Spendesk is the latest spend management unicorn

Unicorns are not as mythical as they once were, at least not in the world of startups.

Nonetheless, reaching a valuation of $1 billion is something to be celebrated by every company and usually sets the stage for greater expansion.

The French all-in-one corporate spend management platform, Spendesk, is the latest unicorn. The company targets medium-sized businesses (50 to 1,000 employees) in Europe with its solution and it has found a great deal of success.

One part of the company’s appeal is that it gives its customers the ability to order cards for staff and then use Spendesk’s platform to pay the outstanding invoices. The idea is that by having all spending localized in one platform, processes can be simplified.

Due to the company’s myriad of features, it toots a “7-in-1 spend management solution”.

Co-founder and CEO Rodolphe Ardant explained why this is to TechCrunch: “We have had this goal since the beginning — we really want to become this platform, this operational system to manage your spending. When we started working on the product, we looked at each use case and designed the right workflow for that.”

The result was a system that can not only distribute spending cards but can automate tasks, formalize processes, set up workflows and carry out tasks related to taxation.

This has led to 3,500 customers, but Spendesk isn’t stopping there.

Spendesk’s plans for the future

On the back of announcing an extension to its Series C round of funding, the company received an additional €100 million from leading US investor Tiger Global taking its total raised in the round to €260 million. Spendesk will spend this on company growth, furthering the product, and connecting the finance community.

In a blog post, Ardant detailed plans to expand the team by 700 members “across our offices in Paris, Berlin, London, San Francisco and the newly-opened Hamburg.”

In terms of the product and connecting the finance community, the company hasn’t been too forthcoming about specifics but it has outlined that the product will expand and Spendesk will feature in more events.

Adrant noted:” This considerable investment lets us double down on our commitment to empowering finance teams to do their best work by accelerating our growth in four areas: our people, our product, our service, and our community.”

The future for Spendesk looks exciting as it continues to build its reach in the finance community and raise the bar for spend management.