Seapoint, the financial home for European startups, has raised $3M in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Frontline Ventures, with participation from Tapestry VC and the ex-COOs of Stripe, Revolut, Tide and Tines. After 9 months of building, the team has launched a private beta that is now being used by dozens of VC-backed startups.
From today, startups across the UK and Europe can sign up for the beta program at seapoint.co.
Mid-market European companies (10-250 employees), which includes startups and scale-ups, comprise a third of the European economy and are the engine of future growth. However, these companies are poorly served by today’s financial institutions. They are too big for neobanks, who cater to consumers and the smallest businesses, but not big enough for traditional corporate banking – they are stuck in the middle with no clear financial home.
Seapoint interviewed 50+ founders of VC backed startups and found their financial stack is fragmented, manual and costly. Depending on their stage, startups use 4-6 different financial products, moving money between them and relying on expensive accountants to stitch things together. Over 90% still run financial processes manually, despite having multiple bank accounts. And over half earn no interest on their cash deposits.
Seapoint is building the financial home that growing companies need. Instead of juggling a half dozen different financial tools, founders get everything in one place: business accounts, corporate cards, payments, and treasury management designed for fast-growing companies. AI then handles the tedious financial work that eats up founders’ time. It automatically processes invoices from your email, manages payroll, categorizes expenses, and creates financial reports. What used to take hours of manual work now happens instantly in the background.
The result is simple: founders can tame the chaos of their finance functions, get clarity for the first time and turn cost savings and incremental interest into extra months of runway.
One early user is Kota, the fast growing employee benefits platform who recently raised a $14.5m Series A.
Luke Mackey, co-founder and CEO says: “I’m excited. I finally have a bird’s-eye view of my finances, and am better able to make decisions for the business. Seapoint is an immediate win when it comes to managing cards & expenses, paying invoices and running payroll – we used to have multiple vendors for this, now it’s all in one place.”
Seapoint Founder and CEO Sean Mullaney was previously European CIO at Stripe, CTO at AI unicorn Algolia, and has advised the ECB and the Bank of England. He’s joined by former colleagues from Stripe’s European payments team and executives from Tide. Many on the team, including Mullaney, are ex-founders who’ve experienced the problem first-hand.
Mullaney says: “AI can transform finances for scaling companies. Within minutes, Seapoint connects to a company’s bank accounts, its accounting software and email. At which point we can give them a real-time view of their business, automate bookkeeping, pay invoices and manage payroll. Seapoint is broader and more powerful than traditional banking. And it puts founders back in control of their finances.”
Will Prendergast, Partner at Frontline, says: “Neobanks have built great products for consumers, but mid-market companies have more complex needs that aren’t yet properly served. With a deeply experienced fintech team, Seapoint is leveraging recent advances in AI to transform the finance stack and solve this tedious issue for all scaling companies.”
Seapoint is currently operating in private beta – startups can join its waitlist at seapoint.co.
Read the orginal article: https://ffnews.com/newsarticle/funding/stripe-alumni-launch-challenge-to-business-banks-with-ai-powered-financial-home-for-startups/
