Finance Automation for SMEs: Moss CEO on Scaling, AI & Fintech Lessons

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What if the future of finance isn't in spreadsheets or
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banks, but in software that actually understands your business?
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Today's guest helped build one of Europe's fastest growing
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fintech platforms, empowering thousands of SMEs
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to automate, spend, master real time budgeting
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and finally ditch the chaos of manual finance
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workflows. From corporate cards to E money licenses, from
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P2 till backing debuffing compliance, this founder's story is
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real redefining what finance ops can be. Stay tuned.
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This once a master class for modern CFO,
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SaaS, builders and startup fans alike.
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Welcome to Startup Rad IO,
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your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
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startup scene with news, interviews and
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live events.
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Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe from StartupRate IO bringing you
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another exclusive deep dive into the minds shaping the future of startup
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finance and technology across Europe. Today I'm
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joined by Ante Splitter, the CEO and co founder of
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moss, a Berlin based fintech scale up that's
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become a category leader in Spanish event management and finance
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automation for SMEs German Kaimus. If you're
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a founder, CFO or operator tired of juggling
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receipts, budget approvals and end of
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month chaos like everybody is, you want to
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listen closely. Musk is building the most intelligent finance
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stack for European businesses, unifying everything from
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copper cards and accounts payable to real time insights,
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pre counting automation and embedded payments
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all wrapped in a user first experience. They've
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issued over 300,000 credit cards, raised
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180 million in venture capital from the likes of Vala
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Ventures and Cherry Ventures and now processes more than
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5 billion euro in annualized payment volume,
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all while maintaining Baffin's licensing and enterprise
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grade compliance. Ante brings a unique lens to this space
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with roots in investment banking and venture capital, plus the
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scars and lessons of building a high profile growth
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fintech from ground up. Today we unpack his
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founder story, most products, evolution and the high stakes future
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of AI powered finance for SMBs. Ante, great
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to have you on startup radio. Welcome to the show. Hello Jern.
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Likewise. Very glad to be here. This was quite an
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introduction. I really like that one. And of course
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we'll dig a little bit deeper but let me
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start out with asking. You were once deep in fines like
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investment banking, VC consulting. What was the specific
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pain or moment that make you say ah, forget spreadsheets,
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let's rebuild finance ops from scratch for European small
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and medium businesses at the typical frustration of
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an analyst or investor with Excel doesn't
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count. Everybody experiences that.
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Yeah, it's a honestly things came
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Together while I was building my prior business together
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with Anton, who is also co founder in this company.
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And it was a marketplace startup. We
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grew very quickly to decent size. So within the first two
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years we had more than 25 million revenue. And
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everything was centered around expansion.
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As you can imagine, what was really behind
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was our finance setup. So after
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18 months, 18, 24 months,
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we realized if we don't get a grip on
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finance now, it's going to kill us, like literally.
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Um, and then, so what followed was a significant
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cleanup with temporary resources, you know, our
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internal team trying to find invoices, receipts.
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It was a total chaos and it took, I would
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say at least six months to clean up and another six months to, you know,
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properly close the books and run to the audit.
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And, and I think this was the moment that that kind of sparked
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my hate and passion, if I may say,
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hate for the situation we had, but also the passion for
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there needs to be a better way. And then it took a while longer
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until it really became the vision for Moss.
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So it was not that right after I got
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extremely excited to continue with
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the finance suite. Instead
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I spent a year in venture capital and, and they realized
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it's a ton of other companies that have very similar pains.
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And this is what together has led to
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actually launching the company. Thinking about the vision, thinking
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about the first product. And yeah, now six years later,
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we're still here. Actually, when you talked about
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the love hate relationship with the finance
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department, in my mind there was somebody looking very much like
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Sigmund Freud wearing glasses and ask, could you,
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could you elaborate at your love hate relationship there? But
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let's forget about that. You
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guys must launch with bold ambitions, corporate cards,
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automation and now full spend orchestration. What was
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the first moment with friction make you doubt whether
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European SMEs were ready for this shift?
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Look, honestly, the market is still
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fairly early if you think about the customer adoption
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curve. Yeah, so the famous S curve, we're still pretty far on
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the left. And the main competitor has
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been and still is manual
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workflows, it's literally Excel, it's email
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signature folders, especially with SMBs. So basically
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everything that finance teams has found as a workaround to get
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the job done. And
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after we started, we managed to launch this
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first incredible product. Yeah, and we were super lucky that we actually also
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started with that product. And it was a cards issuing platform, a
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cards management platform, as you said. And then on top, the expense,
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expense tooling. So how can I process the receipts, how can I connect with
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finance and. All of those Things we may add
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most people, 80, 80% here from
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listeners at least on the audio podcast, are from Germany, Austria and
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Switzerland. But we do have a lot of viewers, especially on long
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form YouTube, who are not familiar with the system. So basically you
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first make your card expenses and then you have to
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get also for the tax authorities, a receipt, an
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invoice that matches this expense. And you have to do this depending
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on your size and every month, every quarter, every year.
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And it's a big headache. It's one of the reasons I have fewer hairs.
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Yeah, like one really interesting point. And
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honestly, I only got to learn this a bit later. Yeah, I realize. Yeah, it's
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so obvious. But then somehow it's also so crazy. In business,
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every single transaction, no matter if you spend five bucks on
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a coffee or if you buy a lunch for a client or if you
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invest hundreds of thousands or millions in machinery,
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everything has to be administered. Like every euro, there is no black,
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there is no hole in the, in the cash. You know, like it's, everything
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needs to be done. So having said that, the administration
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is very significant burden. And now to get
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back kind of to your question, the biggest,
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the biggest point of friction, the biggest question for us was
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will we be able to pass beyond
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that cards platform and being a cards and spend
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management company to becoming a much bigger finance suite?
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Because of course, the vision was to go into this bigger finance suite
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and the vision was to be able to tailor to accountants
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and controllers for a much bigger, much bigger domain.
