It’s estimated that startups and small businesses waste in excess of $130B each year as a result of poor visibility into vendor spending. By leveraging AI into their accounting stack, companies can take advantage of automation and unprecedented financial intelligence. Glean AI is an automated accounts payable solution that drives savings by providing non-intuitive spend insights. With the platform, companies can focus on cost optimization, benchmarking, and spend intelligence rather than spending time on low-value activities like manual invoice processing. With Glean companies can make ACH, check, and international payments, sync bills and payments with leading accounting software, serving the needs of both accounting and FP&A teams.
AlleyWatch caught up with Glean AI CEO and Founder Howard Katzenberg to learn more about the inspiration for the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
$10.8M in Seed and Pre-Seed from Contour Venture Partners, American Express Ventures, Infinity Ventures (from the team that led Paypal Ventures), B Capital Group, Portage Ventures, and several other prominent venture funds and fintech angels.
Tell us about the product or service that Glean offers.
Glean AI is the only AP solution that combines smart automation with spend intelligence to empower Finance teams to drive material savings. In addition to powerful automation that allows companies to pay invoices faster and cut out the manual work, Glean AI is the only platform that analyzes line-item data for game-changing insights. By breaking invoices down by what was purchased and how much it costs (rather than just the total amount spent), we can understand trends, purchasing behavior, and the opportunity for savings. With this information, we use algorithms to proactively identify areas where money is being misspent (such as excess licenses or incorrect pricing), as well as opportunities to negotiate better deals with vendors based on our aggregated benchmarking data.
What inspired the start of Glean?
Prior to Glean AI, I served as CFO at Better.com and On Deck, two fintech pioneers. In both roles, I had great visibility into what drove revenue and could double-click into the details, but when it came to our company spend, things became much murkier. As a result, my finance teams would conduct manual audits of our expenses each year, digging into all the rich data contained in invoices. This process inevitably led to finding 10-15% annual savings each time – but not without several weeks of my team’s time, endless complex & confusing spreadsheets, and lots of back and forth with budget owners along the way. Glean aims to automate and improve what my team accomplished, so Finance teams can focus on strategic work that moves the business forward.
How is Glean AI different?
On our website, you’ll see lots of messaging about “Intelligent AP.” We think there is such a clear need and opportunity to bring analytics to the AP automation category. Glean AI’s differentiation primarily comes from our unique understanding of what’s happening at a line-item level on a bill. Using Glean AI, for example, Finance teams and approvers may be alerted that spend with a specific vendor increased 23% month-over-month. We don’t stop there though; we’ll tell users ‘why’ the bill increased (e.g., # licenses grew 12%, 2 new services were purchased, while pricing remained flat.).
So, our customers not only get unmatched accounts payable automation functionality but also timely spend insights (called ‘gleans’) that help uncover where they may be overspending, analysis that is extremely unique in scope as well as powerful.
What market does Glean AI target and how big is it?
Accounts payable automation is a $40B market. Even the largest companies in the space have captured a small single-digit percentage of the total opportunity, and have done so using simplistic, out-of-date solutions
What’s your business model?
Glean AI is a software business, and leverages a subscription-based model with different tiers depending on the number of invoices processed by Glean AI.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
We received our initial pre-seed funding in February 2020. As a result of COVID, we were forced to grow up as a fully virtual company. Today, we have approximately 30 employees spread over 8 countries (and even more time zones!). Our post-COVID plan is to keep a small office in New York City for our employees located there, but continue to be a virtual-first company.
We received our initial pre-seed funding in February 2020. As a result of COVID, we were forced to grow up as a fully virtual company. Today, we have approximately 30 employees spread over 8 countries (and even more time zones!). Our post-COVID plan is to keep a small office in New York City for our employees located there, but continue to be a virtual-first company.
What was the funding process like?
We had an atypical fundraising process. Our insiders wanted to lead the round so we never really embarked on a formal process. That said, as word got out that we were raising, we received lots of inbound inquiries that resulted in new investors like Infinity, B Capital, and Portage coming onboard.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Probably skepticism about going up against the 800-pound gorilla in AP Automation. Everyone we met recognized the differentiation we provided and the value of our product. That said, we had a few investors pass due to competitive concerns.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
I think two things primarily. First, was the realization that you can unlock tremendous value for companies by analyzing an untapped data asset – the line-item data on invoices. We demonstrated real traction in doing this and generating significant ROI for our customers.
Second, we’ve recruited an amazing team at Glean and have hired experts in data science, engineering, product, and GTM. Our investors have a lot of confidence that we’ll execute well and continue disrupting the AP automation space.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Over the next six months, we’re going to become the centralized vendor spend platform that companies can singularly rely on for efficient business spend. While we’ve already made huge strides, we know there’s still more work to be done and we’re up for the challenge.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh
injection of capital in the bank?
My biggest tip would be to use Glean! If you’re trying to run a lean business, every dollar counts. We’ll help you uncover savings that can go toward other parts of the business so that you can accomplish more with less.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
In the next six months, we’re going to be focused on reaching more customers and growing our customer base, expanding our product, especially around what’s possible through data and analytics, and we’re going to launch new partnerships with accounting firms to bring more efficiency in supporting and be more strategic with their clients.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC?
Our NYC office is located at RiseNY on 23rd Street. As such, we’ve spent a lot of time eating outdoors at Eataly. I highly recommend their pizzas and pastas!
