Why we invested in Embat

Now that the dust has settled down from the news of Embat’s Series A, we would like to share our thoughts on why we originally invested in Embat and kept supporting them since then.

Looking back on our first interaction with Carlos and Toni, we remember vividly their energy and passion for launching Embat, along with their deep understanding of treasury management.

What the heck is Treasury Management?

Taking a step back, treasury management is one of the key functions of a finance department and a permanent headache for CFOs. Just to get a grasp of the crucial role of treasury management and its complexity, below we list some examples of its core components:

• Cash and Liquidity Management: Forecast of inflows and outflows, aggregation of cash from different accounts or subsidiaries, and management of the receivables, payables, inventory of the company, etc.

• Operations: Management of the outgoing payments to suppliers, employees, and other stakeholders, etc.

• Risk Management: Management of the exposure to currency fluctuations and any changes in interest rates, etc.

• Regulatory Compliance and Reporting: Adherence to financial regulations and standards (incl. AML and KYC requirements), preparation of financial statements and reports, etc.
  
  

What’s the problem with Treasury Management?

Corporations need to navigate through uncertain markets, complex frameworks of local and international regulations, and various financial risks (incl. interest rate risk, and currency exchange rate risk, among others) among others.

Additionally, apart from the external risks, enterprises have to deal with the emerging internal complexity. The larger and more complex the structure of the company gets, the more overloaded the finance teams are and the more prone to costly mistakes they become. Errors in accounting reconciliation and mistakes in payments to suppliers are a couple of examples of the numerous issues that finance teams need to deal with. Eventually, treasury management departments end up in a constant firefighting state without having enough time and capacity to optimally manage the cash of their respective companies.

Until now, the majority of the solutions used by medium-sized companies and larger enterprises weren’t able to properly address the issues mentioned above. They required a lot of manual work from the finance teams, were prone to data errors because of the fragmentation of the data sources, and couldn’t handle the multiple banking and payment platforms because of a lack of unified data.

Why Embat?

We were well aware of all the issues after multiple discussions with CFOs of companies of different sizes and in different verticals. Most of the teams we had come across until then, were focusing on the lower end of SMEs, which has a key weakness, the unit economics (high churn, low ACV, relatively high CAC, etc.), that is very hard to overcome and weren’t able also to support a potential path and GTM to larger customers properly.

During our first call with Carlos and Toni back in Jan 2022, Embat was about to generate its first revenue after converting the first customers. For us, it had the key elements that we were looking for:

The Team

It was clear from early on that Carlos and Toni were 2 passionate hustlers, and hustle is a trait we love seeing in founders. Additionally, Toni had 11 years of experience at that point, in one of the largest banks globally providing financial services in the mid-market, while Carlos had 6 years of experience in the same sector and bank.

Tomás, the CTO, was joining Embat that month, and his background was very relevant to what Embat needed (ex-CTO at Fintonic and 1 year at Santander).

Last but not least, we value a lot the connection and chemistry with the founding teams. Throughout their entire journey, we commit to being by their side as dedicated supporters and insightful sparring partners. Our role is to challenge them when necessary while helping them attain the best possible outcome. In our interactions with both Carlos and Toni, we valued their openness to feedback with a sole focus on how they can build a global leader in the treasury management space.

Fast forward to today, Embat has built a strong and performance-driven team of more than 50 people with a common goal of building the next generation of treasury management.

Product

We put a lot of focus on the founding team, but it’s not the only investment criterion. We strongly believe that the product plays a crucial role in the potential of the businesses and thus in our investment decision. Given that we invest in Pre-Seed and Seed stage companies we understand that the products will be at their infancy stage and the expectations are on the team and their product-driven vision.

This was the case also with Embat, where the combination of the deep insight of the founding team in the financial services and the addition of Tomás as CTO helped us build our confidence about the future of the product.

Fast forward to today, Embat has developed a top-notch product suite addressing the main pain points of the finance teams. They provide a fully flexible product with features like:

Real-time control of cash and debt positions Real-time cash flow forecasts Automated treasury accounting enhanced by artificial intelligence Automated bank reconciliation reports Management of payments globally from a single platform and instant execution in over 50 currencies Automated accounting and bank reconciliation in the ERP

Market

Based on the size of the problem that we tried to partly capture previously, the addressable market (i.e number of mid-market and enterprises), and the ACV which could eventually be > €30K, it was clear to us that there is a path for Embat to generate €100M+ in ARR if they manage to become one of the leading solutions in the space.

What lies ahead for Embat

We expect in the coming years a consolidation in the CFO tools space, with many companies targeting to become the go-to platform for finance teams. In that scenario, we can see fintech companies specializing in specific industries to be able to build a moat around them. Embat has shown stellar growth for the last 2 years and they are on the right trajectory to become one of the leading European players. The team is well aware of the risks and current trends and is planning accordingly to be able to win in multiple industries.

We have been privileged to partner up with Embat from their Pre-Seed stage, as well as, keep investing and supporting them in their subsequent and current round. We look forward to the long journey ahead and are excited about what the future holds for Embat!