Our First Investment in Mexico: How Flexio is Simplifying Invoicing for SMBs
Managing bills as a small business owner in Latin America is a painstaking and time consuming process: on average, business owners spend 40 hours per month on invoice management alone. Today most of these invoices are managed through a combination of emails, spreadsheets, WhatsApp, and PDFs to send, receive, and update invoices and then upload them to the government websites that are mandatory to use in LatAm. It can take weeks to update an incorrect invoice and even longer to receive payment.
Since 2014, Mexico, where Flexio is based, has required all companies’ B2B invoices to be digitally documented, and mandatory B2B e-invoicing has since spread across LatAm to Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile, among others, making an already challenging cashflow and bill management process even more challenging. In Mexico alone, 9 billion invoices were processed in 2020.
This is why we’re so excited about Flexio, which is revolutionizing business-to-business payments in Latin America, starting with invoicing. Flexio automates accounts receivable and accounts payable for SMBs, which represent 70% of the region’s GDP. They simplify pay-ins, payouts, communication, and integrations with ERP and accounting systems in one easy-to-use platform. Flexio’s customers, which represent a wide array of industries, see immediate value–cutting their time spent on AR/AP by as much as 70%.
When I first met Flexio’s Founder and CEO, Nathan Schorr, it was clear that he understood the problem personally given his prior experience as an entrepreneur and small business owner in both Mexico and Uruguay. Recognizing the magnitude of this issue, he teamed up with co-founders Juan Manuel Sobral (CTO) and Andrés Hernández (CPO) and started building Flexio. We believe that their combination of a talented team with deep roots across the region and personal experience with the problem makes Flexio the perfect team to take on this massive opportunity.
That’s why we led their $3M Seed — our first investment in Mexico! We’re excited to invest alongside Soma Capital, Latitud Fund, Omri Mor, Daniel Kahn, and Diego Oppenheimer, among others. The team is growing quickly and we look forward to seeing what they can accomplish in this huge and growing market next!
This post was originally published on the Costanoa Ventures website.
