Lili, which is building banking products for freelance workers, raises $10M seed funding led by Group 11
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch : Thanks: @woodlandalyssa
Context & Ripple Effects
This seed round is the opening move in what became a fast escalation: the same backers' thesis carried Lili from this $15M Series A just months later to a $55M Series B also led by Group 11, with the product sharpening from freelancer accounts into a single work-plus-personal neobank.
The raise also lands inside a crowded niche forming around self-employed banking — Karat Financial's creator-and-gig-worker banking and Found's full-stack freelancer services raised their own rounds within two years, confirming that investors saw independent workers as an underserved banking segment worth dedicated institutions.
First-order effects
- Group 11's $10M gives Lili runway to build out its freelancer-focused bank accounts and associated products while the category is still thinly staffed.
Second-order effects
- Rivals Karat Financial and Found, each raising their own dedicated rounds for self-employed banking, now compete head-on with Lili for the same creators, gig workers, and contract workers rather than ceding the segment to general-purpose banks.
Third-order effects
- If the funding cadence holds — seed, Series A, then a larger Series B from the same lead within about a year — vertical neobanks structured around worker type become an established industry layer, forcing incumbent banks to decide whether to build freelancer products themselves or partner.
The trend: Consumer fintech is fragmenting into vertical neobanks built around specific worker categories — freelancers first, then creators and gig workers — with specialist VCs like Group 11 doubling down across rounds.