PLEO

Jeppe Rindom was CFO at Tradeshift. He spent his days drowning in expense reports and receipts.

Niccolo Perra worked there too. In 2015 the two of them left to fix the thing that annoyed them most.

Company spending was a mess of shared corporate cards, lost receipts, and finance teams playing detective. Their idea was a smart company card for every employee.

The card tracks spending in real time. The app grabs the receipt.

Finance sees everything as it happens. They launched in Denmark and the UK first.

Pleo gives every employee a company card. Not the shared one that lives in a drawer.

Each person gets their own. When they buy something, the app captures it instantly and nudges them for the receipt.

Finance teams get one dashboard instead of a shoebox of paper. Pleo makes money two ways.

Companies pay a monthly subscription per user. Pleo also earns interchange fees every time a card gets swiped.

In plain terms, they charge for the software and take a cut of the spending.

The core product is the Pleo card and the app that comes with it. Employees get physical and virtual cards.

Every purchase pushes a notification asking for the receipt. Pleo also added invoice and bill payments, so companies can pay suppliers from the same place.

There is a reimbursements feature for out-of-pocket costs. Managers can set spending limits per person or per team.

The whole point is one tool for everything a company spends.

Pleo went after small and mid-sized European companies first. Big US players like Brex and Ramp were fighting over Silicon Valley.

Pleo owned the boring middle market in Denmark, the UK, Germany, and Spain. Europe is a mess of different tax rules and currencies.

That complexity scared off American rivals. Pleo turned it into a moat.

A moat is just a barrier that keeps competitors out. By 2021 it had crossed 17,000 customers and raised at a $1.7 billion valuation in July, then $4.7 billion five months later.

The 2021 valuation was a sugar high. Pleo raised at $4.7 billion when money was free and fintech was hot.

Then rates went up and the mood flipped. In 2023 Pleo cut around 15% of its staff.

The corporate card space also got crowded fast. Brex, Ramp, Spendesk, and a dozen others all want the same customers.

Pleo has to prove it can grow into that $4.7 billion price tag. Right now the valuation is a promise, not a fact.

Pleo pulled in serious backers. The big 2021 Series C was co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and Thrive Capital.

Thrive is Josh Kushner's firm, the one that also backed Stripe and Instagram. Kinnevik and Creandum were early believers from the Nordic scene.

Seedcamp got in early too. The December 2021 extension that pushed the valuation to $4.7 billion brought in Coatue, one of the biggest crossover funds around.

In total Pleo has raised roughly $430 million.