Payhawk recently became the first Bulgarian unicorn valued at more than $1B. The fintech company specializes in consolidating solutions in the expense management market. It mainly deals with corporate credit cards, bill payments, reimbursements, and accounting automation.
Only four years were needed to reach the glorious milestone. For comparison, it took Klarna six years to reach unicorn status, while Wise managed to do it in five.
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How it started
The Bulgarian fintech startup launched in 2018. There are three founders behind Payhawk – Hristo Borisov, Boyko Karadzhov, and Konstantin Dzhengozov.
Like most startups, Payhawk also had to solve specific problems. The team believed that they could help the companies to optimize their spending. It was no surprise that it took them only five days to prepare a demo product. The rest is history.
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What it is now
bTV Media, a nationwide TV station in Bulgaria, interviewed Borisov and he shared their difficulties in finding funding for Payhawk, saying that they “have been rejected a lot of times. In 2019 when we were applying, we received 62 rejects from 40 funds. They were all saying, ‘this is impossible, you can’t create such a company. It will be very difficult.'”
Now, after a series of fundings, Payhawk extended their series B round funding to $215M. Interestingly, the value of the company in November 2021 was $570M, while six months later it doubled. Their main investors are Greenoaks, QED Partners, Earlybird Digital East, Sprints Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, HubSpot Ventures, and Jigsaw VC.
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Payhawk aims to become one of the biggest players in the fintech market, combining enhanced expense software with offerings of integrated payments. The software solution can be also complemented with many ERPs such as Oracle, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, and many more. The app is currently available on iOS and Android.
Outlook for the future
Currently, the company has offices in Sofia, Berlin, London, and Barcelona, with 70% percent of its employees from Sofia, Bulgaria. In return for the increased demand, Payhawk intends to triple its employees from 100 to 300 in 2022. The company also plans to open new offices in Paris, Amsterdam, and New York.
YouTube: Discover Payhawk: The all-in-one financial software
Photo credit: The feature image has been taken by Blake Wisz.
