San Francisco startup TravelBank, which provides a mobile app and website to help manage travel expenses and budgeting, debuted today.
It has received a $10 million Series A round of investment from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Accel Partners, and angel investors.
CEO Duke Chung created this one-minute pitch video for Tnooz's audience:
A Q&A with CEO Duke Chung:
What problem does your business solve?
TravelBank solves the problem of unpredictable and excessive travel and entertainment expenses by accurately predicting costs and providing employees with an easy-to-follow budget.
Using an algorithm to predict travel and entertainment cost, companies get an clear picture of future T&E spending before it occurs. For employees, the real-time budget bars show how they are tracking against budget as they spend.
We’re on a mission to change the corporate culture around business spend, especially when it comes to work travel.
Names of founders, their management roles, and number of full-time paid staff?
TravelBank has 17 full time team members today; our founders are Duke Chung, CEO, Reid Williams, CTO, and Ching-Ho Fung, Chairman.
Funding arrangements?
NEA and Accel have provided $10M in Series A funding.
Revenue model?
Currently, TravelBank is free to use and you can download it in the app store.
Why do you think the pain point you’re solving is painful enough that customers are willing to pay for your solution?
Every year, thirty-three billion dollars worth of employee time is wasted because companies fail to digitize and automate their expense management processes (source: Conferma via Pymts.com).
Beyond that, sixty-six percent of CFOs are dissatisfied with their current expense solution; the majority feel that their existing expense management
procedure either takes too long or is too expensive (source: Conferma via Pymts.com).
TravelBank automates the expense management process, helps companies save
money on travel and entertainment expenses, and saves time on creating and approving expense reports.
External validation?
We are launching with more than 100 customers including WeddingWire, Cuyana,
FiscalNote, Lean Data, and Ledbury.
Tnooz view:
Apps like early torchbearers Expensify and Rocketrip have attempted to tame the travel-and-expense management monster. Yet with all the tools at hand, there's still one question that employers find mystifying: How much cash should your employees drop on a trip?
TravelBank's app for Apple and Android devices has a slick interface and lets a traveler do a budget gut check on the fly. A traveler can, in the company's words, "calculate upcoming trip costs based on real-time market pricing and motivate employees to save money on corporate travel when they choose more cost-effective options."
It seems likely TravelBank meet its promise of making spending more predictable, and the startup's early launch with multiple partners may quickly let it test-and-learn its way to success.
Of help, co-founder Duke Chung has already had startup practice, having co-founded customer service software developer Parature, which Microsoft nabbed a couple of years ago for $100 million.