Software startup Hudled, which has designed dashboard for growing companies to track and optimise their software stack, has raised $640,000 in a seed round as it officially launches the product and looks to expand into the US.
The raise was backed by Black Nova Group, Antler and Sydney Angels, as well as several high profile angel investors: Justus Hammer (founder/CEO of MadPaws and early advisor to Airtasker), Christian Wanner (co-founder Le Shop) and Josh Kalderimis (co-founder, Travis-CI).
Hudled is an Antler Australia startup that emerged amid the chaos of the 2020 pandemic. Co-founders Alex Millar and Santiago Bravo only met once before they built the business remotely. In just five weeks they managed to develop the initial product to a low-code MVP, lock in their first paying customers and nail a $155,000 pre-seed round from Antler.
Over the last three months, the Hudled team has grown to eight, and will officially launch its product in April 2021.
Even though it’s been in beta phase, the venture has already gained a A-list of Australian tech startup customers, including Employment Hero, Airwallex, Legal Vision, Simply Wall Street and Autopilot, analysing more than $10 million of software spend in its platform.
Hudled plans to reopen its waitlist ahead of the platform’s launch next month.
The duo estimate that around 30% of paid subscriptions sit in a business unused amid an increasing maze of SaaS products.
To build Hudled, they spoke to nearly 100 team leaders about their SaaS management and discovered that 42% had no formal processes to manage onboarding new SaaS tools and 50% could try new products for productivity and collaboration without business approval.
Black Nova Group managing partner Matt Browne said Hudled offers “unprecedented levers to companies” when it comes to managing and controlling software.
“Spend creep on average tech is a major hassle and Hudled ensures only the best SaaS will survive in customers’ stack,” he said.
Bravo said that gaining their seed investment rewrote the rules for startup founders.
“The accepted, often dogmatic truth among every reputable investor is that founders should share a prehistory,” he said.
“Alex and I are proof that the contrarian approach is just as likely; two co-founders that have never met before can actually build a company together.”
Bravo says the rapid adoption of department-specific software, often without IT support, and coupled with the the new WFH approach has created a tracking nightmare for finance and operations teams.
“By syncing in real-time with popular accounting software tools such as Xero, Netsuite or Quickbooks, Hudled helps teams regain control and visibility of what they are spending,” he said.
His co-founder Alex Millar said that since closing this seed round, they’ve hired four engineers and are now investigating entering the US market by Q3 this year.
The seed round will see Hudled accelerate the development of its first product offering company-wide visibility and actionable insights to identify savings, and build a partnership network to offer exclusive software rates.
So far the team has secured +250 partners among leading SaaS companies such as Zoom, Monday.com, 15Five and Semrush, to help customers pay the most competitive rates at every stage of their growth.
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