Ukrainian-American Fuelfinance raises $1M to develop startup-focused financial planning software

Fuelfinance, a company making software for financial management and planning in startups, has raised $1 million in seed funding, AIN.Capital was told. Investors include two CEOs of unicorn companies, with Bolt’s Markus Villig, and SendBird’s John S. Kim, as well as San Francisco-based Stratmind, and Eastern Europe-focused BADideas.fund firms. As a result of the deal, backers have totally acquired less than 10% share of the company, Fuelfinance representatives told AIN.Capital.

• Fuelfinance develops software for financial management and planning in startups. With the suite of tools which streamline financial management from bookkeeping to producing reliable P&L statements, and then — financial planning scenarios, and economics, and dashboards, it is aimed to replace the most mundane work of startup founders and financial teams. This allows management teams to make decisions based on reliable data and stop wasting days on manual spreadsheet-fighting. 

“38% of startups die because of running out of cash. 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,”

says Alyona Mysko, Fuel’s CEO and co-founder.

• Fuel team is implementing financial best practices learned from serving hundreds of clients in financial consulting into its software, while using robust and familiar Google Spreadsheets as a front-end to display the information. This allows the team to offer a product previously unavailable to early-stage companies — while similar financial or ERP systems start with $100,000 per year and may take a year just to implement them, Fuel’s services start with as little as $999 per month and only take 1-2 months to be up and running.
• The company was founded in 2019 by Ukrainian entrepreneur Alyona Mysko, Yaroslav Azhnyuk joined Fuelfinance as partner and co-founder in 2021, with Ukrainians comprising most of the team, while the company’s biggest market is in the US.
• For the last two years, Fuelfinance has acquired a few dozens of clients, including Reface, a viral social app, a few YC-backed startups such as Petcube and Awesomic, and other clients totaling over $200 million in P&L under management. 

• Apart from private investors Bolt’s Markus Villig, and SendBird’s John S. Kim, two funds participated in the round — a San Francisco-based venture capital and advisory firm Stratmind together with early-stage angel syndicate BADides.fund. As Fuelfinance told AIN.Capital, in the search for backers it focused on Western markets, but also talked to some Ukrainian investors. All of them refused — Ukrainians investing in a Delaware-based company face difficulties due to regulations on the withdrawal of capital from Ukraine.
• The fresh funds will support Fuelfinance in its further development. The company is planning to invest the proceeds in expending an engineering team and building sales.