Meet The Start-Up Taking On The Accounting Software Incumbents

Forbes

6 days ago

Accounting software is big business. Every organisation, no matter how large or small, needs to track its finances rigorously – so it can make proper reports to the tax authorities, for example, but also so it can understand how the business is performing. Grand View Research says the global accounting software market was worth around $19.4 billion in 2024 and that it is on target to reach $31.25 billion by 2030, an average annual growth rate of more than 8%.
However, the market is changing. In an era where data, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) tools make it possible for organisations to operate more efficiently and to generate more valuable insight, many businesses are looking for a broader set of capabilities from their accounting software. It should be able to keep score more accurately and quickly than in the past; it should also help leaders to identify opportunities to improve their businesses.
Nicolas Kopp, the co-founder and CEO of Rillet, argues that only a new entrant to the market is capable of responding to such needs. 'This is a market where we have seen barely any innovation for the last 20 years,' Kopp argues. 'Companies making simple requests of their systems are taking weeks to get answers because those systems are stuck in the past.'
Rillet, launched in 2021 by Kopp and co-founder Stelios Modes, claims it is now resolving such challenges. The start-up, which is today announcing a $70 million Series B funding round, has built a new accounting software package from scratch, utilising AI tools to work through an organisation's financial data. Kopp says that through automation of critical workflows and integration with other software commonly used by businesses – Salesforce, Stripe and Ramp, for example – Rillet can produce accurate reports far more quickly than legacy competitors.
'We can provide visibility into performance in a few hours rather than expecting finance teams and company leaders to wait weeks for critical data,' Kopp says. 'Customers consistently report cutting their close times to just a few days.'
So far, Rillet has signed up around 200 of those customers, and is targeting mid-market businesses rather than the largest enterprises or very small companies. The company says it has doubled its annual recurring revenues in the past 10 weeks alone.
That success partly reflects the high-profile Series A round that the company completed in May. The rapid follow on of today's Series B fund-raising came because investors who missed out on that first round were so keen to back the company, Kopp explains. Today's $70 million raise takes the total amount of money raised by Rillet to a little over $100 million.
This Series B round is co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ with participation from Sequoia, Oak HC/FT and a number of earlier investors. The round will also see Andreessen Horowitz general partner Alex Rampell and ICONIQ general partner Seth Pierrepont join the Rillet board.
'Finance teams deserve the same AI advantages that have revolutionised sales, engineering and legal,' says Rampell of Rillet's value proposition. Pierrepont adds: 'Rillet's AI-native approach can give companies a clear edge through faster insights, leaner teams, and smarter decisions; we believe Rillet will become foundational infrastructure for the next generation of category-defining businesses.'
That's quite the claim. And it's worth saying that the incumbent players in the accounting software market would hotly dispute the start-up's argument that they have failed to innovate.
For example, one obvious competitor is Sage, which also targets the mid market. It said last year that investment in generative AI had already helped it to attract 8,000 new customers and to increase its revenues by 9%. Oracle-owned NetSuite, another clear rival, has also made significant investments in AI, including the launch of a suite of new AI agents.
Rillet is confident it can hold its own against these rivals – as well as other big brands in the sector, such as Intuit and Xero. And its new-found financial firepower will help it compete – Kopp has plans to develop a broader range of capabilities across the enterprise resource planning (ERP) space. 'Our customers are building the companies that will define the next decade of business and we're building the infrastructure that will take them there,' he promises.