Aurelia, the startup dubbed “IFTTT for financial admin” because it helps businesses automate tasks across third-party financial apps and services on a single platform – has raised USD3 million in seed funding from Blossom Capital and angel investors including Guillaume Pousaz through his Zinal Growth investment vehicle and Erez Mathan (ex-COO and CRO at GoCardless).
Aurelia, the startup dubbed “IFTTT for financial admin” because it helps businesses automate tasks across third-party financial apps and services on a single platform – has raised USD3 million in seed funding from Blossom Capital and angel investors including Guillaume Pousaz through his Zinal Growth investment vehicle and Erez Mathan (ex-COO and CRO at GoCardless).
Founded in April by a team of engineers and developers formerly of Wise and JP Morgan, Aurelia has been designed to help relieve the financial admin burden faced by small businesses across Europe. Instead of spending more than 15 hours a week – the equivalent to losing an entire month every year just managing admin – business owners on Aurelia get greater insight and clarity over their entire financial landscape from one place.
The accounting software market is booming. Players such as Oracle, Sage, Xero and SAP have all reported huge customer numbers in recent months and the growth has been so significant, the global market size is expected to grow in value to USD20 billion in 2026, up from just USD1 billion in 2018. Yet the influx of individual and specialised services looking to take advantage of this boom has created an admin headache for small business owners.
From connecting their business bank accounts to integrating payroll tools, incorporating transaction data from e-commerce platforms like Shopify, managing invoices from QuickBooks, and more, business owners can, at a glance, control the flow of money more clearly on Aurelia. They can more easily keep on top of unpaid invoices or identify supply issues, format and pull together key information for tax filings, and manage salaries all from one place. This allows them to get paid on time, manage cash flow and focus on their customers, clients and business development.
Once these services are integrated, teams can also collaborate on workflows more securely and efficiently, without the need to juggle different apps or share various login details, or pay premium fees that typically accompany multi-user access on each of the individual services. And they can create bespoke automations to make it easy to manage tasks such as calculating tax, generating reports and following up on unpaid invoices at the touch of a button – without having to know a single line of code. Aurelia offers the level of automation and interoperability made famous by the likes of IFTTT, yet with a sharp focus on the specific needs and pain points that come with managing financial admin.
Sebastian Trif, co-founder of Aurelia, says: “We see lots of fintech apps and banks that try to capture everything a business has but many small businesses aren’t keen on moving their company’s financial life into a new product. Instead, business owners want a platform that can simplify what it means to run a business, so it should be as simple as checking your email. With Aurelia, we allow people to bring together the software and tools they are using already, give them an overview of what’s happening across these different platforms, and start automating on top of it. We’re excited for people across Europe to get to experience Aurelia and start automating repetitive financial tasks, so they can reclaim their time and focus on what they need to do to grow their business.”
Aurelia was founded by Sebastian Trif, one of the first engineers at Transferwise who also led the UK mobile engineering team for JP Morgan’s new consumer bank Chase and Jasper August Tootsi, a full-stack engineer and serial entrepreneur who launched his first startup in high school. With the leadership team spread out across the UK, Estonia and Romania, Aurelia has a pan-European vision and an insight into what small business owners need across these different markets.
For instance, although digital use is on the rise in Romania, around 80% of small businesses still rely on old-school desktop-based software for their accounting needs. In Estonia, where they have adopted electronic tax filing, Aurelia is able to convert the necessary documents into the format required and help business owners file taxes without having to pay an accountant to do so. As Aurelia is built via a bottom-up approach, it can integrate both new and legacy systems into the platform to make it easier for less tech-savvy entrepreneurs to bring together their financial activities. As well, this knowledge and understanding of how to work with small business owners in different countries and their existing technology will help Aurelia appeal to customers across Europe.
The company is looking to launch its beta platform in the UK, Romania, Estonia, and Germany before the end of the year and will use the funding to further develop its features and expand the team.
Ophelia Brown, founder of Blossom Capital, says: “As a small business owner ourselves, we know first-hand how painful and broken it is for SMEs to manage their finances and accounts. After searching for years for the right solution, we committed to Aurelia on the spot. They understand the problem set clearly and we’ve seen how powerful no-code automation is with Tines. Aurelia is building the platform that will empower small businesses owners across Europe to take control of their financial data.”
