Fintech app Expend are seeking investors to help grow their business, and revolutionise the way companies manage expenses.
Using their own pioneering technology, the app allows employees to use a payment card to pay for products and services and instantly receive a notification via the app that the expense has been created. The payment card and management app does the hard work for you – it seamlessly syncs payments to the company’s accounts system, alleviating the need for sending in receipts or filling in forms.
Expend is the brainchild of CEO Johnny Vowles and CTO Rudolph van Graan, who frequently experienced difficulties with expenses and decided there must be a better way for companies to manage the expense process. Surprised to find that there wasn’t a simpler method on the market already, they decided to create one. Their combined experience made the perfect team; Johnny has worked in technology for over 13 years and has experience across a wide range of products for companies such as Tesco, Condé Nast and Vodafone, and Rudolph is an authority behind financial systems around the world, including mobile payment, prepaid and internal systems.
Johnny said of their initial idea: “We identified a big pain point that until now has only been partially solved. There are lots of apps and services for managing expense claims and the reimbursement process, but none of them deal with the problem at source.”
“We believe that if you enable employees to pay for expenses using a company card, but you control the transactions with strict budgets, the whole process will be streamlined and save companies money and time”, he continued.
Expend are currently seeking a £750,000 investment on Crowdcube. The company decided to raise funds through crowdfunding as opposed to more traditional forms of finance after Johnny met Lovespace founder Brett Aker, who recommended the method after successfully funding a campaign on Crowdcube.
“Crowdcube has funded a number of successful FinTech companies on the platform this year including Revolut, Monzo and GoHenry, so it seemed to have a suitable audience”, he continued.
“Equally, engaging with users helps us in multiple ways, including improving our product and prioritising features. Offering this round through the Crowdcube platform is advantageous in more ways than just raising the funds we need to grow; it helps build a community of ambassadors and advocates, which is invaluable. We hope it will help push our company forward in all respects.”
With so many crowdfunding sites on the market, how did CrowdCube become the chosen site?
“Crowdcube have a very good team of analysts and push to keep the quality of opportunity for their investor audience high, which is in everyone’s best interest. Also, their communication has been top quality – they know their product and audience very well and they make some great suggestions.”
However, Johnny recommended doing some serious research before choosing a platform.
“We researched quite thoroughly. I’d recommend researching how others in similar spaces have done and speaking to people who have been through the process. Then weigh it up against other routes, such as Venture Capital funding and Angel investors.”
Expend’s crowdfunding campaign has 39 days left, and is already 31 percent funded. As part of their investment drive, the Expend team will be offering investors the chance to win a share in Expend at various places across London on Wednesday – if they can beat Santa at Ping Pong. For more information and to take part, follow @ExpendTeam on Twitter.