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And, and this was a tough ride. Yeah. So once you have
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the first product, when it works, getting to the next one is
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almost like starting a new company. Yeah. It was a pretty significant
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kind of learning experience and point of friction for us. And also doubt.
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Yeah. On how the European SMEs will react.
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You moved from an investor to
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operator, from finance theory to
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infrastructure execution. How did
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becoming a founder and especially a regulated fintech
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CEO r reshape how you saw yourself and your work?
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Yeah, look, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's very hard. Yeah.
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The job is very hard and it's very demanding. I guess it's true for
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many jobs, but I need to say it's particularly hard and demanding
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based on my experience. And the crazy thing is
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the role changes constantly all the time.
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Yeah. So with every new wave of hires, the,
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with every new executive that joins the team, with every new
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priority for the quarterly OKR cycle, for the strategy for
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the next year, a new market entry, every new kind
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of fire in a Team is always changing
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your priorities as a CEO. It will always impact on
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which decisions you take, what you focus on, et cetera, et cetera.
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So what it really taught me is to become
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multivariate. Yeah. It sounds now very technical, but basically
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be able to switch context very quickly. So now we're
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recording this podcast. After that, it's going to be something
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entirely different. Yeah. I'm not going to have a coffee with a different
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reporter. But also to take decisions
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fast. Yeah. Especially the small ones. But then take a lot more
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time for the tougher decisions to shape culture.
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Like things that never were on my agenda. Right. As a consultant or
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in any other profession, you're basically kind of getting
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shaped by the culture and not you're responsible for shaping that
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culture. So what I want to say is it's a
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ton of setbacks. You have to live with those. You have to develop a
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positive mindset. Yeah. Otherwise you go crazy. And
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you need a fighter attitude. Yeah. It needs to be this
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willingness to win, the willingness to fight,
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because there is a market, there are players, and
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you are the new kid on the block. Yeah. You want to achieve something great,
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but you're nothing. You have maybe some cash from a
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fundraiser, you have a couple of people on your team, and now you want to
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become something big. And this kind of
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is, I think, one of the main ways
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how it shaped me personally. Yeah. And also professionally.
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Yeah. Just trying to think this through. When you
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talked about a new executive coming into the team, it's like when you have
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a new team member, some of your jobs get
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absorbed by this person. You get to do more, but also
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you have to think more, because it's not that you need to write
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email, abc, but you need to tell this person what
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to achieve in a month, in a year, and so on and so forth. So
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you need much more time to think ahead.
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Yeah, 100%. And it changes dynamics because
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maybe first you were also execution responsible. Yeah.
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So maybe first you were the person that worked together with the team on
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getting the job done, and now suddenly it's exactly what you said. Suddenly
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you're the context giver. Yeah. You're direction giver. You kind
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of. You're the control tower. To make sure we stay on course. You work
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together, you help. Yeah. And this is. And this is
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constantly changing as the company
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evolves. Yeah. From. From good to bad. I actually like
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the picture of the control tower. Because you're avoiding the crash. Yeah,
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of course. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. Especially with
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tech companies where one of the key strengths Is to be
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agile. Yeah. So one of the key strengths is to learn fast, to break
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things, to iterate from there. Which also means
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realize where things maybe are not going not on the right path.
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Yeah. And I can give you, if you like, and give you like a very
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clear example. We once
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decided to focus on a customer segment that was a bit outside
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of our ideal customer profile. And, and that
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customer segment faced a little bit lower complexity in
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finance, but actually, you know,
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had some of the pains. And we went
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after that segment and tested how is it
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reacting now? Once we had enough learnings to know what works, what
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doesn't work. It's so mission critical to make sure that this information
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tickles across all of the teams. Because the marketing team is going to
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continue driving, driving traffic, they're going to train your
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driving, investing and same on an outbound sales motion. They need to
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know whether they should continue focusing or not. So
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it's really hard to keep this communication
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best in class to make sure that everybody has the context
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and knows what they have to do in this very quickly changing
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dynamics. And I was wondering,
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because I've seen quite frequently when I was still a
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consultant in large companies that you did this with regular calls,
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weekly or monthly, where people participated and
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they worked through items, but actually they
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tended to get bloated and bloated and you could hear the
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people not paying attention and tapping in the background and all that stuff.
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Have you found a better way to do that? You mean
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with my team or for myself? Both.
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Yeah. So look, I'm really, really, really
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bad at multitasking. Anybody
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will confirm. So the only way is don't
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even try. And this is going to avoid the
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typing, it's going to avoid the confusion and if it happens, people
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will realize immediately and it's not going to be supportive.
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So for me personally, it's 100% presence. If you're
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doing it, just be present, take your notes, be,
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you know, pay a ton of attention, etc, etc. On
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the other side, I guess there is, I don't
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know, it's difficult. Right. Ideally you don't want to have so big calls. Right. You
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don't want to have calls where there are eight to 10 people on it
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and especially not if people have the time to do other
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stuff on the sides. Yeah. Then it sounds almost like the audience is too
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big. So maybe, maybe what we try to do is we try to
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steer kind of ex ante on what is the audience, how
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can we keep it to the ones that are actually working on it, designing it,
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because then There is almost like no chance to escape.
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I'm personally always torn between doing such calls
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with, as you already said, the smallest possible audience
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or working with stuff like to do lists where you just send around to do
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lists. But the problem is then always people lack the
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context there or misinterpret interpret what is there.
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Yeah, yeah, the context setting is really important
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but I guess like the, the magic lies somewhere in the middle.
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Yeah. So async,
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Async, whatever can be done, especially in written form. I think
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sometimes written form can reinforce things and bring things also back
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on the same page later really, really effectively. But then
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when, when there is a, the benefit of a discussion, benefit of
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questions, then probably it's better to, to just jump on the meeting.
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Exactly. From our awesome audience, I would like to know
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what moment made you believe in your startup, share in the comments
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or tag us on social media
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until your darkest day. Moss made headlines with
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layoffs like many other scale ups navigating the Fintech
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winter. Take us to that day. What was
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happening behind the scenes and what helped you push forward?
