We’re excited to announce our $100M Series A investment in Lower today, an investment that hits on a number of themes that are important to us at Accel.

Sector-wise, Lower continues our pattern of backing breakout fintech businesses around the world. We’ve been fortunate to work with companies like Venmo, Monzo and TradeRepublic that are disrupting large financial services markets by building great, mobile-first products.

Lower is taking a similar approach, focused on reshaping the mortgage industry. Anyone who has bought a house knows how arcane the transaction is. The Lower team is demystifying it through innovative, mobile-based products that make getting a home loan and home insurance easier. Their ambitious vision is to make the mortgage process as easy as a few clicks.

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Company DNA-wise, Lower shares the same bootstrapped lineage of Accel-companies like Atlassian, Qualtrics, Galileo and 1Password that achieved significant scale before raising outside capital. All these companies—and Lower—have at their core a similar grit and scrappiness that we believe creates a strong foundation for long-term success. While Lower has come a long way on its own (to over $300M in revenue and profitability—in fact, the largest bootstrapped fintech company we’ve ever seen), we all believe it’s just getting started.

We believe a successful company can be built anywhere across the globe and geography-wise, Lower is the latest proof point. We’re particularly excited that they’re building the company in Columbus, Ohio. Part of this is selfish: we have as many Partners at Accel (myself included) from Ohio as from any other state, so we’re deeply intimate with the region and have long known that Columbus and the Midwest in general has become a terrific place to start and grow a tech business.

This investment marks the biggest Series A in Ohio history. And we think the Lower team (now over 1,000 people) will continue to have a major, positive impact on the Columbus and Ohio tech scenes in the years ahead.

We look forward to working with Dan Snyder, Mike Baynes, Grayson Hanes, Chris Miller and the entire Lower team in the years ahead. We are also grateful to our friend and Galileo Founder, Clay Wilkes, for the introduction to Dan. Stay tuned for more from Lower as they help enable more Americans to find and finance their dream homes.

Welcome to the Accel Family!

John Locke