French accounting software platform Pennylane has launched in Germany, its first overseas market, and is targeting 100 hires in the country next year.
Founded in 2020, unicorn Pennylane is a financial management and accounting platform for startups, SMEs, and their accountants across Europe.
It sells itself as an “all-in-one” accounting and financial management platform that centralises the financial function of businesses and their accountants in one shared workspace, enabling them to work closer together.
It centralises accounting, expense management, invoice and financial reporting into one shared workspace. By doing so, it says it frees up accountants from data chasing. It is also leveraging GenAI while its API ecosystem, featuring integrations with the likes of Shopify and HubSpot, helps its clients work flexibly across different systems, it says.
Pennlylane employs more than 900 people and works with over 6,000 accounting firms and over 600,000 SMEs in France, it says.
In Germany, it will go up against German powerhouse DATEV, which dominates the accounting software landscape.
Pennylane is locating its German HQ in Munich and also has an office in Berlin, as well as sales executives dotted in cities like Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and Cologne.
Tobias Janiesch, who is heading up Pennylane’s German operations, said one of the reasons for choosing Munich as its German HQ was being close to lead investor Sequoia.
He said: “Sequoia is in Munich, one of our lead investors, so it made sense to be closer. And the Munich ecosystem in tech with OpenAI there is also growing."
On why Germany is a potentially ripe market for Pennylane, he said: “It’s a big market, with 80,000 accountants. Germany is one of the most complex accounting markets in the world - yet also one of the slowest in terms of digitalisation."
Future possible international launches include Poland, Spain and Belgium but unlikely the UK, where Sage and QuickBooks dominate, Janiesch said.
Earlier this year, Pennylane raised €75m in a funding round co-led by Sequoia Capital, Alphabet’s CapitalG, and Meritech Capital Partners, with DST Global also participating.
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