Peter Grouev (CIO) & Dean Hastie (CEO), Co-Founders

Digital finance platform Tapline comes out of stealth mode with pre-seed funding of €31,7M

08 December 2022

Berlin, Germany: 6th December 2022 - Tapline, a digital finance platform allowing SaaS companies to trade their future revenues for upfront and non-dilutive cash, has today announced a pre-seed funding of €31,7 million.

Fasanara Capital, the UK-based alternative asset management company, is providing debt funding of €30m. The €1.7m equity round is led by the Czech VC firm, V-Sharp Venture Studio, alongside Antler, Black Pearls VC, 365 fintech, Depo Ventures, Impetus Capital and several business angels investing in the round.

The funding will allow the Berlin-based team to tap into the exponentially growing SaaS market, where global transaction volumes are set to reach €720 billion in 2028. The investment will also be used to enhance the Tapline solution and hire key individuals around marketing and product.

“Access to capital for digital SME’s is a key driver of growth. With today’s difficult macroeconomic environment, its essential there is a financial solution that can support these companies. This is why we are happy to support German based Tapline, with their mission of democratizing access to capital to digital SME’s”

Francesco Filia, CEO of Fasanara Capital

Capital on demand for both early and late-stage companies

Tapline is focused directly on the SaaS vertical across both B2B and B2C business models, especially in the DACH and fast-growth CEE market. SaaS models offer high levels of predictability in recurring revenues, which allows for accurate financial underwriting. Tapline can deploy capital in less than 48 hours after client onboarding.

SaaS companies with as little as €8k MRR (monthly recurring revenue) can fund their growth by trading up to 60% of their ARR into instant, non-dilutive capital. Tapline offers startups 6 or 12 months of upfront cash at a discount against the future value of their revenues. Funding of up to €1m is offered making this solution suitable not only for SaaS startups, but also for later growth stage like companies

Notably, with the current uncertain macroeconomic environment, cost of capital is key to founders and Tapline will give SaaS companies a transparent digital solution that provides a clear view of their financing.

There are many outstanding SaaS companies that have a proven product and a growing customer base, but they need additional funding to fuel further growth. For companies not suitable for or not wanting to raise venture capital, there hasn't been a suitable form of financing in our region for them to take their business to the next level and allow them to keep innovating. Tapline with its non-dilutive financing solution perfectly fits this need. In addition, Tapline has an amazing founder-product fit with Dean, Peter and Dmitrij, so the investment was a no-brainer for us."

Matej Zabadal, Managing Partner of V-Sharp Venture Studio.

Experienced team

Tapline was co-founded in 2021 by Dean Hastie, Dmitrij Miller and Peter Grouev. The team met at an Antler residency in Berlin. The day zero investor and global early-stage VC firm invested in Tapline in September 2021.

The founding team has over 25 years of experience across key focus areas required to execute Tapline’s business model - namely capital markets, early-stage venture investing as well as product and technology.

Notably, Dean and Peter, originally from South Africa and Bulgaria respectively, worked through the financial crisis of 2008 at household banking institutions Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan (USA), Sanlam Investments (South Africa). Their experience in risk management, fixed income asset management and credit makes them a reliable partnership to implement Tapline’s business model, especially in today's economic environment.

As a leading global early-stage investor, we look at a founding team’s strong domain expertise, clarity of vision, team cohesion and dynamics as well as their ability to execute quickly. The Tapline team exceedingly ticks all these boxes and we are very excited to be part of their journey of bringing an innovative and well differentiated solution to the revenue-based finance market

Christoph Klink and Alan Poensgen, Partners at Antler

Targeting the SaaS liquidity gap in the current market

CB insights recently reported that global venture funding reached $74.5B in Q3’22, hitting a 9-quarter low. The new funding level represented a 34% drop quarter-over-quarter, the largest quarterly percentage drop in a decade. Evidently, with a clear lack of liquidity in the market even for great companies, Tapline's product could not be better timed as a key liquidity contributor to the startup ecosystem.

The current macro environment also provides a refreshing and exciting start for revenue-based finance, especially as founders are i) becoming more educated around this type of financing instrument as well as its various use cases ii) having an alternative finance option as part of their total capital stack iii) not giving up precious equity so easily.

Tapline has built a fintech product that allows for swift client onboarding, provides clients with a proprietary tech enabled credit score, and a free financial dashboard that allows clients to monitor various metrics of their business daily. It’s a one-stop shop for SaaS clients to run their business more efficiently through key free business metrics and access to liquidity.

We listened to the fundraising pain points in the market, and it was clear that an alternative financing solution, that is transparent, easy to understand and offers competitive prices with no hidden costs was required. Ultimately, we can provide a quick, transparent, and non-dilutive capital solution to founders, so they can continue to focus on what they do best: building innovative businesses. During the current economic uncertainty, our platform will allow SaaS companies to continue focusing on growth.”

Dean Hastie, Co-founder and CEO of Tapline

About Fasanara Capital

Launched in 2011, Fasanara Capital is a UK based hedge fund and technology platform with more than $3.5bn (£2.8bn) in assets under management. It is one of the largest Fintech focused capital providers globally, with multiple USD 100 Million+ investments in Fintechs. It looks to invest in new technology that is sustainable, scalable, and backed by data. Through the use of proprietary financial technology, it provides liquidity to global firms including Fintech lenders and digital asset businesses. The company has previously invested about $500 million across three venture funds to back early-stage tech-based companies.

About Black Pearls VC

Black Pearls VC is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on supporting the leading tech companies from the Baltic Sea Region. It invests in early-stage with a typical ticket of anywhere between €100k - €1m. Black Pearls VC is a part of the Kauffman Fellows, a global network of +500 leading VCs.