Spiff is now $150,000 (NOK 1.3 million) closer to its planned launch in Norway this fall. The financing was announced by Spiff CEO and founder Carl Nicolai Wessman on Shifter.com and shared with readers on the new Spiff blog. The investment comes a year after the company raised more than $300,000 (NOK 3.5 million) from a group of investors including Founders Fund, and Sverre Munck, the chairman of Opera Software.
The current financing was led by Silvija Sere and Mildrid Raade, veteran investors in the industry, and the company’s first female angel investors. “We built a product for women, so it makes sense to want women on-board,” Spiff’s blog post read this morning. “However there are actually very few women that make angel investments today. That’s why we’re incredibly excited to introduce our first female angel investors.”
From left: CMO Kristin Moller and CEO Carl Wessmann, founder, demonstrated the Spiff app at FinovateEurope 2016 in London.
“I started Spiff (two) years ago from my own savings with Steve Mellbye-Stolen,” Wessman says. “Now we (raise) NOK 1.3 million, and (we are) particularly pleased that it came from two women investors.” Silvija Seres is a partner at TechnoRocks and serves on the boards of a number of financial services and technology companies, including Nordea. Mildrid Raade is a marketing strategist and private angel investor who recently finished an executive MBA thesis on disruption in banking.
In addition to the funding news, Spiff reported that it is joining forces with Fink, a developer startup with experience working for companies such as Microsoft as well as fellow Finovate alums Telenor and Encap Security. Fink will handle engineering with founding partner Svein Halvorsen joining Spiff in August. Calling Fink a match in terms of values, Spiff’s Wessmann praised the team of full-stack developers as “perhaps among Europe’s best.”
Founded in January 2015 and headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Spiff previewed its savings app and service designed especially for women at FinovateEurope 2016 in London. Check out our Finovate Debut post on Spiff from this spring.