Five milestone moments from our first five years

By Wave
By Wave
Reviewed by
February 15, 2016
5 minutes read

We’ve been quietly celebrating our fifth birthday for a couple of months now. First we had cupcakes. Then we moved into a brand new office. Then we launched a huge number of product improvements for our customers.

Hey, that’s just how we roll.

What we missed was a retrospective on the road we’ve travelled. Here are some milestone moments from our adventures:

November 16, 2010

Customer number 1. We were newborns in the startup world, and on our very first day 81 people decided to give us a try. I’ll be profiling some of these longstanding Wave customers in the coming weeks, but in the meantime: Marilyn, Tim, David, Bev, Kevin and the 76 others, thanks for putting your trust in Wave for the last 5 years!

May 11, 2011

Just about every startup has to raise funds from investors, and Wave was no exception. About six months after we launched, we announced the close of our “Seed” financing round. We’ve done bigger investment rounds since, and we have a truly great roster of VC talent on our board, supporting our success. But this first round, led by OMERS Ventures, was a huge vote of confidence, demonstrating that a bunch of really smart people shared our vision for what was possible with Wave. We’ve done three more financing rounds since then, with OMERS Ventures participating in each of them.

December 16, 2012

Launching credit card processing added an entirely new level of complexity and infrastructure to Wave’s already complex suite of accounting, invoicing, payroll and receipt scanning. The team worked incredibly hard to get it right, and on this day we launched Payments by Wave, making it possible for you to accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express and more on the invoices you sent. It’s become one of our most popular products.

July 30, 2014

We’re not going to pick a favorite customer of all time. (You’re all special!) But on this day, 1,383 days after we first stepped into the world, Wave signed up its 1 millionth customer. Gotta say, that felt amazing. We now sign up more than 50,000 small business customers every month, so we have customer #2,000,000 in sight.That will be another cake-worthy celebration.

November 16, 2015

Not only did we celebrate our 5th birthday on this day, but our CEO and co-founder Kirk made a bold announcement: The coming year would be one of huge leaps forward. With five years of experience under our belts, and a recently closed round of financing ($17.2 million) in our pockets, we embarked on what we’re calling “Next Wave.” We’re launching some of our best, smartest features ever — in fact, we’ve already launched many of them. Our goal: Making the traditional tasks of accounting, invoicing and running your small business, a seamless, effortless, intuitive part of your business day.

Today, the Wave team is 90 people strong, and composed of the smartest, most dedicated people we can imagine having the pleasure of working (and playing) with. That’s another thing we celebrate. Cheers! Happy (belated) birthday to us!

Wave team
WaveCupcakes
starter
Plan
starter
Plan
$0
pro
Plan
$16USD
$20CAD/mo
Option to accept online payments
Starting at
2.9% + $0.60
per credit card transaction
Starting at
2.9% + $0*
per credit card transaction
for first 10 transactions/mo
Unlimited invoices, estimates, bills
Add your logo and brand colors
Automate late payment reminders
with online payments
Wave mobile app
Unlimited bookkeeping records
Dashboard and reports
Auto-import transactions
Auto-merge transactions
Auto-categorize transactions
Add users
Live-person chat and email support
with any paid add-on
Digitally capture unlimited receipts
additional fee
Payroll
additional fee
additional fee
Hire a bookkeeper
additional fee
additional fee
Option to accept online payments
Starting at
2.9% + $0.60
per credit card transaction
Starting at
2.9% + $0*
per credit card transaction
for first 10 transactions/mo
Unlimited invoices, estimates, bills
Add your logo and brand colors
Automate late payment reminders
with online payments
Wave mobile app
Unlimited bookkeeping records
Dashboard and reports
Auto-import transactions
Auto-merge transactions
Auto-categorize transactions
Add users
Live-person chat and email support
with any paid add-on
Digitally capture unlimited receipts
additional fee
Payroll
additional fee
additional fee
Hire a bookkeeper
additional fee
additional fee
starter
Plan
$0
Legacy businesses
New businesses
pro
Plan
$16USD or
$20CAD/mo
starter
Plan
$0
Legacy businesses
New businesses
pro
Plan
$16USD or
$20CAD/mo
Invoicing + payments
Option to accept online payments
(and create unique links with checkouts)
Starting at
2.9% + $0.60
per credit card transaction
Starting at
2.9% + $0.60
per credit card transaction
Starting at
2.9% + $0*
per credit card transaction
for first 10 transactions/mo

