Tom Platt Chief Executive Officer, Countingup

Company

Countingup is a Fintech focused on the SME space. The company mission is to make it easier to run a small business by solving the problems that entrepreneurs and sole traders face every day. Countingup provides a business current account with integrated accounting software, backed by a banking platform and payments processor (authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority), automating the time-consuming aspects of bookkeeping and taxes alongside providing invoices and business insights. The business is designed to make life easier for SMBs, and to let customers pay their bills, issue invoices and do their accounting all from the same app. The model combines both SaaS and Fintech – on the SaaS side, the company earns monthly subscription fees and on the Fintech side, it generates revenue from banking activity (e.g. interchange fees) on Mastercard spend.

Search Background

Countingup was seeking to appoint a new Chief Executive Officer to replace the Founder Tim Fouracre. Tim has spent his whole career helping SMEs save time running their companies. When he was 20, he built a debit and credit bookkeeping system, to assist with keeping accounts for his mother’s business in the cloud. This turned into a company called Clear Books, which he ran for 10 years. Whilst doing so, he observed that SME customers were wasting a huge amount of time downloading bank statements into the business, and the idea for Countingup was born. He thought if a business could consolidate into one app, where banking and accounting were in one place, it would be more efficient, and he started Countingup five years ago to do just that. Now that Countingup has scaled beyond a start up, Tim and the Board wanted to hand over the reins to an experienced scaler to further capitalise on the opportunity.

Requirements

Countingup exists to ultimately change the lives of 1M+ sole owners, by freeing them from accounting / tax tasks and creating more time for productive work. Passion and a connection to the customer was therefore paramount for the incoming CEO. The primary focus of the new CEO will be to accelerate growth of the business, deliver the go-to-market strategy and oversee the execution plan for the business across their product lines. They will deliver a step-change in growth, with a focus on developing a meaningful brand and delivering commercial performance through differentiated SMB products. The new CEO will have a strong track record of developing SME brands ideally across the UK and internationally.

Result

Erevena executed an extensive search, ultimately securing Tom Platt from the Fintech TotallyMoney, where he was COO. An entrepreneurial leader, he brings close to 20 years of experience in SME Financial Services in both blue chip and high growth environments, and has stellar track record in scaling businesses from early stage to £20m+. He has been focused on the SME segment for all of his career in financial services and brings deep understanding of the appropriate customer base for CountingUp, and therefore the right propositions for market needs.