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Yeah, it was horrible. Honestly it was
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horrible, especially because in total it took 12 to
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18 months. So we're not speaking about one specific day, we're
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speaking about the whole journey that the company has to go through and that we
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also had to go through. The context was
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fairly straightforward. Markets turned,
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we were over optimized on growth
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and that setup was not fit for purpose anymore. The burn
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relative to growth ambitions and especially to
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cash. And the years of Runway was not in line. So
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we had to take action on the other
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side. We also made this promise. Right. So we
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hired people, we kind of gave them an implicit or even
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explicit promise. We're going to do our best to try to
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make this company and you successful. Yeah, we're going to try to
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coach you, to train you, to develop you, but we're also going to want to
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create equity value in this company. And then we had
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investors that gave us a ton of money that we
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also promised we're going to do something great with that money. It's a
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gene is the right roi, you know, you should invest here.
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So honestly, there was also not really a way out. Yeah,
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I think if you're serious about those things and if you're more accomplished, it's kind
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of on the, on the fighter side. When it's uncomfortable,
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you will still have to grind through it and.
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Yeah. And then we just had to get our shit together. Yeah.
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Honestly and literally we had to understand
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where to think about what is the Future, that is a must have.
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What are the strategic priors? What is the team set
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up? What are the regrets? And no regrets.
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Calculate this through, you know, through business case sessions and
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everything that's needed. Discuss with the board, discuss with
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people, team. Think about all of the consequences that it means for
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the employees. You know, it's like, it's pretty significant. Yeah. Because
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the market was in a downturn in general. So I would
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say very heavy lifting and deliberate thinking
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with many backs and forwards to then kind
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of pull through. And now kind
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of the second wave, second phase starts. Yeah. So
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now you kind of completed your first milestone. The
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culture needs to get, needs to be brought back on track. And
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that's very, very, very hard. So here we learned our most painful
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lessons. How, how to get the
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motivation back when effectively there was a
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severe issue. Yeah. When effectively things failed.
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And, and this took a year. Now it's very. Now it's great
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again. We are, we're so happy. Energy level is super high. Team is,
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is motivated, pumped company grows. All of those things are now in
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a good spot. But to get there was a very slow,
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gradual and painful process.
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You already talked in the beginning that you have a co founder. Let's talk a
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little bit about the team demanding dynamics here. Moss scaled
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to 250 plus people, processed over 5 billion euro
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in payments and added key leaders like jan
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Stehler from N26. What was
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a painful lesson you learned about hiring trust or
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involving your leadership team? Yeah. So
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as I said before, the switch from
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individual contributor, even like a co founder, mostly in the beginning
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you just execute to a manager is pretty painful.
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And I think the biggest kind of thing we had
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to accept is it's hard skills and it's not talent or
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soft skills or whatsoever. Yeah, they come into play a little bit. But there is
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a, it's a hard skill to manage other people
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and to do it right. Yeah. And at the starting point,
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what is, I think is the most important element is the hiring
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process itself. It's about the talent bar that is set. It's about the
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expectations being very, very clear. What do we actually need?
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What is the type of profile? What should they have seen in the past?
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What is the minimum experience level? What are also markers
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that make me believe that this candidate is worth speaking
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and is more kind of interesting versus someone else. Right. Because
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we have a. There is a huge market out there. Out there.
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How does best in class look like? You know, like I'm sure
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you had the situation where you interviewed someone and you
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realized I must hire that person. Yeah. It's like it's this
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very rare case and the 1% or whatsoever where you're so
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excited you think this is the perfect fit. So how can I make sure that
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that best in class kind of is visible at scale?
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This I think is really number one. But then what comes next
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is the onboarding journey. And I think here
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we made mistakes pretty significant and I think almost everyone has
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made those mistakes unless they are already much further in their career.
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It's so much context that is centered in your
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heads that only you have. It's. Yeah. Or your co founder or a couple of
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people in the company that needs to make a transition.
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Right. So for the new leader to do a good job,
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they almost need the same context that you have. Yeah. And
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it's how to do this while everything is moving fast, while
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you're super busy, while you need to kind of give them the right information at
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the right time, keep them focused, you know, plug in other people,
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I think is very, very, very, very hard. So I would
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say the, the most painful lesson has
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indeed been mainly around being really good
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in onboarding. It's too expensive if it fails. The first
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few days, the first month, they're decisive in
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what kind of habits people get in. And that's actually
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we want to set it up properly so that people can really
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understand who is there. It doesn't help if you get hired
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and your boss is not there for the first two. You
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just by habit report to somebody else and when the new boss comes back,
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you'd still talk more to the other person. That's for example, something
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I have experience which is not great.
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Let's talk a little bit about emotional toll. You're building
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a highly. In a highly regulated space with
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aggressive growth and investor expectations. How
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has this journey impacted your professional identity,
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mental health or family life, especially as a
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father? Yeah. It's kind of the magic
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question. Right. And how
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I like to boil it down. Then I'm going to give you some specifics. Yeah.
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But how I like to boil it down and challenge myself is
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am I happy in the current setup? So how it's going
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right now, is this giving me happiness and joy
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or is it not? And fortunately I can still answer the
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question with yes. Like I do not want to be. I really want to
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run this company. I really want to work my founders with all of the
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colleagues here. I love the mission, I really enjoy working
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on finance, etc. Etc. Etc. There is a
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big however though. Yeah. And the however is it has a lot
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of cost yeah. So first, first
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in the first two years of my, of my first son and then also second
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son got born roughly 15 months later.
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I did not sufficiently see them. Yeah. So I had to pay the
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price of not being sufficiently there. And only
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after those two years I caught up with some paternity leave.
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Yeah. A month. A month to spend with the kids.
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And this was not a good thing. Yeah. I want to clearly say this was,
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this was a big cost to carry,
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but I also miss my tennis routine, you know, in many cases or
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I deprioritized. So.
