Arena was founded on the belief that those in the arena are worthy of support; that small and mid-size businesses deserve high caliber tech and touch that will enable and empower them to reach their full potential; that the fabric of our communities depends on the ability of their members to contribute and succeed.
Arena is on a mission to empower businesses to achieve their strategic goals by providing active management of business finances and regularly measuring performance against those goals. Named for the renowned Teddy Roosevelt speech given in 1910, Arena is built for the entrepreneur – the man in the arena, the doer of deeds – who dares greatly.
Founded in 2019, Arena’s vision is to simplify financial services and make them accessible to businesses of any size.
Arena’s initial offering was Arena Pay, a bill pay platform that optimizes payments for businesses and pays bills at the right time with the right payment method. The innovative Arena Pay platform allows users to optimize their cash flow with standard payment functions as well as a patented ‘pay with card’ option that enables card payments against any and all payables.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
– Teddy Roosevelt, 1910
Arena then developed the Arena Business Health Assessment, a 100% automated 3-5 minute assessment about financial operations that provides insights to the business owner and partner CFO so that they know where to begin their operational and strategic discussions.
During the pandemic, Arena took the opportunity to serve small businesses across the U.S. in a pro-bono capacity, assessing their need and eligibility for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) government-assisted funding and forgiveness so that business owners could focus on their employees and customers. That spawned Arena CFO, fractional CFO services for any business regardless of size.
