The startup Pliant could soon become a unicorn. But that’s not important for co-founder Malte Rau. Rather, it’s about the long term. And the stock market.
The two founders Fabian Terner and Malte Rau. Pliant/Collage: Dominik Schmitt
Business trips, expenses, flat-rate costs: Anyone who wants to bill something through the company is often exposed to annoying and complex tools. And in quite a few cases you have to advance the money first. The Berlin startup Pliant has simplified this and developed credit cards that companies can make available to their employees – in virtual or analogue form.
Founded in the middle of the Corona pandemic in 2020 by Malte Rau and Fabian Terner, the company has achieved remarkable success and asserted itself in the highly competitive fintech market. In February 2023, Pliant said it successfully completed a Series A financing round and secured 26 million euros (28 million US dollars). The Series A round was led by the Japanese financial investor SBI Investment, followed by the VC fund Alstin, which belongs to Carsten Maschmeyer’s group, and MS&AD Ventures from San Francisco.
The Commerzbank venture capital arm Neosfer and scene leader Ramin Niroumand also took part again. The money enabled Pliant to become active in seven additional European markets and to increase its customer portfolio sixfold. Now the startup could soon become a unicorn if development continues like this.
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Pliant is silent about specific numbers
In April of this year there was fresh money again. According to Pliant, the Series A round was expanded and brought in more than 18 million euros in additional funding. Since then, investors have included PayPal Ventures, the investment division of the American direct payment service. In total, Pliant received more than 50 million euros in the Series A round. A further 100 million euros were added via external financing in January 2024 via Varengold Bank. With this, Pliant promoted its e-money license and now operates in 25 countries and eleven currencies.
Due to its continued success, there is speculation in the scene about when Pliant will become a unicorn, i.e. when it will reach its billion-dollar valuation. While the industry speculates about the timing, Pliant doesn’t want to know anything about it. “Of course there is hope that we will achieve unicorn status, but we are very ambitious in working to ensure that it is a long-lasting and long-lasting business,” says co-founder and Pliant CEO Rau Gründerszene.
It’s not about the status of a unicorn. It’s more about establishing a long-term business model with Pliant: “Both Fabian and I, we are both “in for the long run”. Our goal is not to sell for a few hundred million as quickly as possible. We believe that if we do everything right, Pliant will eventually go public and create long-term value.” Unicorn status or not.
Like the portal “Finance Forward“ last reported that Pliant is expecting recurring sales of at least 25 million euros annually. The company’s business is expected to be profitable just four years after its founding. According to the report, Pliant is valued internally at 250 to 300 million euros. Rau did not want to comment on figures and evaluations for Gründerszene.
Pliant also had problems
The company has had to struggle with problems off and on over the past four years. “We really had everything, from Corona, Ukrainian developers to Wirecard. And people always asked themselves: Why is this happening right now, when we need money? These are not the things you plan,” he says.
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A collaboration was planned with the payment service provider Wirecard, for example. Wirecard was supposed to act as a banking partner for processing credit card payments. Shortly before the start of the partnership, Wirecard went bankrupt and scandalized. This means that the planned collaboration with Pliant also falls apart. According to Rau, why Pliant is where it is today is also due to its own convictions and the fact that it did not allow itself to be dissuaded from the planned path.
“I’m not the WeWork founder now”
“Investors also told us, you have to make a decision. Either you do your direct business or your indirect one. We have both and will continue to do so. And it was good to see that it worked,” says Rau. And it should continue to work. He wants to stay at Pliant for a long time and has no thoughts of leaving early.
No matter how the company develops. But if one day he realized that he was no longer the right CEO or “motivator” or that he no longer enjoyed his work, he would leave. Pliant would then work without it. “I’m not the WeWork founder who tries to establish his children as successors,” says Rau. But until this point comes at some point, it is positive.
And if this moment suddenly comes? Then Rau would be out for now: “If I had to do something else starting tomorrow, I would, to be honest, take a little break. A few months to just see where the journey goes.” He reveals that he would rather not start a business again. And, Rau might then have a normal weekend.
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Because he currently works on Saturdays and Sundays instead of taking time off: “I keep extra slots free on the weekends in which I work. That’s about four hours on the weekend. I try to work more specifically on the weekends in order to have more controlled working hours during the week.” There is no time between family and work. That’s why hobbies are difficult for Rau. He could pursue this too if one day he were no longer the “right one”. But he wouldn’t be able to withdraw completely. “Maybe I would make a discovery with smart people I work with today.” But it may take some time until then for his taste.
