Meet Monite — They Make the Life of CFOs Easier | Startuprad.io
We really want to draw a net and run the API network for all financial document exchange and financial workflows.
Ivan Maryasin, CEO & Co-Founder Monite
Executive Summary
Monite is a Berlin-based embedded finance startup, which is already active in the US, UK, and major European economies, despite being at Seed Stage. With their API partners like B2B neobanks, SaaS companies & marketplaces can embed Invoicing, AP Automation, and more in 3–5 weeks. They are looking for next year for their next funding and start to offer contract management.
We really want to make sure, that anyone who wants to offer workflows with financial documents … can integrate it with us.
Ivan Maryasin, CEO & Co-Founder Monite
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The revolution is yet to happen for CFO tools.
Ivan Maryasin, CEO & Co-Founder Monite
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Our tool could be build by bigger players in 12–18 months, but we give them an API with which they can start earn revenue in a few weeks.
Ivan Maryasin, CEO & Co-Founder Monite
The Video Interview is set to go live on Thursday, October 6th, 2022
The Audio Interview
You can subscribe to our podcasts here.
The Founder
Our guest is today Ivan Maryasin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanmaryasin/) the CEO and Co-Founder of embedded finance startup Monite. He worked in Moskow, Boston, and the Bay Area, and finally ended up in Berlin in the early team of Penta, as head of growth. He left Penta, when he saw the opportunity for embedded finance tools, especially for CFOs, in order to set up Monite.
The Startup
Monite is an embedded finance startup, that enables non-financial companies to add financial functions without holding a license. The tool of Monite helps startups and SMEs automate some of their finance workflows. They enter the market another way, they are not offering their services to the clients directly, but enable the service providers to offer accounting and financial services, e.g. Qonto, and Penta.
They currently offer payables automation and receivables automation. Monite is currently available in the US, UK, and major countries of the EU.
In 2023 they will focus on contract management, to integrate in their functions.
Venture Capital Funding
Monite is looking for a new funding round in 2023. Feel free to reach out to Ivan to have a chat.
Tune in to our Internet Radio Station here:
Further Readings / Additional Resources
What is embedded finance? https://builtin.com/fintech/embedded-finance
Feedback
We are always looking for ways to make the show better. Please take this opportunity and share your feedback with us! You can also suggest topics or interview partners that you’d like featured on future episodes by leaving a comment below — we would love to hear from YOU!!!
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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Automated Transcript
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Music.
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Hello and welcome everybody this is Joe from celebrated I owe your start a podcast and YouTube blog from the german-speaking area in Germany Austria and Switzerland as well as the world’s number one Tech entrepreneurship.
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Radio called startup dot radio I know little bit confusing sorry about that today I would like to work on Ivan hey how you doing.
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Hey Joel thanks for having me doing really well excited to do this podcast with you.
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And we have to tell the people that this is our second attempt to really do that I had some.
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Technical issues with the software I’m usually using for recording but fortunately the support helped me and now we can do this.
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Scaring everybody guys we you can we using Microsoft Edge 50% of the people just turned off yet.
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Ivan I have been looking at what you have been doing and I’ve seen
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you hold a bachelor’s in economics and MBA from halt but you did a lot of
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let’s say non-economic stuff you’ve been in marketing and Consulting in Moscow you’ve been in project management in.
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You’ve been a marketing manager in Santiago a project manager in Boston and he stopped in several startups in the Bay Area including in areas like marketing,
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PR and sale,
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and then you came to Berlin can you take a little bit along this very interesting very International journey and especially for the people out there listening because
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right now as we recording this we end the podcast shots of countries like,
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Portugal Mauritius and many many other interesting places and they may be curious how do I get the job in the Silicon Valley or Boston.
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If they’d like to work we’re warm socks in the winter right now absolutely happy happy to talk is root so I’m originally from Moscow and that’s
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where I started my first business when I was pretty early in my my journey I self learned marketing and I was always passionate about the whole go-to-market topic.
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It’s felt like I can really help the right technology I beer in front of the right customers so they recognize the value,
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and that’s pretty much what I started doing for small businesses first and Russia and then move to Boston for four studies
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I ended up working with startups at startups every scenes in go to market functions could be of a different Focus as you said like be our SEO Etc but really came down to Growing mrr or ARR
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mostly in B2B sauce companies and then when I landed in Berlin I started majority we spend time
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and inventing my focus has been as ahead of gross just really growing our bottom line customers revenue and all the key metrics.
