Tebi, the startup that is building an all-in-one operational platform, has raised €20 million in funding. The Series A round, led by Index Ventures, is the first institutional investment the company has taken since its founding three years ago, and reflects Tebi’s growth.
The goal is to bring enterprise-level capabilities to the world of independent businesses with the intuitive experience of a consumer app.
Tebi was co-founded in 2021 by a team of creatives, business owners and serial entrepreneurs - including Arnout Schuijff, the co-founder and former CTO of Adyen, and Rob Vonk, Adyen’s former EVP Technology. Three years after Adyen went public, Vonk and Schuijff teamed with Greta Castellana, Thijs van Himbergen and Mazdak Nasori to create Tebi.
Schuijff, who serves as Tebi’s CEO, has been troubled by the plight of independent cafes and shops for over a decade. What began as a side project for Schuijff - who first hacked together a sales app for a bar-owner friend in 2012 - has now become a business that processes over €100 million a year.
“Hospitality and retail businesses bring life and jobs to our communities - but when it comes to technology, they haven’t had a genuine partner who’s on their side and brings a holistic understanding of their needs,” says Schuijff. “They’re weary of being locked into multiple, overpriced contracts for under-performing bits of financial software. That’s why Tebi is replacing a multitude of point solutions with a single, comprehensive and intuitive platform that anyone can use.”
Xander Waller, who has worked in hospitality since the age of 16, now relies on Tebi to run both a bar and a casual dining restaurant he owns in Amsterdam. “The whole thing with Tebi is that it’s super easy to work with,” he says. “It’s like an iPhone, basically everyone can use it from the get-go, so you don’t need to explain anything - which is pretty important in the fast-paced environment of a restaurant, where every minute counts. With Tebi, everyone involved in the guest journey, from maitre d’ to the chef to the bartender, knows what they have to do with zero hassle. It also means there’s no loss of revenue or miscommunication between the kitchen and the servers; there’s a super clear flow of money, and it’s very clear how the money is earned.”
Tebi's mobile-first platform includes point of sale, payments, inventory management, a kitchen display system, reservations, QR ordering, and bookkeeping. It has a single (Kotlin) codebase for Server, iOS and Android which allows for rapid software iterations and feature additions to capture the feedback of the customer. The platform was built on an accounting backbone, providing a single source of truth for users' financial data.
“We’re at a moment in history when you can take your phone and start a business — without dedicated hardware or ugly, complicated software,” Schuijff notes. “Taking orders and payments, keeping stock, checking your realtime revenue across multiple locations: it can now all be done with a few taps, lowering the threshold to entrepreneurship considerably, and running on smartphones and commodity hardware setups that don’t cost an arm and a leg. But Tebi’s true power lies in complex multi-location setups with many devices, syncing in realtime and providing the instant insights needed to keep track of those locations.”
The company allows merchant feedback to determine what features they build as well as offering a pricing tied to users' monthly revenue. The Tebi App is free for those whose revenue stays under a certain threshold, and the company doesn’t charge extra for additional devices, users, or locations. In addition, Tebi's employees own 15% of the company.
“It’s inspiring to partner with founders who are as values-driven and mission-oriented as they are technically talented,” says Jan Hammer, partner at Index Ventures. “We believe that companies who put their customers first will naturally succeed. By combining a deep respect for the people in this industry with unparalleled fintech expertise, Arnout and the Tebi team have the potential to create new standards of excellence for business software.”
With the new funding, Tebi plans to accelerate its product development and expand its reach beyond the Netherlands, bringing the platform to businesses worldwide. The startup, which currently employs 30 people at its Amsterdam headquarters, also plans to grow its team and expand its product beyond hospitality and retail.
“Many of us didn’t realize how important bars and cafes were until we couldn't visit them during lockdowns, and then watched them struggle to survive,” says Schuijff. “We’re bringing all the lessons we learnt at Adyen to give these businesses the tools they need to be sustainable. Our goal is to become the operational partner for independent businesses, helping to make better decisions every day, and freeing up owners to bring their full creativity and passion to this critical vocation. By giving access to the same capabilities as large-scale operations, we want to help level the playing field for the businesses that bring life to our cities and neighborhoods.”