A booking and event management platform beloved by local councils has raised $5 million in its first external round after seven years of bootstrapping.
The raise for Attekus was led by Five V Venture Capital, with support from Queensland government-backed QIC Ventures.
Attekus was founded in 2017 by Tom Muller and Andrew Cutler, who worked together at TechnologyOne, and spotted the gap in the market to modernise booking and event management platform for local government. They developed Bookable, which automates and streamlines booking processes for councils and the broader community, offering features such as automated pricing, invoicing and waitlist management, as well as integrating with existing council systems, including TechnologyOne’s ERP.
It’s now used by around 20% of ANZ councils, and the fresh capital will be used to deepen the product offerings and expand into new markets.
Attekus cofounders Tom Muller and Andrew Cutler
Muller, the CFO, said they set out to bootstrap Attekus from the start, but saw the opportunity to taken the business to the next level with VC support.
“My co-founder Andrew and I chose to build and grow Attekus in a way that ensured we could survive without external funding,” he said.
“The business has now reached a size, and the opportunity ahead of us is large enough that we saw this as the right time to raise capital.”
CEO Peter Suchting, who joined the team last year, said they see significant growth potential in the UK’s council sector, while in ANZ education, as well as state and federal government agencies, have similar complex booking requirements, and the funding will help them target those markets.
“The Attekus team is excited to bring Five V and QIC on board as our first institutional investors,” he said.
“Their combined experience in helping businesses scale across venture capital, growth, and private equity is a huge value add for us as we scale, and their networks have already opened new business opportunities for us.”
Chris Gillings, who led the deal for Five V, said the capital has come from their second, specialist B2B software fund, raised in 2023, investing in startups at Series A and B.
“Attekus has become a trusted partner to local governments, providing an essential platform that meets the complex needs of councils for managing bookings and events,” he said.
“The Bookable platform is loved by its customers – evidenced by the fact that Attekus has yet to lose a customer. Their vision for the product’s broader applicability is exciting, and the team has demonstrated the operating metrics that VCs love to see.”
Nick Capell from QIC Ventures, said the startup’s deep understanding of the challenges faced by local governments allowed them to build a solution tailored to those needs, resulting in widespread customer loyalty and trust.
“The ability to digitise, manage, and streamline bookings for idiosyncratic assets allows Bookable customers to increase revenue and ditch administrative overheads,” he said.
“It’s no surprise more than 80 councils nationally are already on board, including some of the biggest in Queensland, where Attekus can take advantage of high-quality talent to scale their engineering, sales and operations capabilities.”
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