I remember the first day I received a business expense card. It was a cold December morning and Clint Betts pulled me aside, put a fatherly hand on my shoulder, and handed over a Beehive Startups credit card. “Go get ’em, champ,” he said as he gently punched my arm, releasing me alone into the untamed world of business expenses. I’ll admit, I wasn’t prepared. I thought I had limitless power and infinite money, I bought everything I laid eyes upon in the name of Beehive Startups. El Gallo Giro meals that heaped towards the ceiling, bowing the table with their meaty weight — 24oz Monster Energy’s that I handed to visitors as welcome presents, watching their eyes grow wide and wild as they chugged. It was madness and it wasn’t until our next expense meeting that hell broke loose. Clint had surveyed company finances and much to his chagrin, Beehive Startups had been broken and desolated by my bee boy hands. We were moneyless, joyless, lifeless — Beehive Startups was dead.
Luckily Beehive Startups merged with Silicon Slopes and found resurrection, so there is a happy ending. But for most businesses that struggle to track expenses (and that’s pretty much all businesses), happy moments are few and far between. And as a man who believes in max happiness for all, this cannot stand. THIS SHALL NOT STAND.
Divvy co-founders Blake Murray and Alex Bean agree. They’ve spent two years building an automated software platform that takes on the entire expense management process. And the best part? It’s free.
“We are positioning ourselves to be the one-stop shop for business spending,” said Murray. “We are removing barriers of entry by providing a free, yet powerful, solution for businesses as they spend. We’re passionate about helping every business spend smarter.”
Today, Divvy is announcing a $10.5 million Series A round led by Pelion Ventures and featuring several of Utah’s most notable angel investors (Domo CEO Josh James, Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard, Traeger Grills CEO Jeremy Andrus). It’s a large vote of confidence in a platform that hit the ground running in 2018 and continues to gain steam.
So, the platform. It’s free. I can’t stress that enough, neither can the good folks at Divvy. It eliminates the need for any archaic business expense tracking process, replacing past procedures with real-time tracking software. Employees download the app, receive a personal Divvy Mastercard, and can request/send funds immediately. Businesses are always aware of budget and expense reports as they happen, with Divvy tracking every dollar in real-time.
“We completely own the spend process, we help businesses spend smarter from top to bottom,” said Sterling Snow, VP of Marketing at Divvy. “Your expense report is done as soon as you swipe — we know the budget you had access to and we know the category. So if I took you to lunch, it would come out of marketing and food.”
Divvy has a myriad of features — digital cards assigned to specific vendors, travel booking, IRS compliance — designed with the “one-stop shop for business spending” moniker in mind. Since coming to market this year, Divvy has already seen over $250 million come through the platform, eliminating overcharging and saving businesses 5–7% in the process. A partnership with WEX Bank has allowed Divvy to offer its platform at no cost, with Divvy collecting interchange on each transaction. Investors have taken note and many of Utah’s biggest companies — Domo, Qualtrics, Vivint — are now part of Divvy’s client base.
“The plan is to continue to develop and sell this product that’s head and shoulders above anything else in the industry,” said Snow. “We’re going to eliminate expense reports. We’re going to make spending much more successful than it’s ever been. And we’re going to do it for free.”
