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Finding finance for SMEs Andrea Reynolds, Founder & CEO, Swoop
Tell us about Swoop and how it came to fruition? I had a corporate finance firm but because of the nature of my clients I needed to focus on all areas of the funding lifecycle. I quickly realised how fragmented and time consuming it was to understand what finance was available, let alone manually building applications for that funding, and working out the eligibility criteria. Sourcing funding felt like it was a job in itself and a high proportion of business owners were not as financially literate as they needed to be, or too disconnected from their numbers to make the right funding decisions. I started out with two excel spreadsheets. The first one I called “The FitBit for your business” where I created colour-coded performance metrics for the business owner. I would tell them to move something from amber to green by the time I saw them next, such as cutting costs or increasing prices. It always worked and they didn’t have to understand the accounting terms so long as they followed the indicators.
Talk us through your career and what has led you to this point? I began my professional career as a chartered accountant with KPMG Dublin and then moved to the London office with my main focus on financial services. I had a longing to do something more entrepreneurial so I set up my own Corporate Finance firm. My first clients were from the McLaren F1 team Spin Out programme, which meant raising finance for innovative pre-revenue businesses. McLaren drove me to learn about how to navigate the entire funding landscape for a business, from pre-revenue, start-up to exit. I discovered the world of grants, R&D credits and lending, as well as equity investment; in short, this was the embryo of what was to become Swoop. What do you enjoy about your current role? The best part of my role is seeing and hearing from business owners that we have helped survive and grow – whether it’s finding a way to help them through a cash crunch to make payroll, or to get the capital they need to execute their expansion plans. I walk into stores and see products on shelves where we helped those businesses get their start-up funding. It is so rewarding.
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The second sheet was for me to list all of the eligibility criteria and document the requirements of funders. That became ridiculously unwieldy, so I decided it was time to convert these two spreadsheets into a piece of tech that I could make available as a free-to-use platform for all SMEs and their advisors. I always thought that if SMEs could have the same level of service when it comes to finance as larger enterprises then we would have a lot more success stories and greater economic growth.
If SMEs could have the same level of service when it comes to finance....a lot more success stories and greater economic growth. What can we expect from Swoop over the next few years? Our vision is for every small and medium business owner to easily access the right finance products at the right price. We want to help them make the best money decisions every day. We will continue to build on our current offering, where businesses can bring all of their accounts into one place, including accounting, banking, CRO filings, online revenue data and more. We give customers insights and show them what funding they can get so that they can focus on building their business while we do the work of making the application. As we continue to develop our customer experience, our offering will become even more efficient and intelligent.