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So one part of the learning journey was also
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it's not going to be sustainable. It's not going to work long term. And
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in particular it will not. You will not be able to answer the question
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of are you happy with the setup? With the. Yes. If
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there is no balance. Yeah. So right now,
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in the last two years basically revise some of those
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decisions. Yeah. And how to approach it
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and have found some more balance. It doesn't mean it's a good work life
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balance. It's horrible with two small kids and
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the company to run. But the sacrifices are
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very, you know, are different. Yeah. So maybe
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it's seeing some friends less often. Maybe it's
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skipping a conference or, or, or a
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dinner. Yeah, attack dinner in the evening. Maybe it's something, you know, it's like other
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things you can still control to make sure
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you don't go mad. Yes, I know
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exactly what you mean. That's also something I had to learn. For
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example, what I. I've been adjusting my whole
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lifestyle, my whole life. For example, before 9
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I usually don't do any course because I drop off my. My two
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sons at kindergarten. Mondays I get to
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sleep in because my wife gets also a day on the weekend.
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And so I get up late, I do lunch and then I start working because
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I do have a lot of customers and clients
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in the US and they like to do really late calls.
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And so on Mondays they can book me until like 23:00
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o'clock in the evening on Mondays. But you cannot do this
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by starting at 9am Plus I also
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learned the really hard way that you have to take off the weekends, at least
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for me. No work, no work emails and
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stuff like that. There was a tough lot, tough
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thing to learn. But in the beginning you just work, work, work and then at
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one point your body screams no, stop.
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That's something exactly I learned as well. Guys, we'll be
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back after a short app break talking, for example, about a make or
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break moment. Founder misconceptions and market
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surprises.
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Hey guys, welcome back with Ant, the CEO and co
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founder of Moss, a Berlin based fintech startup
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that raised 180 million years so far from
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investors including Cherry Ventures. We linked it here in the show notes
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our interview with Cherry and Peter Thiel's Vala
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Ventures. Ante, let's talk about a make
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or break moment. Was there a point
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perhaps during the rebrand or during
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regulatory approval where you had to
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decide do we pivot,
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pause or push through no matter what?
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We had many of those moments
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and the earlier you take them kind of the smaller the moment is.
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This is kind of a little bit of the philosophy that we have. It's a
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continuum. So by being on top of
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data, by being on top of kind of the strategy and what actually
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needs to be done, what the vision is, and then following through
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with early signals, we had multiple of those points.
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Yeah. So we, we, we, we asked ourselves, for example,
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shall we expand more internationally? Yeah, like,
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very fundamental question. It's a massive distraction for all of the
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teams. The product needs to be brought up to speed. Ton of other,
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other reasons why it's a distraction,
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but also how it can drive revenue. The second big one was
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do we really go for our own license? Yeah.
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Do we, do we, do we really want to get regulated and
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build the team that is needed to
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run to be compliant or do we rely
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on third parties? There is a banking as a service providers
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currently the question is when do we expand beyond spend
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management? This is a pivotal moment for the company as the product suite
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suddenly becomes much more comprehensive. So
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yeah, there are 100%, there are those moments
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and you will have to take a decision on do we do it or do
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we not do it. And hopefully most of those
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moments are happy moments. Hopefully. It's not a
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moment where you say we have to pause, we have to shut down the
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market, we have to shut down the product, we have to stop the company. This
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will be horrible. Of course. I see.
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Yeah, it's a steady fight. I would say that's also how
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it feels here. Talking a little bit about founder
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misconceptions, what did you
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absolutely misjudge in the early days of Moss?
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Either about the market, your customer,
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or what it takes to truly digitize a
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finance department. I can, I can, I can tell you a little
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secret that maybe it's not really a secret. Don't worry,
482
00:30:37.080 --> 00:30:40.640
it will be just between you and me and like 50,000
483
00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:44.360
listeners on the podcast. Yeah. Then that's
484
00:30:44.360 --> 00:30:46.320
fair. That's okay with this. Secret is fair.
485
00:30:48.080 --> 00:30:51.440
If someone has not. Not misjudged
486
00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:55.120
a ton of things, then they probably
487
00:30:55.680 --> 00:30:57.490
didn't start the business.
488
00:30:59.730 --> 00:31:03.290
The. My main point is it's. There is such
489
00:31:03.290 --> 00:31:06.450
a huge ocean of
490
00:31:06.450 --> 00:31:10.210
unknowns and there are so crazy big
491
00:31:10.210 --> 00:31:13.930
complexities that if you take them, if you look at them
492
00:31:13.930 --> 00:31:17.410
from a starting point, it's a wall that you cannot
493
00:31:17.410 --> 00:31:21.250
climb. There is no way you will ever launch
494
00:31:21.250 --> 00:31:25.060
a company. If you knew all of the obstacles,
495
00:31:25.060 --> 00:31:28.420
you would just not do it and no one would give you money for it.
496
00:31:28.420 --> 00:31:31.780
Yeah. So one
497
00:31:31.780 --> 00:31:35.420
example, we got super passionate about the broader
498
00:31:35.420 --> 00:31:38.980
finance suite. We had to find a minimum
499
00:31:38.980 --> 00:31:42.780
viable product, though. And it's this kind of. It's the one shot
500
00:31:42.780 --> 00:31:46.340
you have. You collect the seed funding, you build the first product.
501
00:31:46.420 --> 00:31:50.060
You want to show some traction. If you pick the wrong piece, you're
502
00:31:50.060 --> 00:31:53.600
dead. Yeah. And it can try to raise new money, but very likely it's not
503
00:31:53.600 --> 00:31:57.360
going to work. So we were
504
00:31:57.360 --> 00:32:00.760
super nervous about it, of course. And then we picked something
505
00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:04.480
that retrospectively was actually way too
506
00:32:04.480 --> 00:32:07.640
complex. Yeah. So we thought we can launch
507
00:32:08.280 --> 00:32:11.480
a next generation credit card like the first of its kind,
508
00:32:12.200 --> 00:32:15.640
but not in a way like banks do it. Yeah. American Express
509
00:32:15.800 --> 00:32:18.840
or any other bank.
