Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
Jennifer Dussileck: With our software solution, we support finance departments in SMEs in managing all their expenses. This makes the finance department and its processes a valued part of the company and paves the way for success for the entire organization. Finway was founded in 2020 by Csaba (28), Philipp (29), and me, Jennifer (26). Csaba and I met through the entrepreneurship association 'Start Munich' and are responsible for product conception, finance, HR, and operations in Munich. Philipp, originally from Passau but now living in the Bay Area for several years, joined the team remotely and, with his extensive tech background, is responsible for the entire software development. In addition, the three of us have had additional management support since the end of 2020 with Christian. Previously, he was VP of Marketing at Personio, Christian now coordinates the marketing and sales department at Finway.
Finway provides digital solutions for corporate finance
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Jennifer Dussileck: Financial processes in SMEs are often still very manual: printed invoices, confusing Excel budget lists, and tedious expense reports lead to unnecessary effort, frequent errors, and little strategic work. This is where Finway comes in. We digitize approval processes, payments via online banking or Finway cards, and offer companies real-time insight into their expenses and budgets.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Jennifer Dussileck: SMEs, in particular, whose expenses no longer pass solely through management, lack a comprehensive software tool. Existing solutions often only cover individual process steps, so the company is ultimately reliant on consolidating expenses in Excel lists in addition to processing them in various tools. For this reason, many companies have stuck with manual processes. With Finway, we're changing that. We create an all-in-one solution for both finance and business departments that simplifies the processing and management of all company expenses.
New ways for sales and recruiting
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Jennifer Dussileck: When you start a business, you face many challenges. I think our challenges are very similar to those of many other startups.
We want to hire the best talent, but at the same time, we're not yet well-known in the market. So we're faced with the challenge of how to draw attention to ourselves without investing a lot of money in employer branding.
It's similar in sales – as a startup, you have to find new ways to reach your potential customers. Here, too, the fact that you're a startup entails a certain risk that needs to be mitigated.
Although we have limited resources, we want to continuously improve our product – making existing features even better and regularly releasing new features to our customers. This always raises the question: What do we do first? We have many ideas and receive a lot of feedback. We need to be able to properly categorize and prioritize them.
Incentive for ideas
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Jennifer Dussileck: We've been on the market since the end of last year and are receiving incredible feedback from our customers. They greatly appreciate our software and its simplification, but at the same time, they also inspire us to come up with new ideas.
By the end of the year, we aim to both acquire additional customers and implement customer requests and product ideas. In five years, we will be the leading platform for planning, processing, and managing all corporate expenses for SMEs in Europe.
Munich Startup: How do you rate Munich as a startup location?
Jennifer Dussileck: We love Munich! We're grateful for the 'Start Munich' association, in part, that brought us together. There are so many opportunities, especially in the B2B environment. Accelerators like Xpreneurs and the LMU EC have helped us along many steps. Above all, we still benefit today from the network we were able to build among our startups.
At the same time, great universities give us the opportunity to attract ambitious and forward-thinking talent. However, our remote setup doesn't limit us in this regard.
Munich Startup: Get up early or stay up all night?
Jennifer Dussileck: Stay up all night!
