Earlier this month in Germany, a Russian-founded startup launched a “4-in-1 finance platform” for SMBs — a solution that automates admin and accounting processes.
The startup, dubbed Monite, also announced the completion of a €1.1 million pre-seed funding round, which involved no less than 10 investors. Among them are Berlin-based signals Venture Capital, Zurich-based Tomahawk VC, Turkish fund InVentures and Runa Capital, an international VC firm with Russian roots. Several individual investors are also there, including Dutch Bas Godska — a serial investor in both Eastern and Western Europe, founder of Acrobator Ventures, — former Deutsche Bank board member Ralph Müller, Postbank Board Member Lars Stoy, and others.
Monite claims to “replace 10+ tools saving you 50% of time & costs.” Its functionality include multi banking, invoicing, incoming invoicing automation, expense management and accounting automation.”
“I’ve personally experienced the pain points that Monite solves,” said Cédric Waldburger, Founder of Tomahawk Ventures. “I know how time-consuming the systems and tools are that SMEs use for all their financial and accounting. Monite has taken on a big task which they’ll tackle via the product’s own growing functionality and through its ability to integrate with third-party software. The technology in combination with the experienced founding team has convinced us.”
The Monite team includes Ivan Maryasin, CEO and co-founder; Andrey Korchak, CTO and co-founder; Almir Muminovich, COO; Alex Polovnikov, Frontend Lead; and Alina Matlakhova, QA Lead.
A number of startup entrepreneurs from Russia and Eastern Europe tend to move to Western Europe or the USA as they or their projects get mature. Notable examples of Western European startups founded over the last years by people from Russia include Bioniq, Endel, Humaniq, iFarm, Novakid, Revolut and many others.
1. When and why did you leave Russia?
I originally left Russia seven years ago and spent a few years working in Silicon Valley for a range of different B2B SaaS companies, including People.ai, BrightEdge, and others. In 2017 I landed in Germany and shortly after that joined Penta, one of the key German B2B neobanks, as a Head of Growth.
I realized there that small businesses struggle a lot more with admin and accounting than they do with banking. I met Andrey Korchak, and together we started the Monite project.
2. Why did you land in Germany? Are you incubated/accelerated there?
The German market provides us with great opportunities for entry and rapid development — it already has more than two million SMEs, but up to date there are no alternative solutions to facilitate the administrative and finical management, meaning entrepreneurs constantly face a problem we strive to solve.
3. What are your plans for other countries in the EU or beyond?
We plan to expand across Europe with the next funding round.
4. Do you/Monite keep any roots in Russia?
Several key team members previously worked with Eastern European projects — for example, Andrey Korchak, Monite CTO, led the tech team at Tochka Bank, the biggest SME neobank in Eastern Europe. As of now, our company and the entire team is based in Germany, we don’t have outsourced R&D offices.
