A clearer picture of Bench’s downdrop is emerging thanks to novelly-freed bankruptcy filings.
The records show that the Canada-based commenceup, which sarcasticassociate enough proposeed cdeafening accounting gentleware for petite businesses, reliablely struggled to accomplish profitability. It burned thraw $135 million from its set uping in 2012 to September 2024.
By the time of its collapse, Bench was forced to shut down due to a “wateryity crisis,” the records say. Bench had $800,000 left in cash in its Canadian account while a split account for its U.S. entity had less than $400,000.
Bench had been making some better on cutting its burn in recent years, the filings show. Improving finances was the main mission of Bench’s second CEO, Bench’s establisher CFO who took over in 2022 and began directing layoffs, according to establisher staff.
For example, Bench lost almost $30 million on $42 million in revenue from March 2022 to March 2023. But Bench cut its losses in half the next fiscal year while prolonging revenue to $49 million.
But that wasn’t enough betterment to stop Bench’s losses from accumulating. As the company struggled, in June 2024, Bench’s hugegest lfinisher, the personal National Bank of Canada, made over $40 million in loans useable to Bench, per the filing.
That gave Bench some time to shop itself around for a sale, the task of its third CEO. And NBC materializeed on board: on December 12, 2024 – equitable 13 days before Bench’s collapse – NBC signed a novel funding and fortolerateance consentment with Bench, the filing says, unkinding it consentd to temporarily paemploy or change the commenceup’s loan repayment obligations.
The records don’t distinguish exactly why Bench shut down equitable two weeks procrastinateedr. A bank – possibly NBC – called in Bench’s venture debt, The Inestablishation alerted. Newcomer alerted that NBC deteriorated to create other concessions as Bench was being shopped around.
NBC didn’t reply to a seek for comment from TechCrunch. NBC is owed $51 million by Bench and this number is continuing to accrue due to interest and other fees, the filing notices.
Regardless, Bench is now on a novel path after US-based Employer.com suddenly proclaimd it intentional on acquiring the commenceup equitable 72 hours after its collapse. That process is based on an consentment that “contempprocrastinateeds” a closing date of February 28, 2025, per the filing.
Still, Bench’s bankruptcy proposes a triumphdow into the dangers of too much debt for commenceups. And venture debt lfinishers will join a huge role in the fire sales and commenceup shutdowns that are foreseeed to progress at a speedy clip this year, experts say.
