Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem are you solving?
Tidely: Tidely is a cloud-based SaaS solution for active liquidity planning and management of small and medium-sized companies in Germany and internationally. With our product, companies gain transparency and an understanding of their own finances in real time.
They can run a simulation of future liquidity any time with the push of a button. With our tool, customers can use an AI-based auto-forecast, utilize industry-specific planning templates and compare different scenarios to derive the implications of business decisions. Active liquidity management makes it possible to integrate specific product solutions from strategic product partners (such as factoring). Specific reports and evaluations can be created for the different interest groups, such as banks, investors or tax consultants.
With our solution, small to medium-sized companies now finally have a real alternative to Excel, because Excel isn’t suitable for the active control of finances (for example, because it doesn’t have a real-time connection to data sources).
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Tidely: Two core topics distinguish us from previous solutions and make up our USP: 1. What we do (“contextual focus”) and 2. how we do it (“UX/UI”).
1. Today’s solutions address two thematic areas: a) expense management or b) financial planning. While expense management solutions have a focused view on companies’ spending and upload data in real time, financial planning tools focus on the long-term financial situation based on accounting data. What’s missing in the market is the examination, analysis and control of finances with a short-term time horizon, i.e. days, weeks and months. This is something companies are currently trying to solve with Excel, and that leads to a number of challenges. With Tidely, companies can now easily cover it all with one software solution.
“Familiarize companies with the complex matter of finance as simply as possible”
2. Finance is a very complex topic, and for most companies, it’s more of a “necessary evil” that simply has to be dealt with. Many have emotional “inhibitions” when it comes to the material, because it can quickly become quite complex on the one hand, but is very relevant on the other. That’s why we’ve made it our goal with Tidely to design our software according to the three following cornerstones: 1) Intuitive, 2) individual and 3) insightful to the max. We want to be the “Apple” of financial software. Apple managed to give “standard” households an understanding of a complex matter, i.e. the world of computers and technology. Following their example, we want to familiarize companies with the complex matter of finance as simply as possible!
Especially now with disruptive market turbulence, finances have taken center stage when it comes to companies’ continued existence. With Tidely and the way we’ve created the software, we want to make a key contribution that “secures” as many companies as possible. Our purpose is: No company should have to go bankrupt “just” because of unsound liquidity management!
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Tidely: Two cornerstones:
1. More than 75 percent of companies can’t manage their short-term finances because the necessary tools simply don’t/didn’t exist. This applies in particular to all of the sectors in which liquidity plays a central role in economic activity (such as agency business, consulting, (e-commerce) trade or construction). In our current time of crisis, the situation is exacerbated because 100 percent of companies are struggling with rising costs (such as inflation, energy prices and supply chain problems/prices).
Tidely wants to become a trustworthy partner for SMEs
2. The transition from a “secure” job to a startup adventure with a clear vision of being able to make a substantial contribution to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs form the backbone of all economic nations (over 98 percent of companies are SMEs, which means they have 1-250 employees). Unfortunately, however, these companies only receive very inadequate support when it comes to the fundamental questions or problems. We want to become a trustworthy partner for SMEs, one who stands by their side in difficult times and helps them with critical topics such as finance!
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Tidely:
1. Getting from prototype to market maturity in the shortest time possible (just under 15 months).
2. Constantly deciding what to “reprioritize” in order to keep focused.
3. Finding the right employees to be able to handle rapid growth.
Munich Startup: How is business going?
Tidely: We had more than 4,500 registrations for our free prototype in the first three quarters of the year and more than 500 customers started paying after the first 12 months (growth >20 percent month after month).
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Tidely: On the one hand, the location is a real asset, because working in Munich is very attractive. On the other hand, Munich has high living costs. All in all, however, it’s more of an advantage and, probably along with Berlin, the most attractive location for a startup in Germany: Exchanging ideas with other startups works very well in Munich because there are so many startups here!
Munich Startup: Outsource or DIY?
Tidely: DIY.