid-sized businesses in the US, a number of Israeli startups that target the small business sector have found that their technologies were able to help businesses that were struggling financially due to the pandemic.
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The technologies in question were not developed with COVID in mind, but proved themselves effective for many small business owners.
One of these startups is Tailor Brands, which supplies small businesses with the services offered by traditional branding companies, but through a digital application. The company's technology is also available to owners of brick and mortar businesses who were forced by the pandemic to transition into the online sphere for the first time or improve their digital footprint.
Tailor Brands' platform lets users design a business logo for free, brand their businesses, build an Internet and social media presence.
"We have thousands of customers who used the platform to find a new source of income during COVID," said Yali Saar, founder and CEO of Tailor Brands.
"For example, a single mother from South Carolina who was let go during COVID used our platform to turn a hobby she started with her daughter into a kennel for pets that is now the household's main source of income, " Saar said.
According to Saar, most small businesses "die during the idea stage, because they simply don't get off the ground. "During COVID, the ability to transition from the idea stage to the implementation stage quickly turned from something that's nice to something that's critical," he added.
Saar says that his company's system has nearly 30 million registered businesses. Tailor Brands looked at some 7 million founded during or close to the pandemic and found that the rise in unemployment had led to a corresponding rise in the number of new small businesses this past year.
US Census data corroborates this. In 2019, some 3.47 million businesses opened, and in 2020 that number jumped to 4.41 million.
Melio is another Israeli startup active in the US small business arena. Melio offers a platform that transfers digital payments between US small businesses. The company was founded with the aim of helping businesses like these handle payments remotely and improve their cash flow.
Business payments in the US are still largely processed by hand, which leads to long payment times.
Founding partner at Melio Ziv Paz said, "What makes our technology unique is that it is adapted to people without a technological or financial background. We saw family businesses in the US start using our solution that had never integrated any technological tools before this. It was new for them and for us, but the complications of the COVID crisis pushed them over the edge into digitalization."
Paz explains that Melio's founders decided to set up an accounting firm in the US to understand business cash flow and get a sense of the pain, nuances, and workflow of the sector.
"That helped us create a precise solution," he said.
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