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Everybody who’s listening to this podcast for quite a while and there are few thousand people out there they may remember the very energetic co-founder of Penta named Luca and.
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I was actually texting with Luca when we set up this interview and I quote him he said Ivan’s amazing Penta wouldn’t be here without him you can quote me exclamation mark,
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yeah I appreciate good words from Luca we’ve been been a lot of fun working together especially in early days as company scale they change but I think we had a lot of fun when we’re just early sitting in a small apartment in Berlin the using it as the office
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very very special Vibe I think it’s it was a true true startup days.
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Mmm and I’ve read you helped Penta to grow from zero to twenty thousand customers
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so what is the secret to get something like your first 20 or 100 thousand clients know absolutely look I think I think it wasn’t an easy journey I think there are a lot of stories how you know companies are so successful
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but every success story comes after the right number of failures so think to us I’m and in general in the market of one out of what I’ve observed.
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It comes down to pretty much first understanding the needs,
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and I think the answer came very timely to Market in the country Germany we’re opening an account for a business especially if you’re a foreigner especially if you’re not having track record was your local bank
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was really difficult and really lengthy and some Fanta just address this this pain very very well we could do something that no one in the market could do.
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And we made it very clear to our customers via the website and other channels.
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And it’s actually cool to thank that almost 90 to 95 percent of early customers.
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Came in Balance through the website and they could find us they could understand the value so intense it came down to pretty much understanding the needs making sure that the messages are well well adjusted to the customers,
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I’m just making sure that whoever is looking for something like this can easily find us so I think in the first step of the journey was more around positioning explaining what we do explaining how we’re different.
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Now in the second stage it was making sure that Venza is really number one or at least top three in all places where people can be looking for a bank account be that a partnership website do that an online.
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Kind of advertising or anything else and then I think the team did a tremendous job after that not only maintaining the brand but really taking it to the next level
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but if you speak to an average businessmen in Germany almost everyone knows Penta even if they’re not using Fanta they definitely know what it is
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and the green cards that’s actual Luka always pushed for I’m stands out.
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Yeah is there they’re there they got a very shiny green they’re very awesome and at one point you decided to leave.
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Penta and go for your current startup more night working on embedded Finance I would be curious.
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What was the problem that first triggered you and how did you make your decision to jump ship and go for your own.
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So absolutely it’s actually never an easy decision to to move on especially because answer was in the very good trajectory big them just got a new influx of financing etcetera so I think for me it came down to pretty much
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thinking about the bottom line of what I want to accomplish in my career and my focus has always been on the impact on the End customer
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so I felt like Advanced I’m definitely making a difference but I saw a bigger problem in a market that wasn’t being addressed
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which was more related to General Finance automation or back office automation of smes.
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And then I felt like no no bank loan or no platform alone can tackle this today because of how the space is true.
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And there I and my co-founder who actually builds one of the largest Russian Eubanks we saw an opportunity to really make a disruption and really make a big fundamental step.
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In really automating SME finance and I’m just doing you know one be that or another bit better but for really automating the picture.
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And I think crystallizing this picture having insights from Pentecostal Murs having insides from a general European market including for example opening in Italy.
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These were all the triggering moments that made me realize that there is something big out there,
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and whenever I see something big I always make a compromise on you know not having let’s say a stable Serie seller as a founder or missing out on stock rather things.
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But I think these decision to focus on the impact has been The Guiding Stars throughout my career and I continue basically doing that way.
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I’m for the people out there who read embedded Finance that’s new trend that’s that’s new high board how would you describe embedded Finance because for me it would be
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you in able other companies to do some Financial transactions on financial processes without you showing up there directly.
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Would that be okay.
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Yeah that’s that’s that’s about right so I think embedded Finance in general comes down to like many sub-sectors but in general its ability for non-financial companies non fintech companies to add Financial functionalities
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or payments into their interface most of the times without holding any licenses or actually having any expertise in the area which means that it goes anywhere from just simply inventing a wallet and payments
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two more complex things like embedding certain licenses etc etc I think what we do is is a sub-segment of embedded Finance
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I would basically call hours house embedded work clothes more than anything.
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Because what we do is not related to let’s say traditional embedded Finance wedding accounts cards effects for anything else.
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We’re more focused on actually the finance automation workflows of back office Automation and then we basically linked with other embedded Finance providers,
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to close the workflow so we’re more focused on things like I’m embedded in voicing embedded payables automation embedded expense management and then we pretty much connect the dots if we spam and swiss Financial Services through our.
