Coconut

Summary

Starting a self-employed business is easier than ever, but the finance tools available haven’t improved for decades. Coconut automates bookkeeping & tax for sole traders, a market of 3.5m in the UK. With 8k paying customers and 174% revenue growth in 2020, Coconut is on a mission to transform sole trader finances.

• 174% revenue growth between 2019 and 2020
• 8,000 paying customers, a 6x increase since December with new subscription model
• 2,800 accountants registered on the Coconut Accountant Portal
• Fully authorised by the FCA for Open Banking aggregation as an AISP

Idea

In 24 months 3.5m sole traders will be required to complete 4 tax submissions a year instead of 1, because of HMRC’s Making Tax Digital (MTD). What’s more, they will be required to use a digital product like Coconut to do this.

Founders Sam & Adam became self-employed after selling their first fintech business. Despite being PwC trained accountants, they found managing taxes a growing burden.

Coconut is on a mission to become the leading sole trader finance and MTD product in the UK. They are raising a Pre-Series A to cement their lead in this space.

The pandemic focussed the team on meaningful core metrics. Total revenue grew by 174% in 2020 (YE 2020 revenue: £679k, EBITDA: -£2,335k). Having launched a new pricing model at the end of 2020, they converted 75% of active customers to paying by March 2021, growth of 6x since December. With 2,800 accountants signed up, Coconut is a favourite with accountants too.

An early pioneer in Open Banking, Coconut connects with over 25 banks, giving automatic tax insights using banking data. With invoicing, receipt storage, tax and performance dashboard built-in, Coconut equips customers to easily manage their business and tax in one place.

With 100m+ self-employed businesses in Europe and North America alone, Coconut is targeting an exciting global opportunity.

Team

Sam O'Connor, CEO: qualified as a Chartered Accountant, he co-founded ProConfirm in 2012, a Fintech connecting banks with accounting firms. ProConfirm was acquired by Confirmation in 2014 where he led the Europe office for 2 years before starting Coconut.

Adam Goodall, Co-founder: qualified as a Chartered Accountant at PwC and co-founded ProConfirm with Sam, leading product development. He is using his 10 years of specialist expertise to help transform finance for sole traders.

Pete Finlay, COO: A seasoned COO & founder of Songkick, backed by Sequoia and acquired by Warner, and then Silicon Milkroundabout, the leading tech hiring fair in Europe.

Martin Moss, CTO: Slando CTO, exited to Naspers, and a number of VC backed startups, bringing 20 years of scaling and team-building expertise to lead our tech team.

Ness Kent, Head of Marketing: 10 years in branding & product marketing roles, most recently responsible for building and growing the Learn with Facebook product at Rehab agency.

Mai Yamaguchi, Head of Product: A seasoned fintech product strategist, previously working in Product and Strategy at Xero and Tide before joining Coconut in 2020.

Brian Fox, Non-Exec Director: Brian is the founder of Confirmation and acquired Sam and Adam’s first business, ProConfirm. Confirmation was acquired by Thomson Reuters in one of US tech’s big success stories of 2019.