Despite the war, Kyiv-based Fuelfinance ‘does your finance’, raises $1 million

Let’s not sugarcoat it: startup life is anything but easy. Now let’s add an invasion of the country you call home, and things went from stressful right on over to yeeeeeeesh. 

Despite the challenges that, oh, say rockets flying overhead and regular trips to subway stations/makeshift bunkers present, there’s no way one can say that business in Kyiv is anything but usual. 

However, flying in the face of adversity, Kyiv-based Fuelfinance has raised $1 million in a seed funding round that saw Bolt’s Markus Villig, SendBird’s John S. Kim, and San Francisco-based Stratmind and Eastern Europe-focused Bad Ideas.fund backing the company.

Putting the bullets and the bombs aside for a moment (aside, but definitely not forgotten), Fuelfinance is putting the fun back in fundane. Or rather, taking the tedium out of the grinding work that can quickly overrun startup founders and/or the financial teams behind said startup(s), with a host of tools that are aimed at streamlining financial management from bookkeeping to producing reliable P&L statements, to financial planning scenarios, economics, and actionable dashboards. 

Subverting traditional/similar financial or ERP systems that can start with prices around $100,000/year, Fuel is employing user-familiar Google Spreadsheets as a front-end to display information and offering their end-to-end services at $999/month, promising that full integration can take as little as 1-2 months.

“38 percent of startups die because of running out of cash,” explained Fuel CEO and co-founder Alyona Mysko.  “That is insane. Imagine we were throwing out 38% of food or any goods we produce. Fuel’s mission is to save companies from financial mistakes that should not have happened. If we succeed in that we can not only save a good chunk of GDP, but for some people, save their life’s work, and avoid a lot of personal drama.”

Fuelfinance has been a bootstrapped and according to the company, a profitable business for the last two years, with a client roster that includes social app Reface, YC-backed Petcube and Awesomic, and others, totaling over $200 million in P&L under management. 

“Fuel’s net promoter score of 87 was among the things which impressed me the most,” says John Kim, angel investor and the CEO and founder of Sendbird. “As a founder, I know firsthand, how critically important proper financial reporting and planning are for any business. This team, the market, and their approach to the product make me believe the future of financial management will be much brighter for the early stage companies than it used to be for me”