Learn How French Fintech Unicorn Qonto Wants to Conquer the German Market
Executive Summary
French neobank unicorn Qonto announced their 486 m Euros in Series D funding at 4.4 bn Euro valuation in January 2022, with a global Who-is-Who of investors. 100 m Euros of this record funding will go into their expansion in the German market, competing with Penta, N26, Holvi, or Deutsche Bank’s Fyrst. So we talked to Torben Rabe Qonto’s Country Director for Germany about how they want to compete and reach their goal of 1 million customers by 2025.
“Qonto is the leading European business finance solution… we want to help SMEs, startups and freelancers to protect their most valuable resources which are time, energy and focus.”
Torben Rabe, Country Director of Qonto for Germany
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“Exactly, in 2021 Germany was our fastest-growing market … we grew our customer base by 2.7x. 2022 we will double down on Germany”
Torben Rabe, Country Director of Qonto for Germany
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“We want to reach 1 million SMEs, startups and freelancers as clients by the end of 2025”
Torben Rabe, Country Director of Qonto for Germany
The Video Interview is set to go live on Thursday, July 7th, 2022
The Audio Interview
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The Country Director Germany
We interview the person in charge of Qonto in Germany (https://qonto.com/de), Torben Rabe (https://www.linkedin.com/in/torben-rabe/). Torben studied at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Universität Mannheim and HEC Paris. He held multiple positions before he joined Qonto, including at Rocket Internet, Oliver Wyman, and escooter company Bird. At Bird, he was in charge of the market entry in southern Germany and Austria.
Torben started in 2020 when Qonto was already active in Germany. They had a team of German speakers but in Paris.
“In the beginning, we offered Qonto with a french IBAN in Germany, but soon realized that we had to change this [to a German IBAN]”
Torben Rabe, Country Director of Qonto for Germany
The Startup
Qonto was founded in 2016 in Paris by Alexandre Prot and Steve Anavi. They originally wanted to set up an e-cigarette business and realized that business banking is broken. They want to give business clients an experience with business banking similar to what they have experienced in B2C businesses.
Qonto claims to be the leading European finance solution. They not only offer the business account with a credit card but also expense management and bookkeeping solutions to make your accounting easier.
⅓rd of their customers in Germany are already startups.
“Trust is very important for winning German customers …”
Torben Rabe, Country Director of Qonto for Germany
Qonto Is Hiring: They Are Looking To Hire More Than 1.500 People
Qonto has (at the time of the interview) around 600 employees. They are looking to have 2.000 at the end of 2025. They allow flexible remote policies and are looking to hire more people outside of France than inside. You can learn more here:
Venture Capital Funding
Qonto raised 486 mn Euros (Series D), which was announced in January 2022 (Announcement on TechCrunch). Of this fundraising, more than 100 mn Euros will go to the German expansion.
The investors of Qonto read like a global who is who of investors. Their Series D funding round included Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Tencent, DST Global, legendary private equity investor KKR, the European Investment Bank, the founder of unicorn Solana, Flucas Ventures (investor in AngelList, Pipe, and Binance), and lead investor was TCV (investor in Airbnb, ByteDance, Celonis, Electronic Arts, Facebook, GitLab, Klarna, Mambu, Netflix, Peloton and Spotify).
They also raised funds in a crowdfunding campaign in April 2022, raising 5 m Euros. You can tell that it has no big impact on their funding, but helps them to get closer to their community, which is a big goal of Qonto.
Qonto is aiming to make shifting your account between countries as easy as changing your country in Gmail.
“We surpassed 250.000 clients excluding free accounts, as of end of April 2022 … we want to reach one million customers by 2025”
Torben Rabe, Country Director of Qonto for Germany
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Further Readings / Additional Resources
- During the interview, we talk about the interview with Fastbill. You can learn here:
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The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:
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