Photo credit: Pleo
Being an SME owner means worrying about money. From late payments to concerns about suppliers’ solvency, no wonder more than half of the UK’s small-business owners agonise so much about cashflow that they have trouble sleeping at night. Given the ubiquity of these anxieties, it’s clear why companies promising to solve these woes are raising impressive rounds.
The latest one to do so is the London and Copenhagen-based fintech startup Pleo that just announced a $56m series B round. The investment round was led by Stripes, a New York-based growth fund. Bolstering the raise, existing investors like Swedish investment firm Kinnevik, Stockholm and San Francisco-based VC firm Creandum and Copenhagen-based startup studio Founders also contributed. This new round comes on the back of a $16m series A capital injection from 2018. In total, Pleo has raised $79m across five rounds.
Pleo provides businesses with a spending platform based around smart company cards to enable more control over the business expense process. Each card is paired with software and mobile apps to automatically match receipts and track all company spending in real-time with detailed analytics. In other words, Pleo automates the paperwork so that business leaders can focus on working on their business rather than in their business.
The startup already provides its services to over 3,500 companies, including Airsorted, The Tab, Lyst, Yoyo, Pizza Pilgrims and Roskilde Festival. But with the new money, the company aims to roll out its services further across Europe whilst growing its staff count from the current 120 to 400 by the end of 2020.
Jeppe Rindom, co-founder and CEO at Pleo, said: “Managing work-related spending has traditionally caused headaches for employees and their employers alike. Pleo is making the whole process simpler, quicker and more transparent. We are building a solution to fit the needs of today’s modern workforce – reshaping how businesses manage company spending and how they operate, enabling staff to feel more empowered and ultimately more productive.”
With investors being more than happy to inject money into startups like Pleo, maybe SME owners can be more optimistic about their future cashflow woes and finally catch those Zs without fear of night terrors.
