From left: Jonas Børgh Larsen and Emil Hagbarth Rasmussen. Image: Pento
Danish start-up Pento has raised $2.8m and is now looking at expanding into the UK.
On Tuesday (10 September), Pento announced that it raised $2.8m in a seed round led by Point Nine Capital. There was also support from Seedcamp, Hustle Fund, Futuristic.vc and PreSeed Ventures.
The Danish company was founded in 2016 by Jonas Bøgh Larsen, who serves as CEO, and Emil Hagbarth Rasmussen, who is the company’s CTO. It was set up to find a way to update payroll systems.
Pento said: “Although a monthly occurrence, payroll remains one of the most manual, error-prone and innovation-lacking business processes out there.”
With its new payroll service, Pento estimates that it can cut between 50pc and 80pc off the time companies spend on payroll each month, by automating everything from tax reports to payments, and providing payroll managers with a seamless, modern and real-time payroll experience.
Users don’t need payroll experience to operate the software. If they run into any issues, the start-up offers instant support via online chat or phone.
Growing the company
“At previous companies, I was responsible for figuring out payroll,” Larsen said. “I would quickly realise there was no simple and user-friendly product available – only complex, old payroll software.
“Because of that we ended up with an inflexible and manual process where we would send spreadsheets back and forth to our accountant, making it all feel like we were sent back to a previous decade. Later, we realised how bigger companies had the exact same problem, just at a much larger scale.”
Pento’s cloud-based SaaS payroll has more than 400 customers in Denmark already. The company is primarily focusing on SME clients and has plans to launch in the UK following its latest round of investment.
“We’re really excited to continue the journey with some of the best investors in the game,” Larsen added.
“As we spent more and more time with the team at Point Nine, it became clear that we’re getting a very experienced, hands-on partner on our team. Having support from Seedcamp and our existing investors made everything come together very nicely, and I’m sure we couldn’t be in a better position to continue growing the company.”
