At SmallBusiness.com, we rarely, if ever, report on news concerning tech startups raising venture capital as that topic receives carpet-bomb coverage so many other places. (Our focus is helpful tips, information and advice.) However, when we learned today that the cloud-based accounting software service Freshbooks raised $30-million (US) in its first institutional investment round, we felt the need to give it a shout-out.

Indeed, we don’t think of the Canadian-based company as a startup as they’ve been around since 2003, which is like a century ago in the small business services category. More importantly, their product has always been focused very tightly on a segment of small businesses and self-employed individuals who are among the types of small business owners who use SmallBusiness.com the most: service providers like freelancers who didn’t go into business to learn accounting (or any of those other business-type things).

There are a lot of great companies that serve the marketplace of small business owners: Freshbooks is one of the best.