17hats
“Can a lean, all-in-one CRM own the entire back office of the single-person service business without becoming a fintech itself?”
Founded2012
HQPasadena, CA, United States
FoundersDonovan Janus, Rhesa Rozendaal
Total raised$5.3M+ (disclosed)
Latest roundSeries A, 2015
IndustryHorizontal SaaS / SMB CRM
The story
17hats was founded in 2014 by Donovan Janus after a 2011 NYT article on the trials of solo entrepreneurs. Positioned as an all-in-one CRM/quote/contract/invoice tool for service-driven single-person businesses (photographers, coaches, designers). Payments are a core hook — Stripe for cards/ACH and Square are the merchant options — but 17hats itself is not a regulated financial entity; embedded finance sits entirely on partner rails. In 2023 the founder handed the CEO role to Amanda Rae and the product has been consolidated into a single tier with SMS texting, pipelines, and scheduling baked in.
Last 12 months
—
Product timeline
2014
17hats founded by Donovan Janus and Rhesa Rozendaal to give solopreneurs an all-in-one business platform.· pivot
2015
Raised $4M Series A led by Wavemaker Partners to expand CRM and workflow tooling for freelancers.· pivot
2023
Amanda Rae becomes CEO; founder Donovan Janus transitions to board.· pivot
2025
Repackaged into a single all-inclusive plan with SMS texting, pipelines, and built-in scheduling.· pivot
The stack
4 layers disclosed in 17hats’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
Money movement
in the full report
Open banking
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
7 more providers across 3 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.