Building a business banking platform at 60% of the cost

Thriday is a small business banking platform that eliminates financial admin, saving small businesses six hours of time a week. Thriday integrates banking, bookkeeping, accounting and tax into one platform, bringing the time that business owners spend on financial admin down to only 30 minutes a week! Discover how Thriday raised capital to build the business and what they learnt from it, ultimately unleashing the power of good finances for Aussie businesses.

Co-Founders Michael Nuciforo and Ben Winford have both had experience in start-ups and small businesses. Being frustrated by the time spent in spreadsheets, reconciling receipts and coordinating items with their accountants, they agreed there needed to be an easier way. So, they looked at solving their own problem, by integrating banking and payments with bookkeeping, accounting and tax management.

The idea for Thriday was born. The plan took a product-based focus on building what small businesses need most, with the initial MVP aimed at the 2.3 million Aussie businesses who are burdened by financial admin. The founders forecasted needing to raise $15 million in total to achieve their ambitious goals. Their original plan was to do a $5 million seed raise, then a $10 million series A. In 2021 they turned to crowdfunding platform, Birchal, to facilitate the raise and build a community around the platform. Over three days, they managed to raise $3 million. This broke crowdfunding records in Australia for the most amount of money raised in the shortest amount of time. Next, a $6 million pre-series A raise led by Nab Ventures occurred in 2022.

Thriday's top five tips to get funding to go the extra mile:

1. Strategic development and partnerships: Due to the tough fundraising environment, Thriday has been smart in focusing its funds where it can make the most impact, and partnering with businesses who are already doing a great job. One of the partnerships that has proved successful (and was a finalist for a Finnie award for Excellence in industry collaborations and partnerships) is the partnership with Regional Australia Bank (RAB) for banking as a service. Where other fintechs went and got an ADI, this partnership reduced Thriday’s funding requirements by tens of millions of dollars. 
2. Diversify your hiring options: Hire full-timers and consultants, both offshore and onshore. They find this is a good balance for their business needs and budget. Expanding hiring globally has given them access to a worldwide talent pool as opposed to just hiring local staff. Patona has been instrumental here in facilitating the hiring, onboarding and management of global teams. The time zone differences mean that development timelines can continue around the clock. 
3. Creating a strong culture: A team that gets along, enjoys working together and is motivated is the dream. Strong co-founders with experienced backgrounds have been crucial in leading the company. Often this is where companies can fall over in the early stages. Experienced founders who know how to execute have resulted in a strong core team, empowering employees who understand the vision and values means everyone is working towards the same goals. Think about what employees value and implement a strong options incentive scheme for staff so they are invested in the business and go the extra mile. This is a great way for teams to feel valued beyond just salary increases. Employee share options don’t have a direct short-term cost impact on the business but provide a lot of extra value to staff like extra leave boosts morale and employee happiness.
4. Be frugal: Always review your cost base and look for areas where you can reduce costs, or make your dollar stretch further. Don’t have extravagant offices, or spend a fortune on company parties. Instead, look to work with and learn from businesses who’ve done it before to leverage their knowledge and develop team skills. For example, the Microsoft Start-ups Program provided Thriday with $150k in free services.  
5. Create an advisory board: Getting great advisors on board to strengthen the team where needed. Thriday attributes much of its success to the expertise provided from Kerry Roxburgh AM, Dave Curran, Rachel Gatehouse, Satyendra Chelvendra and Simon Lee. 

The funding forged the way to accelerate the development of the platform, increasing their timelines and speed to market. When looking at hiring developers, they understood the challenges of attracting the right people, there’s a lot of competition in Australia and salary expectations can be high. This prompted the partnership with Patona in order to diversify their hiring options, to help build and manage their remote team. They now have a mix of onshore and offshore engineers which has made it easier to meet their staffing needs. While the remote team is employed by Thriday, Patona coordinates the onboarding and management of offshore team members in the background. Stand-ups, WIPs, town halls, etc are all in a timezone friendly format to accommodate the global teams. If Thriday lost a resource or needed to increase development timelines, Patona has the talent to fill the headcount quickly. Patona took care of everything from EOR (Employer Of Record), compliance, insurance and HR. Staff hit the ground running, leaving Thriday to focus on product delivery and building world-class culture.

Thriday has an ambitious vision for the platform, currently, they’re only 1% of where they want to be (we couldn’t believe it either!). There are many more additional features to build and many untapped markets who could benefit from Thriday’s tools. Currently, only sole traders are able to use the platform, but soon they will expand their reach to companies, which will multiply the opportunities for customers exponentially. 

When thinking about tips for start-ups, Thriday says to experiment, learn and build. And always be led by the customer. They’ve found value in platform surveys asking for customer feedback, eg “how easy was it to send an invoice?” Simple questions that give an insight into the customer journey, providing a Customer Effort Score helps the team to learn, build and improve. Testing content across platforms like TikTok to see what resonates and what the market is interested in. And, iteration is key to the business model, releasing an MVP to market, getting customer feedback and building upon it. It means you’re continuously growing and building something that is truly for the customer. 

From raising capital, strategic partnerships, hiring the right employees and advisors, Thriday has successfully built a business banking platform, saving them 60% of the cost they would’ve spent if they were to build everything in house. To find out more about Thriday and how you can reduce your financial admin from six hours to 30 minutes, head over to their website: thriday.com.au