Norwegian iFacturas makes Innovate!100 List

iFacturas (earlier no excuse accounting) has made it to the top 100 list outstanding and fast-moving startup companies from around the world. The List was developed after more than 30 Pitch Slam events on five continents over the past 10 months, as part of the Innovate! 2010 program.   Placement on the list was determined by a combination of the company’s G/SCORE assessment, stage and pace of growth, and business potential.

The G/SCORE measures a company along seven factors: overall concept, market opportunity, competitive risk, product development, business development, team, and business model.  In each factor, our judges compare the company to key milestones that represent achievement in business building.  Using the G/SCORE data, combined with other information about the companies, we ranked the startups who participated at each event.

From the bizspark  interview

Tell us who you are and your role in the company:

I´m a «General Ledger Visionary» happened to be the in right place at the right time. I´m the CEO and founder of «no excuse accounting» in Norway and Spain.

What did you do before creating your company?

Creating other companies within the IT and accounting market.

How do you feel being the most promising ‘Startup of the Day’ per Microsoft BizSpark?

I feel excited about promoting our tools to the only companies in the world which can really create new jobs - startups.

What is your company’s mission?

Our mission is to help the Independent Contractor stop losing time and money, by providing his loved smart-phone with an compelling new invoicing, accounting and payment experience, as a service in the Cloud.

In 140 characters or less, tell us what your company does:

100 millions of independent contractors can use smart-phones as their primary computer, allowing them to invoice at the point of service.

How did you get the idea for your company?

I´ve heard the ICs scream for tools to enable them to sell more and easier. And the screams got higher and higher during the crisis. Suddenly, there was the ability to combine our financial UI «for the rest of us» with touch computing and the Cloud and an environment to do it in - BizSpark. We simply had to answer…

Tell us about your funding history. Are you currently looking for funding? If so, how much?

We are looking for €2.5M to penetrate the Hispanic market.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

We are six people right now. Four of them in development.

Are you hiring?  If yes, what are you hiring for and where?

Yes, smart-phone User Experience designers in Spain.

Which platform are you building on?  Why?

We are building on Silverlight, asp.net MVC and Windows Azure. We want to be globally available and dependent on very fast processing, all without to have to pay upfront for the costs.

Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/Internet area?

I foresee that the Natural User Interaction (NUI) will open the computer to people who hasn´t been using them, and facilitating and increase the productivity for us who already use it. The combination of NUI and the Cloud, and the huge step in performance/cost will create an environment where we will see a lot of disruptive solutions.

What do you think about the BizSpark Program?

It´s great. It has been an enabler for us. We were so happy to join BizSpark Camp NYC in January, and that has been a real driver for the company.

Do you have any advice for young Software entrepreneurs?

Don´t even think about having your own «on premise» server park. And start using the highest modeling level that you are able. If you need to store data, please consider using ASP.net MVC 2 and Entity Framework 4 to get the base laid down on Azure SQL!

Who’s your role model?

Leonardo da Vinci.

What’s the ONE THING you would like readers to take away from this interview?

That invoicing and accounting now can be done faster and easier than ever on a smart-phone, still being able to communicate the accounts with advisors and authorities.

There are other scandinavian companies on the list, we will be covering them.

sources: iaktakkelser / innovate100