Vev, a company founded by former Apple employees, has raised €5 million from Notion Capital and Point Nine Capital.
Vev helps aspiring entrepreneurs launch a business by providing its users with a ready-made and industry-specific software and payments stack. Using Vev, founders can choose to launch one of over 100 business types — ranging from restaurateur to dog walker — and Vev’s platform provides them with all the tools they need to start trading. For example, if a user chooses “music lessons”, they will be provided with all of the tech tools needed to book lessons, plan their diaries, take payments, and deliver online tutoring.
This is important, as swathes of potential entrepreneurs are being dissuaded from starting a business before they have even begun. A UK study demonstrated that 28% of would-be entrepreneurs were put off launching a business because of the complexity involved with starting a company. Vev’s ambition is to alleviate that burden, by putting everything founders need to run a business in one place.
To perfect its offering, Vev has spoken with over 350 business owners from all industries to understand their everyday problems and aims to fix them through software. Vev works from any device and is tailored to meet the needs of a specific industry.
Vev provides a broad range of services and advice, from auto-suggesting the next appointment for a haircut, tailored to a customer’s schedule; to optimizing the delivery routes of pizza couriers, to streamline business operations.
Michel Elings CEO and co-founder of Vev explains, “Starting a business can be overwhelming, which causes potential entrepreneurs to stop before they’ve even begun. That’s exactly what we want to change at Vev. We have created the first platform where people can run any type of business. We are still building out our catalog of business types, and we will work with a founder in any industry to support their business”
Elings expects that Vev’s catalog will quickly grow to over 250 business types, to fulfill the ambitions of its growing user base.
Ricardo Sequerra from Point Nine adds: “Vev is capturing the workflow of merchants across verticals and over time will disrupt not only pen and paper but ultimately the physical POS with a software-only approach. The horizontality of the tool also enables Vev to cater to very underserved segments who haven’t been the focus of traditional software vendors.”
Chris Tottman from Notion says: “Vev provides a “business in a box” software for the self-employed, a global market of nearly 3 billion users. We’ve been very impressed by their deep understanding of their target audience and how it translated into a powerful yet highly intuitive product.”
Image Credit: Vev
