We’re very excited to welcome the Pento team to the Seedcamp Nation as we invest in their $2.8M seed round led by Point Nine Capital with support from Hustle Fund, the former Atomico partner, Mattias Ljungman, and existing investors including Futuristic.vc and Preseed Ventures.
Since 2017 the founders, Jonas Bøgh Larsen and Emil Hagbarth Rasmussen have been on a mission to radically improve the payroll experience for both companies and employees. The Danish-based startup allows companies to cut 50-80% off the time they spend on payroll by automating everything from tax reporting to payments, and, for the first time ever, providing payroll managers with a seamless and real-time payroll experience.
Jonas comments: “At previous companies, I was responsible for figuring out payroll. I would quickly realise there was no simple and user-friendly product available – only complex, old payroll software. Because of that we ended up with an inflexible and manual process where we would send spreadsheets back and forth to our accountant, making it all feel like we were sent back to a previous decade. Later we realised how bigger companies had the exact same problem, just at a much larger scale. That’s when we decided to go after the opportunity and build a better payroll experience for companies and their employees. Now, 2 years later, it’s becoming clear that the demand for something better is far bigger than we had imagined.”
With hundreds of companies already using Pento to run their payroll process in Denmark, the newly raised funds will support their ambition to further expand in the UK market where over a hundred companies have signed up to Pento’s waitlist in less than 2 months time. Besides expansion, the team plans to improve and build out new features in the product and support the growing demand from bigger companies and new industries.
Sia Houchangnia, our Investment Partner, adds: “We’ve been tracking the Pento team for months – they are a delight to work with and we’ve been highly impressed by their execution so far. Running payroll is a massive headache for lot of businesses including many of our portfolio companies and Pento makes the all process extremely smooth. We are also excited by Pento’s huge potential to empower employees by offering them a much more transparent and dynamic payroll experience.”
As the company taps into new markets, Jonas and Emil are keen to grow the team and will announce the open positions very soon. The founders are confident that the right team is the key to their success to make payroll more efficient for companies and more transparent, flexible, and user-friendly for employees.