ownership
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Ledgy is an equity management tool for European startups
Every startup founder faces the same issue — how do you manage your cap table and equity plans in a transparent and lightweight manner? If you’re based in the U.S., chances are you’re using an equity management solution like Carta. But if you’re not based in the U.S., you don’t have a ton of options.
Ledgy wants to become the ownership management tool for the rest of the world. Based in Switzerland, several well-known European startups are already using Ledgy, such as Wefox, Kry, Bitpanda, Gorillas and Trade Republic.
The company recently closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital. Other investors in the round include Xavier Niel, Harry Stebbings, Visionaries Club, UiPath’s Daniel Dines and Front’s Mathilde Collin. Some of Ledgy’s existing investors also invested once again, such as Myke Näf, Paul Sevinç, btov Partners, Creathor Ventures and VI Partners.
A few years ago, when Ledgy co-founder and CEO Yoko Spirig talked with an entrepreneur, the founder showed her how he managed ownership. He opened an Excel spreadsheet and scrolled, scrolled, scrolled… “Each line represented a share. You can imagine how error-prone it is,” she told me.
While the implementation was odd, most companies in Europe are still using Excel spreadsheets to manage ownership. And Ledgy wants to convince those companies that switching to a software solution that has been specifically designed to solve this issue could be beneficial.
“The key has really been to focus on the software infrastructure. What we do is that we have implemented automation workflows that are adaptable depending on countries,” Spirig said. “We’re not focusing on one regulation and we’re really offering the infrastructure layer,” she added.
That’s why Ledgy already supports 32 countries. It has tweaked its product even more specifically for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. There will be more country-specific releases in the near future for startups based in the U.K. and France. 1,500 companies are using Ledgy right now.
When you switch to Ledgy, there are three main advantages. First, like other software-as-a-service products, Ledgy acts as a single source of truth for all stakeholders — the HR team, the finance team, investors, lawyers and employees.
The second selling point is that you can automate some of the most tedious tasks. For instance, Ledgy can automatically generate documents based on templates and different variables. Signed documents are stored on Ledgy. You can export data every quarter or every year for compliance reasons.
Third, it fosters transparency across the company. Employees can check the value of their options. They can see how much their options could be worth if the leadership team is in the process of raising a new round of funding.
With today’s funding round, Ledgy plans to expand into new markets. The company also plans to roll out support for public companies so that some of its existing customers can go public and keep using Ledgy.
Image Credits: Ledgy
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Portside raises $17M for its business aviation management platform
Portside, an aviation startup that is building a platform for managing the backend of a corporate flight department, charter operation, government fleet and fractional ownership operation, today announced that it has raised a $17 million funding round led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from existing investors I2BF Global Ventures and SOMA Capital.
The idea behind Portside, which was founded in 2018, is that it lets business aviation companies and flight departments manage everything from flight operations to maintenance, crew and staff scheduling, expense management for crew members and staff, and financial data to help them operate more efficiently. It’s basically everything you need to run your flight department in a single solution, but it also integrates with virtually all of the existing scheduling, accounting, expense management and maintenance tools a flight department or fractional ownership operation is likely using today.
Image Credits: Portside
While the COVID pandemic put a halt to most forms of private aviation early on, that market saw a quick rebound. Portside says it saw its revenue grow almost 300% in 2020 and that it added more than 50 aircraft operators in multiple countries to its user base.
“This infusion of new capital will be used to accelerate investment in product innovation, support further engagement with large enterprise customers and grow our global engineering and customer success teams,” said Alek Vernitsky, co-founder and CEO of Portside. “We appreciate the strong support we have received from both our existing and new investors in this round. They have collectively demonstrated their confidence in our strategy and intentional approach to cloud-based digital transformation of the global business aviation industry.”
Portside is not alone in this market. Companies like Fl3xx, for example, offer similar solutions for flight departments and at the lower end, tools like Flight Circle offer a subset of these features for general aviation clubs and partnerships.
“Portside has progressed rapidly since inception and is entering the next stage of fulfilling its vision of becoming the undisputed leader in cloud-based solutions for business aviation,” stated John Curtius, partner at Tiger Global Management. “In our view, Portside represents the future of the industry, and we are pleased to partner with a company we believe will continue to create significant value for many years to come.”
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