The 3 major reasons why we invested in Futrli’s Series A
We are happy to announce our investment in Futrli, a Brighton, UK, based B2B SaaS company that is changing the way how entrepreneurs and managers make decisions. We co-led the GBP 4M Series A investment alongside our friends at London based Notion and firstminute capital. As it is part of our wider strategy to syndicate investments across Europe we are very excited to team up with these exceptional VCs.
“Bootstrapped with no external funding to date, Futrli already supports over 40,000 businesses and 1,100 accountants in 130 countries and are on a quest to move the needle on the small business economy, which spans over 130 million small businesses globally. The four-year-old business led by CEO and Founder Hannah Dawson uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to produce actionable insights that drastically improve decision making and success rates in small businesses.” — from the official press release.
Below you will find our top 3 reasons why we decided to invest.
1.) The amazing executive team and their incredible energy
CEO Hannah Dawson, COO Helen Cockle, and their gang have this special something that excites all of us. The incredible dedication, hard work, and focus on metrics create this special energy surrounding the team. When I first entered Futrli’s office in Brighton and met the 46 team members I could literally feel that they are up to something. Everybody sitting at their desks reflected this enthusiastic mindset and eagerness to win that investors want to see. We simply fell in love with the Yin energy that Hannah and her co-executives lead their team with.
Hannah is a serial entrepreneur who has first operated a restaurant for several years. Some years after this experience she started her first software company Opsimize, a cloud-based back office management tool for the hospitality industry. The company got acquired by EPOSability in May 2014. After her exit, Futrli was founded out of a personal pain of Hannah to create meaningful business reports and eventually help making better business decisions.
2.) The powerful product that solves a real problem and creates a new category
Futrli is an SMB focused software subscription company that creates detailed cash flow forecasts in a drag and drop format. The idea is to consolidate (or rely less on) myriad legacy and fragmented financial software tools, applications and, of course, Excel spreadsheets, and in turn reduce the tendency for error, including automatically flagging anomalies. It’s also designed to make generating reports, such as those that are required quarterly or yearly, a lot less painful and updatable in real time. Where the software truly stands out is that it is forward-looking instead of backward-looking.
I thought it would be easiest to understand what the company does by reading through some of the client references. I have picked two for your convenience that are software based internet companies (that is how the online community will most likely understand the solution best):
Founder 1:
“Lee: When we had our first board meeting, our incumbent board members asked for board reports to be printed and sent to them and I immediately said no. They had that classic look of surprise, but then I gave them the link to the FUTRLI platform and explained that you don’t need to request accounts from me when things change, all you really need to do is click on the link again and you’ll see it in real time.”
Founder 2:
“1.My absolute favourite thing is the forecasting feature. Having an accurate view of our cash flow as we accelerate our growth of the business is absolutely critical, it’s a startup imperative.
2.Naturally, I like to make sure that the business’ cash position is healthy; but not too healthy because we’re utilising that capital to accelerate growth. By using FUTRLI’s forecasting feature, we can quickly play out multiple scenarios to see how cash flow could be impacted if we make that new hire or invest ‘big’ in that conference. Using the forecasting feature, we can make the right, informed decision with confidence.
3.I also love the fact that I can share management information with the board easily. They have logins and can review the same data that we have access to.”
By reading through many other feedback stories I was fascinated by the diverse user base. It has shown me that Futrli is going for a huge market affecting a broad base of global SMBs. I think it is relevant to mention that the highly fragmented user base is a good indicator for a very unlocal and unspecific challenge and that Futrli does not simply offer a light version of existing products (https://www.futrli.com/category/customer-stories/).
3.) The gigantic opportunity
Globally, >95% of all companies are SMBs.
We love these businesses because they are easier to acquire than enterprises (performance marketing still works here) and stick around for a longer time than a consumer (and even show potential to up- and cross-sell). And in Futrli’s case, all of these companies require some sort of cash flow management. Excel is just such a bad product for most people…
For the moment, Futrli will focus on US, Europe, and Oceania, adding almost 55 million potential clients to the map. On current pricing schemes ($50 per month per user) the total addressable market equals $33 billion. This does not account for markets outside of the current target geographies, neither does it account for any future up-selling or cross-selling potential of the product to boost ARPA.
Of course, we have had many other reasons to invest in Futrli. But in this post is meant to give you some insights into the most pressing points that excited us during our DD.
Christian & the e.ventures team
