Australian FinTech company profile #129 – Spenda
1. Company Name:
Spenda – we are the core product of ASX listed company, Cirralro (ASX: CRO)
2. Website:
3. Key Staff & Titles:
- Adrian Floate, Managing Director of Spenda and CEO at Cirralto
- Dave Wood, Chief Product Officer at Spenda
- Richard Jarvis, Chief Financial Officer at Spenda
- Olly Speed, Chief Technology Officer at Spenda
4. Location(s):
Australia. We have offices in both Sydney and Perth but work as a virtual business with employees located across the country and abroad.
5. In one sentence, what does your fintech do?
Spenda delivers a fully integrated digital payment and business software solution that enables businesses to transform with fast, error-free digital efficiency.
6. How / why did you start your fintech company?
The original idea came from the concept that people make more informed decisions if they better understand the information that is presented to them. It then evolved into how that could be applied into a business context in the way businesses trade between each other and how information (ie. quotes, invoices, payment notices etc) is currently transferred between both parties. We wanted to make it easier for businesses to communicate and collaborate in a quick and efficient manner by removing the manual and error-prone processes, and putting a stop to late payments – and that’s how Spenda came to life.
7. What is the best thing your company has achieved or learnt along the way (this can include awards, capital raising etc)?
Like any growing business, you learn, adapt and grow from your failures. One of the key things we have come to learn is that anything is possible and good people can make that happen. Because of this, we’ve been able to achieve things that others have told us won’t work. We like to take the ‘anything is possible’ approach, because in business, you only fail when you quit.
We’ve worked extremely hard to grow Spenda into the company and solution that it is today. In just two short years our staff base has nearly tripled, and we have successfully built and launched our App into the market. On top of this, because we aim to always deliver more value to our customers, we recently entered into key agreements with two international payment players that enables Spenda to manage all business processes that take place before and after the payment event. Our aim has been to produce cutting-edge technology to streamline the sales transaction process for B2B trade and through these agreements, we’re now able to deliver financial services on more favourable terms for our customers.
8. What’s some advice you’d give to an aspiring start-up?
The main piece of advice is to master resilience. Business is tough and there are no free kicks so it’s important to be prepared to be able to deal with stress and failure. Remember that you only fail when you quit, so if you keep pushing through during the tough times when things aren’t going to plan, you will come out on the other side smiling. And for any business owners, there are also times when you need to step away from your work and disconnect to really recharge.
9. What’s next for your company?
In the immediate term, we are trying to consolidate what we have built, grow our team capabilities and continue to perfect our software and payment solutions for our customers.