510
00:32:20.300 --> 00:32:23.740
It was a platform where customers could issue
511
00:32:23.980 --> 00:32:27.420
physical virtual cards with one mouse click.
512
00:32:27.820 --> 00:32:31.660
Set limits. Do like a ton of stuff that you cannot even do.
513
00:32:31.740 --> 00:32:35.540
Yeah. Like this whole card issuing platform was just
514
00:32:35.540 --> 00:32:39.260
a beast. And then on top, it had the finance suite.
515
00:32:39.420 --> 00:32:42.780
Right. So how do I connect? How do I. How do I now attach receipts
516
00:32:42.780 --> 00:32:46.180
to single transactions? How do I assign accounting
517
00:32:46.180 --> 00:32:49.700
categories? How do I do the coding? How do I connect with Data or with
518
00:32:49.700 --> 00:32:53.320
NetSuite or with Exact. With Xero, like all of those ERP
519
00:32:53.320 --> 00:32:56.840
systems, we entirely
520
00:32:56.840 --> 00:33:00.280
misjudged the complexity of doing this.
521
00:33:01.400 --> 00:33:04.840
Fortunately, the consequence was it was just very
522
00:33:04.920 --> 00:33:08.680
painful and took a bit longer. But.
523
00:33:08.760 --> 00:33:12.600
But it still kind of worked out and we saw many of those things
524
00:33:12.600 --> 00:33:16.240
again. Yeah. I remember the day when we're sitting in the Cherry
525
00:33:16.240 --> 00:33:19.320
office. It was an off site. We always ask them if we can
526
00:33:20.220 --> 00:33:23.620
work in their big boardroom. They have a nice room. It's a bit
527
00:33:23.620 --> 00:33:27.100
detached from the office. So we go there and then we discuss the serious
528
00:33:27.100 --> 00:33:30.940
stuff. And I remember when we discussed the serious decision, when
529
00:33:30.940 --> 00:33:34.580
are we. Are we like, are we going to leave the territory of Amex and
530
00:33:34.580 --> 00:33:38.340
now expand into accounts payables or not? Yeah. Do we want
531
00:33:38.340 --> 00:33:42.060
to build a suite where customers can also process all of their
532
00:33:42.060 --> 00:33:45.340
incoming receipts? Yeah. That's very different from card transactions.
533
00:33:46.090 --> 00:33:49.850
And I also remember that when we took the decision yes.
534
00:33:50.250 --> 00:33:53.530
We brutally underestimated the requirements.
535
00:33:54.970 --> 00:33:58.810
So this is three years ago. We're still working on the product and expanding the
536
00:33:58.810 --> 00:34:02.490
product. I think the short and sweet answer is
537
00:34:02.730 --> 00:34:06.490
if you don't misjudge to a certain degree, you're probably
538
00:34:06.890 --> 00:34:09.930
never start. You should not entirely kind of fail,
539
00:34:10.890 --> 00:34:14.660
but you will definitely misjudge. Yeah.
540
00:34:14.900 --> 00:34:18.500
That's also what I felt when he said that if you really know
541
00:34:18.980 --> 00:34:22.660
how big the problem is, you likely won't
542
00:34:23.620 --> 00:34:24.420
start here.
543
00:34:27.380 --> 00:34:31.060
You've described Moss as finance software
544
00:34:31.060 --> 00:34:34.580
that actually works like your team does. What
545
00:34:34.580 --> 00:34:38.020
trait in yourself once felt like a liability
546
00:34:38.340 --> 00:34:41.860
and and ended up shaping Mosso's user
547
00:34:41.940 --> 00:34:45.060
first design. Yeah.
548
00:34:45.780 --> 00:34:49.540
So there is an interesting insight about
549
00:34:49.540 --> 00:34:53.100
this, about this industry and also
550
00:34:53.100 --> 00:34:56.900
here it actually took a while to get there. Even though it's super simple.
551
00:34:57.620 --> 00:35:01.460
Finance and finance software were almost the first
552
00:35:01.940 --> 00:35:05.740
proper. It was like first technology. Yeah. So amongst the
553
00:35:05.740 --> 00:35:08.740
first. Yeah, let's call it like this. So what I want to say with this,
554
00:35:09.860 --> 00:35:13.140
the ERP systems like SAP
555
00:35:13.620 --> 00:35:17.100
or accounting software, it was the early days of
556
00:35:17.100 --> 00:35:20.740
digitization, of putting codes into a piece of software
557
00:35:20.740 --> 00:35:24.420
to run something in a digital way. Having said
558
00:35:24.420 --> 00:35:28.260
that, they are their biggest, biggest, biggest pain.
559
00:35:28.340 --> 00:35:31.450
If you boil it down to kind of
560
00:35:32.170 --> 00:35:35.770
all of the pains that exist is the user experience.
561
00:35:36.490 --> 00:35:40.330
Yeah. It's not that they don't offer functionality.
562
00:35:40.570 --> 00:35:44.330
They have the broadest suite of functionality. They had 20, 30 years
563
00:35:44.330 --> 00:35:47.770
of time to build all single functionality.
564
00:35:49.370 --> 00:35:53.050
Where it breaks is the user experience. It's not
565
00:35:53.370 --> 00:35:57.090
state of art. It doesn't adhere to the standards, neither in
566
00:35:57.090 --> 00:36:00.740
design nor in the flows. It's
567
00:36:00.740 --> 00:36:04.060
maybe less user centric, it's maybe more infrastructure centric.
568
00:36:04.460 --> 00:36:07.020
Not all data is available kind of.
569
00:36:07.980 --> 00:36:11.580
That's actually their biggest pain. So what we understood
570
00:36:11.820 --> 00:36:15.420
and I'm so happy that our lead product
571
00:36:15.499 --> 00:36:19.220
designer, Moritz, who was the only person in
572
00:36:19.220 --> 00:36:22.860
that team when we started, got this very early, is
573
00:36:23.100 --> 00:36:26.540
we will only be able to create this.