Send invoices, estimates, and other docs:

  • via links or PDFs
  • automatically, via Wave
when you add-on online payments
when you add-on online payments
Automate late payment reminders
when you add-on online payments
when you add-on online payments
Add your logo and brand colors
Remove Wave branding from footers
Add attachments to invoices and estimates (coming June 10)
Create reusable message templates (coming June 10)
Invoice and estimate in the mobile app
Accounting
Unlimited bookkeeping records
Auto-import bank transactions
Auto-merge and categorize transactions
Add users to your business
businesses already auto-importing bank transactions and/or that already have users added to their businesses as of May 1, 2024
Digitally capture unlimited receipts
Manage accounting transactions in the mobile app and sync with desktop (NEW!)
when you add-on receipts
when you add-on receipts
Other Wave features
Dashboard and reports
Live-person chat + email support
with any optional add-on
with any optional add-on
Optional add-ons
Receipts
nothing changes
additional fee
included
Payroll
nothing changes
additional fee
additional fee
Advisors
nothing changes
additional fee
additional fee
Invoicing + payments
Option to accept online payments
(and create unique links with checkouts)
Starting at
2.9% + $0.60
per credit card transaction
Starting at
2.9% + $0.60
per credit card transaction
Starting at
2.9% + $0*
per credit card transaction for first 10 transactions/mo
Send invoices, estimates, and other docs via links or PDFs
Send invoices, estimates, and other docs automatically, via Wave
when you add-on online payments
when you add-on online payments
Automate late payment reminders
when you add-on online payments
when you add-on online payments
Add your logo and brand colors
Remove Wave branding from footers
Add attachments to invoices and estimates (coming June 10)
Create reusable message templates (coming June 10)
Invoice and estimate in the mobile app
Accounting
Unlimited bookkeeping records
Auto-import, -merge, and -categorize bank transactions
businesses already auto-importing bank transactions and/or that already have users added to their businesses as of May 1, 2024
Add users to your business
businesses already auto-importing bank transactions and/or that already have users added to their businesses as of May 1, 2024
Digitally capture unlimited receipts
Manage accounting transactions in the mobile app and sync with desktop (NEW!)
when you add-on receipts
when you add-on receipts
Other Wave features
Dashboard and reports
Live-person chat + email support
with any optional add-on
with any optional add-on
Optional add-ons
Receipts
nothing changes
additional fee
included
Payroll
nothing changes
additional fee
additional fee
Advisors
nothing changes
additional fee
additional fee

*While subscribed to Wave’s Pro Plan, get 2.9% + $0 (Visa, Mastercard, Discover) and 3.4% + $0 (Amex) per transaction for the first 10 transactions of each month of your subscription, then 2.9% + $0.60 (Visa, Mastercard, Discover) and 3.4% + $0.60 (Amex) per transaction. Discover processing is only available to US customers. See full terms and conditions for the US and Canada. See Wave’s Terms of Service for more information.

By Wave
Categories:

The information and tips shared on this blog are meant to be used as learning and personal development tools as you launch, run and grow your business. While a good place to start, these articles should not take the place of personalized advice from professionals. As our lawyers would say: “All content on Wave’s blog is intended for informational purposes only. It should not be considered legal or financial advice.” Additionally, Wave is the legal copyright holder of all materials on the blog, and others cannot re-use or publish it without our written consent.

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