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I’m right now smiling a little bit here because.
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Um one you write on your website startups using up to 15 hours a week to perform Financial tasks I do believe in many startups it’s a lot more and basically what you’re saying.
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Automate everything most startups to with an Excel sheet right yeah that that’s actually true I think that there is like
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I think in the start of audience we all have bit of misconception that because we were using cool tooling and modern tooling most of the market is and that’s also you know what comes up a lot in our talks busy Seas
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but in fact the situation is very different and as a 16–0 at a while ago the revolution is yet to happen in CFO tooling.
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And therefore what’s important to realize is that most of the market is sitting with Excel for receivables for variables for many other things they’re not using modern tooling like even not even build a.com some of the people for example in the u.s. use.
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Books Etc but it’s far from being automated.
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So we end up having 70 80 almost 90% of Assamese in some markets not actually using the full automation or even the partial Automation and a lot of things they are doing by hands are very easy to automate.
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Now the issue is very simple that convincing an SME to use any sort of tooling is very difficult as well as convincing them to use and you know bank or something else.
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Which is why the market penetration of new tooling is super low.
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And while we started first at money as a B2B company we felt this pain very well and I also know it from Penta times it’s very challenging.
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Now the way you approach the market now is turning it around and saying look there are so many platforms that already have businesses to trust them you know Banks vertical sauce companies fintech sauce etcetera.
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Why don’t we let them bring more value to their customers.
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By comparing this Finance Automation and that’s pretty much where we need comes in and does what we call all the boring words for this platform.
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The work that they’re not willing to do because it’s not their core business but the work that really enables I’m to open up you value streams for their.
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And on the other hand you basically utilize their client base their marketing
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to do your job right correct actually we just plug in a revenue stream into them we are nowhere to be seen so for a customer or flats a Penta or Canto or any software platform it would look like
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fans are just shipped great accounts payable automation solution or Contour just shift grading voicing we would not be in the picture
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but the customers would actually imagine that this is being provided by their provider and there is there’s a already a very good example for example if you do see,
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where whoever is using Breville trading probably thinks it’s traveling being so cool but there’s driver Wells API behind it.
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And situations like this basically show that time to Market to bring value is streamline big time and the newer banks are other companies just don’t have to default goes they plug in a specialized API and it just works.
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I see and what are you guys currently offering.
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As I said it’s to the End customer but basically you’re here more talking to the entrepreneurs to the people in charge of businesses if they could use one or two.
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Like building blocks of your tool to put it in their software.
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Absolutely so the two products we have live today are payable sort of nation and receivables automation
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to put it simple the first product is really around spaying paying vendors
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so every business has bills to pay every months now most of the guys were on it’s for email downloading everything on their computer or storing it in Google Drive it’s a complete mess and then it’s manual payouts from account.
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So we offer a solution that allows companies to centralize all their payables in one platform be that a new bank or there I don’t know Barbershop software and then pretty much run specific approval flows and release payments that’s step one.
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Next year we’re going more into the direction of covering the whole contracts to pay workflow where we will also deal with procurement which contracts management and really connects the dots across the flow,
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but for businesses to have it all in one platform so they won’t have to use like contract management software here and procurement there and invoicing here it’s all in one place.
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And we seen this product there are basically software components which is pretty much Gathering bills doing I see are building approval Flows at Seth’s room
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and there are also components around payments which we built together with our partners and those allow people to leverage some of the very successful Revenue models that exist in the market such as for example
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Bill hop are millio in the US where people can for example pay their vendors with a credit card
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therefore extending the bill payment terms or they can actually use be npl rails and again defer the invoice.
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The second product we have is receivables Automation in simple words its invoicing embedded into the platform.
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So it’s flexible invoice issuance it’s storing products in storing customers
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sending offer sending invoices everything is compliant for a specific country and includes eating voice and compliance where
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I’m eating voicing is mandatory and then the idea is that there is pretty much the the simple invoicing functionality of like let’s put together a really nice invoice make it look great
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send it out.
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Then there is a second part of actually chasing people to pay the invoice and then there is the third part that is probably most important and related to actually getting money in.
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We’re basically combined payment lengths like one would get with QuickBooks freshbooks or stripe.
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And at the same time we are adding more options like for example a Advance Cash on an invoice via our be npl provider or something like this.
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So the solution that we offer in a basic version of API is probably something people could build in-house especially bigger players we’ve seen around 12 to 18 months of time.