574
00:36:26.950 --> 00:36:29.430
A very distinct and long term
575
00:36:30.150 --> 00:36:33.510
differentiating factor. If we exceed
576
00:36:33.670 --> 00:36:37.430
customer expectations on user experience. We have to
577
00:36:37.430 --> 00:36:40.910
take an entirely different lens. How we look at those
578
00:36:40.910 --> 00:36:44.710
workflows, how we design the platform, how
579
00:36:44.710 --> 00:36:48.150
we incrementally optimize it. Yeah. Over and over again,
580
00:36:48.230 --> 00:36:51.910
small stuff, big stuff. To create this compounding effect
581
00:36:52.660 --> 00:36:56.460
of a superpower. And I think in this
582
00:36:56.460 --> 00:36:59.620
regard we are very proud and we know it's true
583
00:37:00.260 --> 00:37:04.060
and the market confirms it. Moss does have the best user
584
00:37:04.060 --> 00:37:07.660
experience. If an, if an accountant, a controller, business
585
00:37:07.660 --> 00:37:11.180
owner, a tax advisor, if they, if they want to have this
586
00:37:11.180 --> 00:37:15.020
iPhone like experience. Yeah. You find everything by Yourself pretty
587
00:37:15.020 --> 00:37:18.860
much the connections make sense. You can find, you
588
00:37:18.860 --> 00:37:22.340
can, you have the right settings that you need and that's an
589
00:37:22.340 --> 00:37:26.100
objective that we widely have achieved. Yeah, entirely. Will be too
590
00:37:26.100 --> 00:37:29.900
optimistic. Ton of stuff to still do but.
591
00:37:29.980 --> 00:37:33.660
But much better than anyone else in the market. Mm
592
00:37:34.780 --> 00:37:37.660
hmm. I was wondering
593
00:37:38.540 --> 00:37:41.980
if I could ask our audience the same question. What was
594
00:37:42.700 --> 00:37:46.380
one founder trait you've turned from a liability
595
00:37:46.620 --> 00:37:50.470
to superpower? Maybe even with your co founder. Let us know
596
00:37:50.470 --> 00:37:53.910
on AX BlueSky threads or LinkedIn.
597
00:37:55.910 --> 00:37:59.190
With over 5000 SMEs onboarded,
598
00:37:59.430 --> 00:38:03.150
what unexpected insight changed
599
00:38:03.150 --> 00:38:06.950
the way you understood CFO workflows, span
600
00:38:06.950 --> 00:38:09.990
patterns or ERP integration pain points?
601
00:38:10.630 --> 00:38:13.670
Yeah, there is. So first I think it's important to
602
00:38:14.260 --> 00:38:17.260
segment the market a little bit. Yeah. Now it's getting, I don't want to get
603
00:38:17.260 --> 00:38:20.980
too technical but just for the, for the audience also to get a better
604
00:38:20.980 --> 00:38:24.660
understanding. There are small businesses, right? Micro
605
00:38:24.660 --> 00:38:28.500
enterprises could be a solo trader, one person, could be two, could be
606
00:38:28.500 --> 00:38:32.100
five, but basically a very simple and kind of
607
00:38:32.100 --> 00:38:35.820
easy to communicate setup. Then there is the mid segment. It's the
608
00:38:35.820 --> 00:38:39.300
companies to start with, let's say 10 employees and then go up to
609
00:38:39.300 --> 00:38:42.650
500 or thousand. It's kind of the traditional
610
00:38:42.650 --> 00:38:46.450
kaimo as you said, the traditional SMBs to choose like English
611
00:38:46.450 --> 00:38:49.650
words. And then there is mid market enterprise
612
00:38:49.970 --> 00:38:53.810
companies that operate globally, have huge organizations,
613
00:38:53.890 --> 00:38:55.810
many entities, etc. Etc.
614
00:38:57.810 --> 00:39:01.410
In that mid segment. And this is our core and this is where
615
00:39:01.730 --> 00:39:05.570
kind of the, the biggest share of the GDP lies.
616
00:39:05.730 --> 00:39:09.170
Yeah, this is kind of the biggest segment in terms of kind of the GDP
617
00:39:09.600 --> 00:39:13.360
in business. The very surprising
618
00:39:13.360 --> 00:39:16.400
insight was that they are not
619
00:39:16.960 --> 00:39:20.720
zero digitized. It's not like
620
00:39:20.720 --> 00:39:24.560
that. There is no software they use. I
621
00:39:24.560 --> 00:39:28.400
mean they use anyways accounting software and erp. But even
622
00:39:28.400 --> 00:39:32.160
beyond that the point was it was very
623
00:39:32.320 --> 00:39:36.150
unsophisticated single point software. Yeah. So
624
00:39:36.150 --> 00:39:39.110
for example there is a tool that allows you to
625
00:39:39.990 --> 00:39:43.790
build approvals. So you as a company you
626
00:39:43.790 --> 00:39:47.350
want to stay on top and control what people buy. So what you do, you
627
00:39:47.350 --> 00:39:50.630
build an approval flow and now you want to buy something for
628
00:39:50.869 --> 00:39:54.590
10k. Someone needs to sign off and not doing this kind
629
00:39:54.590 --> 00:39:58.150
of an accident or via email or via signatures. The only way is
630
00:39:58.150 --> 00:40:01.990
to bring it into a tool. The challenge though is if
631
00:40:01.990 --> 00:40:05.710
you have one or two or three of those tools, you have
632
00:40:05.710 --> 00:40:09.430
to manage your workforce on the tool. You have to onboard them, they have
633
00:40:09.430 --> 00:40:13.110
to log in, they have to run the process and like who wants to
634
00:40:13.110 --> 00:40:16.750
have three, four different tools to get the job done.
