At this year’s Money Motion conference, a record number of applications were received for the startup competition among prominent teams developing fintech solutions for existing and upcoming challenges in the industry. During the conference, the best 14 startups from 12 countries presented their pitches to an expert jury of six professionals and investors in a fierce battle for a prize fund of 10,000 euros.

In the end, three ingenious teams from Ukraine, Spain, and Slovenia won awards at the Money Motion Startup Pitch competition.

The first-place Ukrainian Spendbase took home a prize worth 5,000 euros for an ingenious service that saved many clients an average of 30 percent of the costs of the software they use in their daily business in just two years of existence. The second-placed Spanish Devengo won 3,000 euros, and the third-placed Slovenian DDD Invoices 2,000 euros.

One month after the competition, we caught up with the founders of these startups and asked them what they plan to do next with the funding they won and what challenges they intend to tackle during this year.

Here’s what they had to share!

Spendbase – smarter subscription budgeting

The main winner of this year’s competition is a company that has existed since 2022 and is growing at an exceptional speed. The team behind this startup has designed solutions that use artificial intelligence technology to assess for each business client the cost gaps in the various software subscriptions they need for their daily processes – from infrastructure maintenance to short-term projects.

“Companies have an average of 130 subscriptions to different software and unnecessarily spend more than 25 percent of the total budget on such solutions,” says the Spendbase team, which provides clients with complete centralization of subscriptions through their SaaS management platform. Their services are charged only when the client sees concrete savings from their analysis.

Spendbase, although it has been operating for only two years, is present in as many as 13 European markets, as well as in South and North America and India. The main reason for coming to the Money Motion conference was to present it to the regional market to open up new opportunities here as well.

On average, they grow as much as 21 percent every month and have more than 300 clients worldwide.

“In addition to analyzing existing consumption, our platform also offers clients direct lease of software with which we have a contract at a more favorable price. Our ambition is to offer an open platform on which all companies in the markets where we are present can directly rent SaaS solutions, and not through local intermediaries,” added the Spendbase team.

Devengo – money transfer within a few seconds

The Spanish duo behind second-placed Devengo focused on instant and secure money transfers directly from one account to another in as many as 37 countries.

The key question was why, at a time when it only takes us a few seconds to minutes to open an account in any bank in the EU, it is still necessary to wait a day or more to transfer money from our local account to an account in another country. Why do we sometimes wait for the payment of a salary or confirmation of bill payment for the same amount of time?

“Devengo is a payment service provider that provides its business and corporate clients in the SEPA region with the latest generation A2A (account-to-account) payment infrastructure.

We serve clients in various verticals such as Payroll Advance, Payroll, Insurance Technology, Cryptocurrencies, Loans, etc. Generally, any business operation that processes payments on a large scale like online classifieds and marketplaces, payment service providers, or any other vertical for which payments are part of the offer, can use Devengo to automate and optimize their payments,” shared the founders.

They appeared at the Money Motion conference for the first time this year but they say that it is an event that everyone should attend to become aware of how many excellent solutions there are in the making, but also to experience the openness to sharing experiences and connecting that the conference abounds with. As for the prize they won, it’s already reserved for the next team retreat that will benefit everyone.

DDD Invoices – less tax-related stress

The founders of the third-ranked fintech solution initiated working and tweaking their idea 10 years ago, but it was completely different then. Starting from enabling developers around the world to design frontend solutions without the need to develop the backend in parallel and adapt independently with each change, a key part of the development of such a solution was the one for the secure management of electronic documents, as well as the module for issuing invoices following tax regulations.

“When we created our own invoicing application and began to expand it, we realized that there was a trend towards global e-invoices and fiscalization.

With a strong platform behind it, it made much more sense to focus on other platforms and software vendors instead of selling invoicing solutions to SMEs. Instead, we focused on providing global compliance solutions. Today it is DDD Invoices,” the founders explained their beginnings.

They currently have about 50 clients whose software includes issuing invoices regardless of industry. They are focused on software providers, platforms, and IT companies using ERP systems, CRM systems, accounting and invoicing software, B2B SaaS, sales applications, management applications, POS systems, platforms, webshop platforms, and even electric charging stations for vehicles.

“We know their problems well, because we have developed several business solutions before, and we know that none of them wants to deal with the boring and complex issuing of tax-compliant invoices.

This is not their main activity. It’s something they must have, but they’d rather spend their time focusing on developing their own products and building relationships with their clients,” says the DDD Invoices team, whose key advantage is adapting financial and tax statements to local standards in different countries.

Money Motion, they say, was an extraordinary experience for them because they saw how the Balkan countries are developing and that such events are becoming more and more present, which encourages innovation and connection with other actors in the industry and beyond. In the end, they told us that their award would deservedly go into their colleagues’ salaries.

And there you have it – an update on the #MoMo2024 start(up)s. We wish them a lot of success in the future! 😀

Photos: Money Motion