As your team scales, managing employee spending becomes another one of those inevitable things that you now need to add to your roster of growing responsibilities. Simply, handing your corporate card to your employees may not be the most ideal situation from a corporate governance perspective. Remote workforces have only complicated tracking expenditures as well. Teampay is an all-in-one cloud-based spend management platform for companies to manage employee expenses, providing unprecedented visibility to finance teams. The platform simplifies a number of different functionalities including automation, centralization, real-time tracking, permissioning, and virtual card issuance. Teampay is built with integrations with some of the most popular productivity and accounting tools including Slack, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, and Sage allowing its users to connect with their existing technology stacks without any added friction. The company has recently powered with Mastercard to offer a premium corporate card experience called Catalyst that focuses not only on spend management but also offers rewards and benefits to rival other corporate cards.
AlleyWatch caught up with Teampay Founder and CEO Andrew Hoag to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total equity funding raised to $68M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
$47M in Series B led by existing investor Fin VC and supported by new investors Mastercard, Proof Ventures, Trestle, and Espresso Capital.
Tell us about the product or service that Teampay offers.
Teampay helps high-growth companies streamline the purchasing process across virtual cards, physical cards, invoices, and reimbursements. The only purchasing software designed with employees in mind, Teampay’s automated workflows empower employees to quickly buy what they need while staying in policy. The platform issues secure payment methods with built-in controls and reconciles transactions into the customer’s accounting system in real-time. This modern approach to purchasing eliminates unauthorized and out-of-policy spending, provides full visibility for finance, and helps build better relationships between finance and employees.
What inspired the start of Teampay?
I launched Teampay in 2017 to revolutionize corporate spending after seeing how broken legacy platforms were firsthand as an employee and operator. Teampay’s mission is to help modern businesses spend money more efficiently.
How is Teampay different?
Teampay is the only spend management platform designed with employees in mind. Most mid-market companies are coming from a mess of systems and some form of DIY; Teampay often sees customers who cite their transition to needing a system that is more modern, user-friendly, and faster to deploy.
What market does Teampay target and how big is it?
Teampay serves nearly every industry. Most of our customers are cloud-native and have scaling, often high-growth, businesses.
What’s your business model?
We are a SaaS platform, and earn revenue from software as well as embedded financial service offerings.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
In the current economic environment, Teampay’s software-led approach has proven resilient.
Today, companies care more than ever about where every dollar goes, which requires a new perspective. And as we saw in late 2020 – 2021, when the economy rebounds, Teampay benefits disproportionately through accelerated growth.
What was the funding process like?
We were fortunate to have competing offers, and ultimately went with an investor we knew well in FinVC.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Some teams are still stuck with a legacy, reactive mindset anchored on how businesses handled spending when purchasing was centralized. The way companies spend money has changed. With education and innovation, we look forward to bringing best-in-class consumerized tools to the finance department. As an emerging category, all solutions can appear the same, but it is crucial to understand specifically the right solution for the right stage of business.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
All our investors have a strong belief in the opportunity around the Office of the CFO. The Finance function is one of the last departments to benefit from good, consumerized software. The market TAM is enumerated in the $Trillions, and we are the market leader for mid-market and emerging enterprise businesses.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’ve used the capital to bolster the executive team and extend our innovation lead. Our primary focus now is getting the product in the hands of as many customers as possible, while simultaneously capturing more from existing legacy systems.
We’ve used the capital to bolster the executive team and extend our innovation lead. Our primary focus now is getting the product in the hands of as many customers as possible, while simultaneously capturing more from existing legacy systems.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Given the current market conditions, now is the time for companies to scrutinize their capital allocations. It is more important than ever to have upfront control over spending, ensure policy compliance, and maintain agility by having visibility. Coincidentally this is one of the use cases for Teampay and an example of how a technology like ours will help companies better manage and control their spend.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Based on our experiences in 2020, we see the pullback in the macroeconomic environment as a unique time for more customers to benefit from best-in-class control and visibility over operating expenses. We’re excited to continue pushing forward with innovation and partnerships to capitalize on this opportunity.
What’s your favorite restaurant in NYC?
I love my city, but no restaurant has my heart as much as Quintonil in Mexico City.