635
00:40:16.910 --> 00:40:20.590
It's like it's a nightmare. So
636
00:40:20.590 --> 00:40:24.390
the kind of. The most interesting insight was there are tools out
637
00:40:24.390 --> 00:40:28.090
there, but they have one big deficit. They don't
638
00:40:28.090 --> 00:40:31.690
connect the dots. They are isolated pain
639
00:40:31.690 --> 00:40:35.170
points. It's isolated solutions. They are
640
00:40:35.250 --> 00:40:38.610
not connected to the broader software landscape.
641
00:40:38.930 --> 00:40:41.330
They are covering only fractions of the pains.
642
00:40:42.690 --> 00:40:46.290
And this is an option for us to tackle. We
643
00:40:46.290 --> 00:40:48.450
decided this is the way to tackle.
644
00:40:51.490 --> 00:40:54.520
You've said Moss aims to be the most
645
00:40:54.600 --> 00:40:58.440
intelligent finance stack for Europe's SMBs.
646
00:40:59.080 --> 00:41:02.920
Paint the picture. What does that look like in five years?
647
00:41:03.320 --> 00:41:06.680
Does it include Treasury AI, embedded
648
00:41:06.680 --> 00:41:10.360
FPA, cross border FX? Yeah. So now,
649
00:41:10.360 --> 00:41:14.080
now I love speaking about the future, but it's also very
650
00:41:14.080 --> 00:41:15.000
hard to predict.
651
00:41:17.640 --> 00:41:21.460
Maybe starting first with the fundamental belief. Yeah. And I think this is
652
00:41:21.460 --> 00:41:24.900
what shapes like a lot of thinking for us at Moss and also for me
653
00:41:24.900 --> 00:41:28.420
personally and my co founders. The first
654
00:41:28.420 --> 00:41:32.180
layer that we tackle is the workflow. It's
655
00:41:32.180 --> 00:41:36.020
creating a digital experience. Now, for
656
00:41:36.020 --> 00:41:39.660
some, this might already be groundbreaking. Yeah. But if we are
657
00:41:39.660 --> 00:41:43.460
honest, it's only the baseline, it's only process efficiency.
658
00:41:43.460 --> 00:41:46.980
Right. You basically can do the job in a more orchestrated way and maybe a
659
00:41:46.980 --> 00:41:50.250
bit faster and a bit more automated. The true power
660
00:41:50.730 --> 00:41:54.570
comes from intelligence. Yeah. So how can I
661
00:41:54.810 --> 00:41:58.410
digest that data and how can I use that data
662
00:41:58.810 --> 00:42:02.490
in a way that makes people work smarter?
663
00:42:02.650 --> 00:42:06.330
Yeah. Not. Not just harder. And by
664
00:42:06.330 --> 00:42:10.170
comparison, here would be. For anyone who is working with CRM
665
00:42:10.170 --> 00:42:14.010
software and in sales, think about Salesforce. Yeah. The,
666
00:42:14.230 --> 00:42:15.910
the company, Salesforce, the product.
667
00:42:17.910 --> 00:42:21.470
It's good if you can create a customer journey and a
668
00:42:21.470 --> 00:42:25.150
buyer list and basically move away from a Google Doc, from Excel to
669
00:42:25.150 --> 00:42:28.990
having it in Salesforce. But the magic is when you get all of
670
00:42:28.990 --> 00:42:32.790
your KPIs, when you understand what the sales cycle is,
671
00:42:32.790 --> 00:42:36.590
what the big deals are, when the follow updates are, when it automates your
672
00:42:36.590 --> 00:42:40.320
ways of working, when it gives you the intelligence to say I'm on
673
00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:44.120
track or I'm not on track. And it's the same thing with
674
00:42:44.120 --> 00:42:47.800
Moz. We are building the foundational layer and
675
00:42:49.400 --> 00:42:53.240
we are moving very fast on that front. But once
676
00:42:53.240 --> 00:42:56.920
we have done this, we'll move and invest much more into the intelligence
677
00:42:56.920 --> 00:43:00.680
layer. Because we want our customers, we want the finance teams,
678
00:43:00.680 --> 00:43:04.360
the business owners, to just spend as little time as possible with
679
00:43:04.360 --> 00:43:07.870
admin and focus most of their time on the
680
00:43:07.870 --> 00:43:11.550
activities that change and drive their company. Yeah. And we
681
00:43:11.550 --> 00:43:15.310
call it business partnering. Yeah. So you work with the team
682
00:43:15.310 --> 00:43:18.870
to grow sales, to reduce costs, to improve margins
683
00:43:19.670 --> 00:43:23.510
or whatsoever. So having said that. Yeah, it's the foundational
684
00:43:23.590 --> 00:43:27.270
layer. This really great workflows end to end across
685
00:43:27.270 --> 00:43:31.070
accounting, across controlling. Very likely not just focused on
686
00:43:31.070 --> 00:43:34.710
spend, what we do now in five years from now, very likely also focus on
687
00:43:34.710 --> 00:43:38.300
the revenue side. But then it's the layer on top,
688
00:43:38.460 --> 00:43:41.740
it's kind of the cash flow forecasting, it's the budgeting,
689
00:43:42.940 --> 00:43:46.580
it's a lot of additional use cases, effective cost
690
00:43:46.580 --> 00:43:50.420
controlling, etc. Etc. That connect all of the dots in
691
00:43:50.420 --> 00:43:53.980
the dashboard and then help businesses improve, help
692
00:43:53.980 --> 00:43:57.780
businesses grow. Sounds pretty
693
00:43:57.780 --> 00:44:01.300
good. Sounds like you'll have some kind of AI
694
00:44:01.300 --> 00:44:05.060
agent best controlled
695
00:44:05.060 --> 00:44:08.820
via audio and you tell him make a casual forecast this
696
00:44:08.820 --> 00:44:12.420
and this and this changed and let me know tomorrow what are the
697
00:44:12.420 --> 00:44:16.180
implications. Yeah, yeah. So I love
698
00:44:16.180 --> 00:44:20.020
that. If I may, if I may say, I we're so excited about the
699
00:44:20.020 --> 00:44:23.700
AI. AI kind of AI segment,
700
00:44:23.780 --> 00:44:27.060
category, trend, whatever want to call it. And
701
00:44:27.460 --> 00:44:31.150
one fun fact up front, AI has been
702
00:44:31.150 --> 00:44:34.950
leveraged in finance since many, many years already. So
703
00:44:34.950 --> 00:44:38.350
OCR, extracting information from documents and
704
00:44:38.350 --> 00:44:42.030
categorizing it is basically a certain
705
00:44:42.030 --> 00:44:45.589
form of AI and it's already in
706
00:44:45.590 --> 00:44:48.710
most software since many, many years. What
707
00:44:48.710 --> 00:44:52.510
fundamentally changed with the introduction of the LLMs and with the
708
00:44:52.510 --> 00:44:56.360
power of the LLMs was to supercharge other parts and
709
00:44:56.360 --> 00:44:59.320
connect more dots and more context and more information.
