Monite
Ivan Marison and his technical co-founder André came from U of Banks with an ambitious vision to transform SME finance. In 2020, they launched Monite as a one-stop-shop platform for small business owners to manage their finances. But they quickly realized the real opportunity wasn't in serving SMEs directly—it was in providing the infrastructure that platforms with millions of SME users could leverage to embed financial functionality into their own products.
The transition from B2B to infrastructure happened in 2021, and it required significant upfront investment. "There is no real MVP in this market," Ivan explained. "If people come to us and say, 'I want to offer invoicing for my clients,' I can't give them a scrappy solution that doesn't work. I have to give them something production-ready." This meant building a fully robust API that could handle invoicing, accounts payable, payments, and integrations with financial service providers. To date, Ivan estimates they've invested "a bit over five" million dollars into the product—a necessary foundation before monetization could begin.
Monite's land-and-expand motion focused on enterprise platforms with hundreds of thousands of SME users. Their biggest customer to date is Capital on Tap, a UK credit card provider with 300,000+ SME customers. Capital on Tap saw an opportunity to offer their cardholders additional financial services—helping them pay suppliers more efficiently—and turned to Monite's API to power that functionality without building it in-house. Ivan described the value proposition: "We give them all the functionality and they make sure it's a perfect fit for their user. With that, they earn more per customer, get more transactions volume, and their user base is more engaged and locked in."
In infrastructure businesses, revenue lags behind customer acquisition. Ivan's first customers signed almost "for free" to help Monite validate the service and gather real-world usage data. About a year before the interview, revenue was essentially zero. By the time of the conversation, they'd grown to roughly $20k/month from a base of nothing, but this didn't tell the full growth story. The company raised its first pre-seed round of $1M in 2020 (led by Tomahawk), then split its seed into two tranches: an initial seed and a larger $5M second close in December 2022 (led by 0.72 Ventures and Third Prime). The second close came with "a good premium" in valuation despite minimal revenue at the time, because Monite had demonstrated strong product-market fit indicators: active API deployments, real usage data, and a robust funnel of enterprise opportunities.
Ivan also shared the secret to managing burn: geographic arbitrage. By establishing operations in Georgia (with co-founder André on the ground), Monite keeps 20-25 engineers there—relocating talent from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—while maintaining a small footprint in Europe. This allowed them to build a 50-person team (80% product and engineering) on a lean burn rate.
Monite today serves 20 platform customers and has tripled its customer base in the last six months. The company's pricing model starts at $30k per year for new deals, with active customers paying well over $100k annually as they scale usage. Monite charges per active SME customer per module per month, plus takes a small take-rate (typically 2-3%) on payment transactions. Ivan was confident about the path forward: "Our game is rather aggressive and opportunity-driven." With nearly 12 months of runway remaining and strong PMF signals, the company is preparing for Series A while maintaining unit economics discipline. The infrastructure market for embedded finance was emerging rapidly, and Monite aimed to maintain its leadership position.
- •By pivoting from direct-to-SME to infrastructure-as-a-service, Monite identified a more defensible and scalable market where platform operators with millions of users needed their financial functionality rather than building it themselves.
- •The founders' willingness to invest over $5M upfront into a production-ready, fully-featured API before monetization demonstrated commitment to solving a real problem deeply, which enterprise customers valued more than a scrappy MVP.
- •They acquired anchor customers like Capital on Tap by clearly articulating how the integration would increase monetization per user, create network lock-in, and reduce engineering burden—aligning incentives between Monite and their customers.
- •The strong valuation increase on their Series A despite near-zero revenue proved that demonstrating product-market fit through active API deployments and enterprise pipeline visibility can attract institutional capital even when revenue lags.
- 1.Identify a B2B infrastructure opportunity by analyzing where your initial direct customers have to spend engineering resources solving repetitive problems, then pivot to serve the platforms those customers use rather than the end-users themselves.
- 2.Build a production-grade API first by investing heavily upfront in robustness and integrations with critical third-party services, rather than launching a minimum viable product, because enterprise customers will not pilot unreliable infrastructure.
- 3.Land enterprise customers by clearly quantifying how your API increases their revenue per user, improves customer retention, or reduces their engineering costs—then offer early customers favorable pricing in exchange for real-world usage data and case studies.
- 4.Reduce cash burn while building by establishing operations in lower-cost geographies and recruiting experienced engineers from regions with favorable talent arbitrage, allowing you to extend runway without compromising team quality.
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