QuotaBook, a Seoul-based fairness administration platform, has raised $11 million in funding led by Elefund, with participation from Entry Ventures, Hana Securities and South Korean fintech firm Viva Republica. A few of its earlier backers, together with Draper Associates and Capstone Companions, joined the spherical.
The Korean startup, which graduated from Y Combinator (YC)’s Winter 21 batch, was based by former enterprise capitalists Andy Choi, Dan Hong and Pilseon Jun, in 2019. Choi, the corporate’s CEO, stated in an interview with TechCrunch that of their capability as buyers, the three seen that in Korea and lots of different Asian nations, startups have been nonetheless counting on Excel when managing their cap tables, inventory choices, stakeholder and different associated data.
That meant the startups’ backers have been compelled to make sense of those spreadsheets, too. “VCs have been caught with Excel sheets or very outdated enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) instruments, so outdated that they aren’t web-based and could be put in solely on Home windows machines,” Choi stated. “It created a really annoying and error-prone course of the place startups and buyers have been commonly exchanging essential fairness knowledge and company information by way of doc attachments or textual content messages.”
Everybody was typing within the knowledge manually as a result of buyers and startups had totally different codecs and needed to run double checks from either side once more, Choi instructed TechCrunch.
“I had a case the place the startup didn’t present their most modern cap desk Excel sheet for greater than two months, which made it exhausting for us to replace our funding valuations and returns that have been wanted to be reported to our LPs,” Choi stated.
QuotaBook will use the newest funding — which brings its complete raised to roughly $20 million — to digitize the fairness/fund administration course of, offering a typical commonplace for security-related knowledge, and making it doable to securely host shareholder and board conferences on-line. Moreover, the startup plans to scale out its product workforce, enter Southeast Asia and launch its service for buyers within the Center East, Choi famous. “The [Asian] market remains to be very younger, so we additionally wish to arrange native places of work or groups within the areas like Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan.”
Presently, the outfit employs 45 folks, Choi added.
Picture Credit: QuotaBook
QuotaBook claims that it has greater than 3,500 startups and investor customers on its platform, largely based mostly in South Korea, the place the corporate began. About 40% of startups in Korea use QuotaBook’s service that gives cap desk administration, in response to Choi. In June, it launched a restricted inventory items (RSU) administration service.
Its SaaS-based platform provides two providers: an equity management service for startups, which incorporates cap desk administration, inventory possibility administration, investor reporting, investor consents, shareholder and board conferences, and a fund management platform for investors, which supplies fund information, funding and returns administration, portfolio administration, LP dedication and returns administration, LP reporting and fund exercise analytics.
Its startup customers begin with a freemium plan. In the event that they improve to a plan with extra options, they get charged by the variety of stakeholders, like holders of securities and inventory choices, Choi stated. Traders additionally get charged based mostly on the AUM of their funds and the variety of portfolios.
QuotaBook additionally just lately launched a communication platform referred to as QuotaSpace that focuses on the communication and networking between buyers and their portfolio firms. Choi stated extra options are coming, too.
“As soon as our core enterprise settles down, we plan to develop into new enterprise alternatives with the community and knowledge we cowl. Serving to out with secondary gross sales and offering knowledge providers are a number of examples,” he stated.
QuotaBook didn’t present its valuation when requested. The startup raised its earlier funding in June 2021 from Draper Associates, Carta Ventures, Elefund, Goodwater Capital and Scale Asia Ventures.
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