I’m Jeppe Rindom, co-founder and CEO at Pleo. Prior to founding Pleo, I started my career as a consultant at McKinsey, before going on to work as the CFO of Danish fintech success, Tradeshift where I met Pleo co-founder, Niccolo Perra.

After experiencing first-hand the pains of business expense tools and credit card systems, we both set out to build a business that solved the chaos of receipts and invoices by simplifying company spending. Our goal is to orchestrate a financially transparent business culture in order to cultivate meaningful conversations around money, growth and how organisational decisions are made.

Tell me about Pleo.

Founded in Denmark in 2015, Pleo is a new way for businesses to manage their spending. It is powered by a smart company card and app which automates expenses, and empowers employees to independently make company purchases - all whilst giving managers and financial directors a real-time overview of company spending.

In 2018, we expanded into the UK and over the next year, we grew from 2,800 to 6,000 customers - with the likes of Pizza Pilgrims, Patch Plants and TechSpace amongst our earliest users. In 2020, our customer base grew to 13,000 and we are set to double that number in 2021.  In fact, we are over 15,000 already.

With 99.9% of UK companies defined as SMEs, Pleo instills financial resilience and fosters open conversation with money amongst a workforce that has been relentlessly hit by the effects of the pandemic.

How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?

Where Pleo differs from others is in how we approach the problem. Expenses are a necessary part of doing business, but we’ve recognised the unnecessary stress that they cause. Our recent YouGov survey of 1000 UK businesses, found 30% of employees have experienced some form of financial loss or stress as a result of poor expense processes in place. Our goal is to alleviate this stress and make doing your expenses as easy as the press of a button.

A massive part of what Pleo also does is also improve the relationship between the employee and the business. By creating an environment where people feel empowered to make financial decisions, we open-up conversations and tackle the challenges associated with money in the workplace.

How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why?

I’m particularly proud of how Pleo is a purpose-led company. We have taken what some would consider a ‘boring’ financial product and turned it into something fun and educational, with a positive influence on business culture.

Our solution gives teams full visibility of company expenses, inclusive of invoices, and the impact these have on cash flow when running a business. Employees have the freedom to make and expense company purchases whenever they want, while team leaders can manage the entire process - such as setting spending limits, or processing refunds - completely remotely. It’s a simple, innovative way to tackle the problem of expenses and helps everyone understand why tracking these are so important to the business.

On top of this, when people feel equally responsible for company spending, there’s a certain level of trust and transparency that is built across it - something that you don’t get with traditional credit cards - and this is why we are different.

How important is company culture and what is your top tip to get it right?

Transparency is key, particularly when it comes to money and we like to think we lead by example here. At Pleo, we are entirely financially visible - educating and empowering our staff to understand the dynamics involved in running a business.

For start-ups in particular, I think it's important to bring your people along the journey of building a business to help rally them behind the vision. In the early stages of Pleo’s inception, for example, I would invite various team members into investor meetings to ensure they were a part of helping to grow the business.

Keeping an eye on the numbers in any business is important. How do you ensure that you’re always up to date?

Because of our culture of financial transparency, we are able to react quickly to events, and the pandemic is a great example of this. Thanks to our diligent financial systems, we were able to instantly forecast and proactively prioritise and engage with the needs of our customers and our own business.

For example, we noticed the immediate impact of our customers’ spend as card payments dropped by as much as 25%. On top of this, online and in-store spending also shifted significantly. Pre-lockdown both were roughly 50/50; however, from March 2020, in-store spending sharply dropped to just 22% of transactions as lockdown took hold. 

As a result, Pleo’s virtual cards became a key focus, moving them up the roadmap in order to respond to the demand for greater digital payment capabilities. This also meant that features like Google and Apple Pay were also integrated owing to the demand of digital and virtual payments. Furthermore, we have made our customer services 24/7 to ensure there’s always support

What plans do you have for Pleo over the next two years?

More immediately, we’re focused on supporting our customers and the businesses who have been hardest hit by the pandemic and helping them get transparency of their spending.

Beyond this, our goal is to tackle the disparity in service we see between our professional and personal lives. If banking current accounts can offer people detailed spending information, we believe B2B products should do this too.

I think our recent growth speaks to our customers’ frustration around this too, which saw our software business increase by 150%, and I’m confident Pleo will reach unicorn status in the next couple of years.

Any new product launches we should know about?

We will soon be launching our ‘Bills’ functionality which will allow our customers to use Pleo to pay for their invoices and bills. This will be rolled out in the UK first, before being made available in our other European markets.

With this new feature, every bill will be visible in one centralised overview. This doesn’t just save time, but it also means Pleo users can pay at a time that is convenient, giving a better idea of what the company’s outgoings will be each month.  This will also encompass key VAT details to ensure that bookkeeping adds up.

How do you believe the evolution of tech will affect your industry over the next 10 years?

In the financial industry, I expect we'll see more technology that will enable companies to easily comply with regulation. Companies can often fall into a compliance trap, but we’re seeing more financial solutions emerge that help to automate and implement key regulatory rules so businesses can focus on growth.