710
00:45:00.840 --> 00:45:04.600
And yeah, so we for example right now are,
711
00:45:04.760 --> 00:45:08.320
have a very, very powerful AI automation
712
00:45:08.320 --> 00:45:12.040
platform. So let's say a customer submits an invoice.
713
00:45:13.000 --> 00:45:16.640
19 out of 20 actions that have to be
714
00:45:16.640 --> 00:45:20.360
taken, such as, you know, the service date, the
715
00:45:20.360 --> 00:45:24.050
account category, the cost center, like everything finance
716
00:45:24.050 --> 00:45:27.530
needs to do for the transaction. 19 out of 20
717
00:45:28.010 --> 00:45:31.770
the machine can do for you in an automated way and an
718
00:45:31.770 --> 00:45:35.410
accurate way. Yeah, and this is just think about this change. So just think
719
00:45:35.410 --> 00:45:39.249
about you have to do one step out of 20. Yeah, it's a
720
00:45:39.249 --> 00:45:42.770
very, very brutal improvement and it's just
721
00:45:42.770 --> 00:45:46.210
starting. Yeah. So on compliance
722
00:45:46.210 --> 00:45:49.690
checks, there's so many other areas
723
00:45:49.690 --> 00:45:53.310
where, where AI will supercharge the
724
00:45:53.310 --> 00:45:57.150
offering and it's not necessarily going to be kind of just
725
00:45:57.150 --> 00:46:00.470
an AI agent. I think it's almost like it's a
726
00:46:00.470 --> 00:46:04.310
misused terminology. It will be part of the software suite. The
727
00:46:04.310 --> 00:46:07.750
AI will enable a better workflow and better
728
00:46:07.750 --> 00:46:11.190
insights for customers through a specific user experience.
729
00:46:11.510 --> 00:46:15.030
It might be a prompt, it might be kind of just in the background, you
730
00:46:15.030 --> 00:46:18.140
don't even see it. It's just, it's just, it just executes the job
731
00:46:19.020 --> 00:46:22.780
or it might be a different ways, but it's kind of,
732
00:46:23.260 --> 00:46:26.620
it is going to be part of the software. Let's face it
733
00:46:27.660 --> 00:46:31.100
this is well, but I had in mind if
734
00:46:31.100 --> 00:46:34.860
it's from a psychological perspective, easier
735
00:46:35.260 --> 00:46:38.620
for person to interact with an AI
736
00:46:38.620 --> 00:46:42.420
agent that at least has some personality. I'm thinking about
737
00:46:42.420 --> 00:46:45.100
Jarvis here from Ironman or or
738
00:46:45.740 --> 00:46:49.540
Skippy. Sci Fi readers would know
739
00:46:49.540 --> 00:46:53.340
them, but that's a completely different topic. If anybody out there is
740
00:46:53.340 --> 00:46:56.900
researching on that or knowledgeable about it, hit me up Joe,
741
00:46:56.900 --> 00:47:00.340
celebrate IO and we can talk about and maybe even find an
742
00:47:00.340 --> 00:47:04.020
interview for you. Let's reflect a little bit for the
743
00:47:04.020 --> 00:47:07.500
closing in the Future version of ANTO 5 years
744
00:47:07.500 --> 00:47:11.200
older post series D looked back at this moment.
745
00:47:11.200 --> 00:47:15.040
What would he say to you right now?
746
00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:19.840
Yeah, so I'm thinking about what the future me
747
00:47:19.840 --> 00:47:23.600
will say. Yeah, this is a very very good question. Yeah.
748
00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:28.560
So I hope it will say stay hungry,
749
00:47:29.280 --> 00:47:32.400
push, but don't stress out too much.
750
00:47:32.960 --> 00:47:36.240
Everything will be fine. I hope this is what they will say.
751
00:47:36.750 --> 00:47:37.790
Everything will be fine.
752
00:47:41.230 --> 00:47:45.030
Great. Awesome Ante. Thank you
753
00:47:45.030 --> 00:47:48.270
very much. Awesome interview. Hope to have you back soon
754
00:47:48.750 --> 00:47:52.549
and we'll now hop into the founders
755
00:47:52.549 --> 00:47:56.270
world and talk a little bit behind the scenes
756
00:47:56.430 --> 00:47:59.990
for our subscribers. If you'd like to join us, go on
757
00:47:59.990 --> 00:48:03.795
substack or YouTube, become a paying member and you'll have access
758
00:48:03.795 --> 00:48:07.550
to access to the Founders vote. Thanks y and all
759
00:48:07.550 --> 00:48:10.830
the listeners. Really really enjoyed. My pleasure.
760
00:48:15.870 --> 00:48:19.390
That's all folks. Find more news streams,
761
00:48:19.550 --> 00:48:20.790
events and
762
00:48:20.790 --> 00:48:25.070
interviews@www.startuprat.IO
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00:48:25.470 --> 00:48:27.710
Remember, sharing is caring.
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00:48:29.640 --> 00:48:41.010
Sam.