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Spending quite a lot of resources we give them something out of the box that they can go live within three to five weeks of time with pretty much minimal technical work,
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and then the idea is that they start earning money with this almost right away and the ROI is very high because the amount of value they provide is definitely bigger than what could be in typical.
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They can match fast that whack the competition I see with what’s the now you have to like building blocks elements happy Lego blocks however you want to call it what is the final Vision down the road.
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Yeah that’s a great question I think we aspire to become the default provider in terms of apis when it comes to.
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Every every possible Financial workflow
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that has to deal with financial documents or similar matters so we really want to make sure that anyone who wants to offer the sort of functionality to clients can work with us and pretty much offer them the Streamline workflow
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be the payables be that receivables be that expense management be that pre accounting
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or cash flow analytics in the end of the day if we cook all the data in the same pot you have high data accuracy if we have
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direct interchange of these data between all the counterparts especially globally this will bring a completely new reality to the markets where a lot of Technologies needed today like for example way CR
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like International payments for like other things might not even be needed in car and shape.
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So I think our vision really stretches into saying look we’re really wants to spread the net and Rhonda sort of the the Nats the API Network for all financial documents exchange for all the financial automation workflows that’s part number one.
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Various part number two where at least from my experience I see a huge disconnect been so many great financial services.
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And the small businesses that are supposed to use them.
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If you ask a typical Billy like provider or a Myers like provider a lot of these guys who built an amazing product for example for e-commerce players or small businesses are struggling it was go to market because they still have to acquire customers directly on the market
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by Google ads Facebook ads are similar now the big the picture we foreseeing the future is that
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the consumption of financial services for businesses has to be contextual IE you actually get factoring in the place where you do invoicing you actually do invoice Insurance again in a place where you do invoicing.
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You use be and bl as an option to pay a business bill.
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And now for this to happen we really have to connect the dots and that’s why the second part of my night vision stretches into enabling the open blog for all those specialized providers to actually become a pi first in their goal to.
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When they actually know and can trigger upsell in the right point in time which means that a typical Neo bank or a typical software.
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Would now be able not only to earn from payables or invoicing as software offering
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but actually to earn a margin on all the financial services that customers can consume now we seen the workflow we seen their interface if we make it friction less.
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I’m pretty sure that’s the benefit ratio of this great financial services to Market will increase because.
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You’ve been talking about being available in different markets where is You pronounces More Night.
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Yeah yeah where are you guys available.
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Sure so we are now available in the US UK and major countries of the EU our plan until series a at least is to stay focused on this regions and then as we raise more financing we can scale,
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now the truth is that scaling for us comes at a cost but it’s a lot lower than if we were building for example the B2B side that I directly to the customer so the way we built infrastructure allows us to quickly scale to New Markets
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an ad for example things like eating voice and compliance or payments that are localized to specific markets Etc,
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and the beauty of our business is that at the moment we’re not bound by any licenses we don’t need local licenses or for example I don’t know payment licenses to operate in the location will average providers for that.
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Which means that our go-to-market time for new regions is a lot faster.
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You talked about funding I’ve seen you raced something like a little bit over six million u.s. dollars so far
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in seed and proceed and your investors include valid formula.
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X.u Bank board member and the CEO of ing in Germany.
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Point 72 Ventures from New York City Victor Jacobson the co-founder of kalana.
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Molly founder Adrian mole for my Google payment boss.
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Jonathan Winer and senior director from paper fill valka how did you get your hands on those people and is it.
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Does it prove to some of the investors you are talking to that there’s really something about your idea.
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Absolutely does let me start with the letter I think the VC sentiment many times goes
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I’m around who is already invested and most most of the times they also asked why these people invested so the the good thing about our situation is that for instance Point 72,
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is known as an expert investor they don’t do many deals they’re very focused on fintech and embedded finance and they have very very good reputation.
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Which means that every time we say look b72 let the last rounds it does create an impression.
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Now in terms of how we how we found all these angels so the general the general sense I get and look I’m a first-time Founders I had to learn it all from scratch.
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The general sense I got from more than three years in a game is that great people seek was great people.
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So you really got to make sure you find at least one enter at least one VC that is really good
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because a lot of good people and a lot of good angels and a lot of good other VCS will actually be around them and this is pretty much how we how we started
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for instance Ralph was one of our first angels and he’s been extremely helpful in building the business and he’s up until this point now Point 72 came around but they also brought in The Angel Network some of which you already named that.
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The guys who came in the last rounds so the general the general recommendation I would make for anyone who is was Raising trying to find a really really strong lead investor or at least the lead Angel who will bring the network with them.
