At Uber, Gurjit Pannu remembers moving billions in cash across bank accounts globally, realizing almost immediately the importance of effective cash flow management.
Christian Sobkowski, meanwhile, recalls his days working in financial services, most notably at PayPal, where helped expand the company’s business across Europe.
It’s no wonder then, that the two decided to come together as co-CEOs, pairing their financial backgrounds to create a company that, in hindsight, would have made Pannu’s former day job much easier.
“With Treasury teams deciding how the largest corporations move cash around the world, it became obvious that guiding those money flows was worthy of bringing the best talent to re-think how it’s done,” Sobkowski told TechCrunch.
The result is Palm, launched in 2023 with the goal of making cash management for enterprise treasury teams easier. Today, it’s announcing a $6.1 million seed round led by Speedinvest and Target Global. The company has built all-in-one platform to let businesses move money between hundreds of bank accounts and subsidiaries in a more efficient way.
Palm’s platform tracks daily money movement, and the setup process takes weeks rather than months like traditional treasurer systems, the founders claim. It also has an automated feature that provides tailored cash forecasting in a way that the company says outperforms human models at least 75% of the time.
“Although we had a treasury management system, all of the forecasting and money movements were managed in spreadsheets because the systems we used weren’t reliable enough to build the process around,” Pannu recalled of his time at Uber. “They required tons of workarounds and costly customization to meet our requirements. With an ever-evolving business, we couldn’t invest the time [or] money to customizing a process within the tool that would later become redundant.”
For many companies, Pannu says the executive of payments is quite straightforward — but the friction and decision-making leading up to making such decisions is “arduous.”
“Treasury teams must retrieve balances across hundreds of accounts, understand the funding need on these accounts, determine when the payment is required to ensure it gets there on time and determine the correct commercial instrument is being designated for the movement,” Pannu mapped out. “Teams must also have the funds follow an intricate map across entity structures to ensure compliance.”
In other words — it’s a lot of work that perhaps could use some automation.
Palm has clients listed on the NASDAQ and NYSE but declined to share their names. Palm plans to use the fundraise to expand its team, especially within product and engineering. The company’s closed beta is also now accepting new customers. The company’s beta ends at the end of this year.
This story was updated to reflect the proper spelling of SpeedInvest.
Source @TechCrunch
