Trade
Sean Mullaney, Seapoint
Seapoint, the financial home for European start-ups, has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding in a round was led by Frontline Ventures, with participation from Tapestry VC and the ex-COOs of Stripe, Revolut, Tide and Tines.
After nine months of building, the team have launched a private beta that is now being used by dozens of VC-backed start-ups. From today, start-ups across the UK and Europe can sign up for the beta programme at seapoint.co.
Mid-market European companies (10-250 employees), which includes start-ups and scale-ups, comprise a third of the European economy and are the engine of future growth. However, these companies are poorly served by today’s financial institutions. They are too big for neobanks, who cater to consumers and the smallest businesses, but not big enough for traditional corporate banking – they are stuck in the middle with no clear financial home.
Seapoint interviewed more than 50 founders of VC-backed start-ups and found their financial arrangements are fragmented, manual and costly. Depending on their stage, start-ups use 4-6 different financial products, moving money between them and relying on expensive accountants to stitch things together. Over 90% still run financial processes manually, despite having multiple bank accounts. And more than half earn no interest on their cash deposits.
Seapoint aims to solve this problem as a unified financial tool, where founders get everything in one place: business accounts, corporate cards, payments, and treasury management designed for fast-growing companies. AI then handles the tedious financial work that eats up founders’ time. It automatically processes invoices from e-mail, manages payroll, categorises expenses, and creates financial reports. What used to take hours of manual work now happens instantly in the background.
The result is simple: founders can tame the chaos of their finance functions, get clarity for the first time and turn cost savings and incremental interest into extra months of runway.
Seapoint Founder and CEO Sean Mullaney was previously European CIO at Stripe, CTO at AI unicorn Algolia, and has advised the ECB and the Bank of England.
“AI can transform finances for scaling companies,” said Mullaney. “Within minutes, Seapoint connects to a company’s bank accounts, its accounting software and e-mail. At which point we can give them a real-time view of their business, automate bookkeeping, pay invoices and manage payroll. Seapoint is broader and more powerful than traditional banking. And it puts founders back in control of their finances.”
Will Prendergast, partner at Frontline, added: “Neobanks have built great products for consumers, but mid-market companies have more complex needs that aren’t yet properly served. With a deeply experienced fintech team, Seapoint is leveraging recent advances in AI to transform the finance stack and solve this tedious issue for all scaling companies.”
TechCentral Reporters