ÄûÃʵ¼°¹, the procurement platform for SaaS-buying for SMBs raises $7M from HV Capital and the founders of FlixMobility, Personio and SumUp to become Europe’s go-to SaaS provider.
- While the $505bn Enterprise Software market is growing like never before, tech, finance and procurement leaders waste hours on choosing and buying SaaS solutions
- Launched in early 2021, ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ has already grown to a high 6-digit recurring revenue within only a couple of months
- ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ already serves major unicorn clients (such as Gorillas and sennder) and saved its customers already more than $5M and over 12,000 hours of work
Cologne – August 30, 2021. ÄûÃʵ¼°¹, Europe’s leading virtual SaaS procurement service, announced today a $7 million round of funding from HV Capital and the unicorn founders of FlixMobility, Personio and SumUp. This new financing follows a $1.3 million pre-seed round in late 2020
With an ever increasing number of highly specialized software-as-a-service (SaaS) products and more decentralized organisations, efficient vendor management becomes a top priority for modern companies, which spend a significant portion of their budgets on SaaS tools. In many cases, these companies do not know whether or not they are making the right choices which often leads to long decision times and significant overspending on SaaS. Also, they often maintain SaaS subscriptions that are redundant or underused. ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ provides an automated procurement service that helps companies to buy the right SaaS solutions faster, negotiate competitive contracts and keep track of all subscriptions in decentralized organisations.
ÄûÃʵ¼°¹â€™s value proposition has quickly resonated in the European market, where the company is serving unicorn startups like Gorillas and sennder. ÄûÃʵ¼°¹â€™s clients enjoy an average 6.5X return on their investment in SaaS procurement services, plus the elimination of thousands of working hours wasted on activities related to SaaS procurement. With guaranteed savings and a platform that matches especially well with the needs of European tech companies, ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ claims to be the first choice for any growing company with more than 100 employees.
“Cloud software adoption is massively accelerating and almost every company nowadays uses SaaS products but does not buy and manage them efficiently. ÄûÃʵ¼°¹â€™s astonishing growth underlines the broad customer value the team has already created †said Jasper Masemann, a partner at HV Capital. “It is early days but ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ could create an SAP Ariba with a payment solution for SMB – a massive market just in Europe.â€
The ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ team is also building and maintaining positive relationships with SaaS providers like Google and Miro. These relationships help ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ better serve its customers and the vendors by streamlining processes and bringing an experienced, trusted voice into negotiations. ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ even serves as a distribution partner of many SaaS products in the European market, which provides its customers with another option for buying discounted licenses.
The model of connecting companies with SaaS vendors in a way that streamlines negotiation processes has quickly delivered financial results for the company. ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ is already cash-flow positive only a couple of months after its initial launch.
“The more we talk to prospective customers, the more we realize just how widespread the need for SaaS procurement has become in the 21st century,†said Sven Lackinger, one of ÄûÃʵ¼°¹â€™s co-founders. “We’ve experienced rapid growth because we can point to significant savings each and every one of our clients has realized through our services.â€
ÄûÃʵ¼°¹â€™s team of around 30 employees is currently working with a remote-first approach. The company’s leadership team will use this new round of funding to focus on sales, marketing and product development to bring its time- and money-saving services to more companies in Europe and beyond.
About ÄûÃʵ¼°¹
ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ (before Sastrix) was founded in Summer 2020 by the serial entrepreneurs Maximilian Messing and Sven Lackinger in Cologne, Germany. ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ supports CTOs and CFOs as well as their teams in buying and renewing SaaS subscriptions. They can focus on what matters while ÄûÃʵ¼°¹ saves them time and money by applying best practices in SaaS buying and using a dedicated procurement team that benefits from a large database of benchmarks. More information can be found on .
About HV Capital
Since 2000 HV Capital, formerly HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, has invested in Internet and technology companies through various generations of funds and is one of the most successful and financially strongest early-stage and growth investors in Europe. HV Capital has already invested in around 200 companies, including Zalando, Delivery Hero, FlixMobility, Depop and SumUp. The total of all HV Funds amounts to €1.7 billion. The company supports startups with capital between €500,000 and €50 million. This makes HV Capital one of the few venture capitalists in Europe that can finance startups through all growth phases.
