Flow Your Money team | Image credit: Flow Your Money
Amsterdam-based Flow Your Money, a fintech startup that focuses on money automation solutions, announced on Thursday that it has raised €3.5M in its Seed round of funding led by Eleven Ventures.
The round also saw participation from RockSalt, the venture arm of SaltPay; Silverflow co-founder Robert Kraal; Hristo Borisov, founder and CEO of Payhawk; Marnix van der Ploeg of Booking.com; and Travel Health Group’s owner Arnoud Aalbersberg.
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About Eleven Ventures
Bulgaria-based Eleven Ventures claims to be one of the leading early-stage VCs in Southeast Europe, investing in startups since 2012. The firm has invested in over 150 startups since its inception. Eleven supports tech companies in five priority verticals – fintech, healthcare, future of work, future of food, and ecomtech.
Vassil Terziev, Managing Partner at Eleven Ventures, says, “All the more people are choosing freelancing as a long-term career path. However, this market segment lacks suitable finance products and services, which often leaves gig-workers and freelancers out of the financial mainstream. Flow is on its way to revolutionising the orchestration of both personal and business finance management, leveraging technology and AI. We are happy to further support their journey.”
Automate saving, budgeting and investing
Founded in 2019 by Daan van Klinken, Niels Mulder and Danny Wilson, Flow Your Money aims to help freelancers and individuals to better manage their money flows. The company launched an app in 2020 that automatically distributes incoming money flows across budgets, savings accounts and investments based on ‘triggers’ that users set themselves.
In a statement, the company says, “With the help of ‘smart rules’, it is possible to set up a money system that automatically budgets and prioritises income. This way, money flows directly into ‘jars’ or different accounts, so that users have an overview of all their income and expenditure and it is always clear how much money is still available to spend.”
The company has had a PSD2 Open Banking licence since 2020, allowing it to view and initiate financial transactions. The fintech company was one of the first Open Banking companies to receive both an AIS and PIS PSD2 licence from De Nederlandsche Bank, making it possible to connect all European banks. Besides newer Dutch banks, such as bunq and Knab, major players like ING, Rabobank and ABN AMRO are already connected to Flow.
The company reports that other European banks are also following quickly, and the ultimate aim is to make the app available to all relevant European banks. In addition to banks, Flow is also connecting various important money destinations, such as investing, crypto and charities, to its platform. This will create an ecosystem for money management in which users of the app can be completely unburdened, says Flow.
Capital utilisation
Flow Your Money says that the funds will help the company scale up its platform, which makes it possible to automatically distribute incoming and outgoing money flows, taking the step towards ‘self-driving money’: smart, fully autonomous money management.
Besides, Flow will also now expedite European expansion plans as it aims to become the largest player in this fast-growth market.
Co-founder Daan van Klinken says, “We are very happy with the awarded capital and the expertise of this group of investors. The existing investors have also shown that they continue to believe in Flow Your Money. Besides capital to scale up our platform and develop artificial intelligence for that purpose, this investment round brings a wealth of relevant knowledge. This will help us realise our ambitions to become the leading self-driving money player, not only in the Netherlands but ultimately across Europe.”
Dragon’s Den
The company has already been on the Dutch version of Dragon’s Den, a world-famous reality pitch shows that gives entrepreneurs an opportunity to pitch their ideas to top names in the business world.
After the questions round, Michel Perridon and Pieter Schoen showed their interest in the startup. According to Flow, the final bid was made for €1.5M for 20 per cent of the company. However, founders Daan van Klinken and Niels Mulder thought that the asked equity by the investors was a bit on the higher side and hence the deal did not go through.
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