In late 2017 I had the fortune of interviewing Divvy founder Blake Murray, which I published on Daily Fintech – have a read here.
At the time, the Utah based employee expenses management fintech had recently raised US$7M. The business has gone from strength to strength since, with news out this week that they had raised a further $200M after banking close to $45M in funding in 2018 alone.
Why is employee expense management so hot, you might ask?
Well, I have a few thoughts about that.
Firstly, it’s one of those boring processes that gets no love internally in a business, and no compelling solution currently exists. This means you’re not displacing something existing, but providing a cure for an awful job that literally no one loves. And if you can automate it out of everyone’s hands, no one is going to be complaining or blocking that sale/implementation.
It also provides line managers, who are often in charge of managing or overseeing employee expense budgets insight and control into how they manage team spend. It’s scary handing over a credit card to an employee, no matter how much you trust them, and Big Brother Divvy takes that fear away.
And subscriptions? What. A. Nightmare. Keeping track of business subscriptions, managing trial periods and that leaky financial tap the SaaS economy creates (but conveniently neglects to mention in their sales pitch) is a business admin hell hole. Divvy allows you to create virtual cards for each of your subscription services, and provides a way to manage and see all of them from your dashboard. I actually want that for my personal life…but that’s another story.
Solving problems that don’t already have any solutions is where the gold is to be found for sure. And Divvy seems to have struck more than $200M of it.
Daily Fintech Advisers provides strategic consulting to organizations with business and investment interests in Fintech. Jessica Ellerm is a thought leader specializing in Small Business and the Gig Economy and is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zuper, a new superannuation startup in Australia.
I have no positions or commercial relationships with the companies or people mentioned. I am not receiving compensation for this post. I was a previous employee at Tyro.
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