Frontline Ventures invests in UK fintech start-up Countingup

4 Sep 2018

From left: Countingup CTO Mike Moate and CEO Tim Fouracre. Image: Countingup

Countingup enables small businesses to do bookkeeping and also create a current account on their smartphones in less than five minutes.

Dublin venture capital firm Frontline Ventures has taken part in a £2.3m seed round investment in UK fintech Countingup.

The round was led by Forward Partners with participation from Frontline Ventures and JamJar Investments.

‘Combining accounting and banking into one single product simplifies running your business’
– TIM FOURACRE

The investors are backing the company’s vision to be the financial platform for 1m small businesses.

Today, Countingup boasts more than 4,000 customers.

It all adds up for the future of accounting

Countingup’s technology lets companies set up a business current account within five minutes as well as do their bookkeeping, view a profit and loss report, attach receipts to expenses, and more, all within one simple app.

The banking and accounting features have been built in the period since Countingup closed its first funding round last year in October 2017.

The start-up plans to use its investment to ramp up development of its accounting features.

“Combining accounting and banking into one single product simplifies running your business,” said Tim Fouracre, the founder and CEO of Countingup. “It saves time and takes away the pain and hassle of tax and compliance.”

He continued: “We’re now looking ahead to our Series A as we’re growing at an incredible rate. 1,500 small businesses are joining us every month and this recent funding puts us on a path to be at 10,000 customers rapidly. More importantly, there are a number of ways for us to accelerate this.

“There are 5.7m businesses in the UK that need a solution like Countingup, particularly as HMRC plans to require the digitalisation of small business record keeping with its Making Tax Digital initiative.”

It is an interesting move for Dublin-based Frontline Ventures, which last year raised a €60m fund that will invest in B2B software start-ups in Europe that have an eye on making it in the US.

The funding for Frontline Fund II was raised with help from Irish State enterprises, including the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Enterprise Ireland and AIB. It is also backed by the European Investment Fund as well as some other undisclosed pension and family funds.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com