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And it’s usually marginally a lot easier to close blast one or two or three cool people Founders exacts if you already have one or two.
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Because they all know each other and they’re all speak to each other so sometimes just saying that for instance we also have Tom Stafford from DST sometimes saying the Tom Stafford is invested tells it all.
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They trust the Judgment of the other person so much that they would actually come along because they think you’re cool and it makes sense.
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Now the one precondition to this is that the market is split into people who kind of trust you with the vision and invest more into the people side.
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And people with a strong hypothesis in the area.
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So in p72 case p72 had a hypothesis around what we do before they found us so they had a view on the market that was very strong.
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And when they found us they were just making sure that we are the right team to build this and I think this is this is a rare occasion because most people will actually
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I’m kind of expect you to bring the idea to them explain why it’s cool they might not have a premade hypothesis or a strong view on the market yet.
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And I also found where you guys are currently spending your money I’ve seen you have at least 40 employees 52 percent growth in the last 6 months.
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And on average the people are there less than half a year so that means you are currently hiring as crazy is that still true.
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I think I think now given the market situation we’re being more cautious and optimizing with cash burn I think we’re about 37 people now actually
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we’ve grown a lot since Eid
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now the secret is gross is very simple that unlike many other companies especially based in the EU or base in the US,
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we’re not burning money in Crazy EU or you asked X’s where and deploying teams especially for Tech and products in locations that are tax-efficient like for instance Georgia.
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Which means that we don’t have to pay a high margin on top of employee salary for taxes and this means we can’t afford more people at the lot lower burn,
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so for instance if we had our HQ or most people in Israel and Silicon Valley in Germany we would probably be able to afford the team that is half the size we have right now.
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I see and we guys officially headquarters.
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We’re officially headquartered in Berlin an hour Hobbs are pretty much Berlin London Amsterdam and beliefs in George.
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ICC and and and again that just just a comment that I think our challenge has largely been assembling a team of senior fintech experts.
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Covid made is harder in a sense that people got picky people aren’t willing to move anymore they just want to work where they are which meant that we also have to adjust.
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Our head of API is ex-head of API vendian to get this guy on board we had to create very comfortable conditions for him to join.
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We have a head of product design from back base we have great people from p ps our payments
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or to be us who is leading our a Reb from Salon is now to get all these people together we had to pretty much accommodates where they’re located and create a work structure that allows us to do so which meant pretty much serveral things
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first it’s grading the Hop structure and investing more into team events together people in one place,
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second one was he playing like many people in the market remote work Solutions like remold.com ordeal and then the third one actually I’m now sitting in a we work but this really helped we actually got we work Alexis.
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Which means that we can use any work in the world.
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And wherever our guys are they can just go into any good work they want which which definitely helps when they’re all in different locations and we can’t possibly pay for a proper office in every one of those locations.
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Be ICC but you you still hiring and in some positions right.
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Correct so coming back to hiring so I think we have still a couple rolls open we’re mainly looking for people in products and we’re accelerating our Tech side as well,
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so always always open to two good people even if we’re not publishing Bacon’s is openly
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most of the times we’re open to I’m get you folks on board and especially as you know we’re ramp up the customer acquisition side maybe get some more financing this whole thing starts accelerating.
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That would be like my last one statement one question one statement would be
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down here in the show notes we link your company website if you’re listening to this on audio only podcast on YouTube or something there’s a link to our blog post and medium and there you find all links
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so basically you can there have a look at the open positions or mail out,
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of course you LinkedIn profile is also linked in the show note and just one more question you
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been talking about Sirius a rating more funding you would be open to talk to new investors and what is like rule of thumb approximately the timeline for series 8
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yeah Joe that’s a great question so I think given the current market Dynamic and the general situation in the sentiment
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would probably be looking at here is a somewhere between meet next year and end of next year fortunately our Runway allows us to pretty much last until then and focus on Traction in building the products
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now we’re always talking to new investors we get on average 57 you VC funds every.
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We always entertain those conversations not only because it’s great it’s a great way to keep in touch with the market but also because VCS are actually one of the best source of clients.
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Chance for us at least so far we’ve been growing fully organically on and on VC interest so whoever wants to talk to us with a very often to to consider and then as the fundraise comes we are definitely taking you.
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I would say basically that’s all the questions I had thank you very much with an awesome interview and.
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Best of luck and hopefully we can talk soon next year like end of next year about your successful fundraising.
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Music.
