Advanon: With Fintech for invoice pre-financing. An interview with CEO Phil Lojacono.

Advanon is the leading platform for pre-financing debtor invoices in Switzerland. Their concept is innovative and has attracted a lot of attention in recent months. Now they are about to make the leap to Germany. Reason enough to have a few words with Phil Lojacono, the founder and CEO of Advanon.

Hi Phil, you are the CEO and founder of Advanon. What is Advanon?

Advanon is an online platform that enables SMEs to have their outstanding accounts receivable invoices pre-financed directly by financial investors. This allows you to bridge the increasingly long payment periods quickly and flexibly. This means that we do not charge any platform or minimum fees, only a fee once the invoice has been financed. For investors, on the other hand, we offer an exciting, unprecedented financing alternative.

How did you come up with the business model and how did you take the first steps?

We three founders got to know each other in Dublin at Google. All of us had already worked in SMEs and all had similar problems, namely the long payment periods of large corporations. This, combined with the fact that traditional financial institutions do not utilize all technological possibilities, quickly showed us that this is a promising business model.

Why did you launch Advanon in Switzerland? How do you rate the environment for start-ups in Switzerland?

As mentioned, we are a very international team. The three founders come from three different countries and we have 15 employees of 10 different nationalities. The decision to start in Switzerland was made firstly because we valued the proximity to capital. This is particularly important for a two-sided platform. On the other hand, we also assumed that we would make one or two mistakes at the beginning. It’s good to make them in a comparatively small market.

We are very happy in Switzerland and are currently structuring our market expansion in Germany. In contrast to many other start-up exponents, I don’t think the environment in Switzerland is bad. Quite the opposite. We are satisfied. Of course, not everything is perfect yet (e.g. taxes, bureaucracy and, to a certain extent, the Swiss culture, which is not start-up friendly). But that’s not the case anywhere else. We like it here ;-)!

One reason why you exist is, to put it bluntly, because the traditional banks are not in a position to really bring new concepts to the market. How do you feel about traditional banks and how do you see their future?

Basically, I believe that both sides will not be successful without the other. The future of the Swiss financial center lies in cooperation between fintech companies and banks. We therefore don’t see ourselves directly as a competitor, but rather as a sparring partner for the banks. We must not forget that banks are very good at a number of things. These include distribution networks, building trust with customers and customer proximity. We believe we can say that we are ahead in technical aspects, but the banks certainly still have an advantage in other areas. If we combine the solidity of the banks with the speed and innovative strength of us start-ups, I see a very successful future for the Swiss financial center.

Are you being noticed by the banks?

Yes, slowly but surely ;-). We have also already concluded two exciting partnerships with BLKB and HBL. This is very exciting and instructive, as two worlds effectively come together.

How is Advanon developing?

Since we went on the market in August 2015, we have developed magnificently. Of course, it could always be more. But we are very satisfied and have exceeded our targets. We are growing in volume by around 35% per month and already traded more volume via the platform in the first half of 2016 than the entire Swiss crowdlending market last year.

Are there any lessons you can share from this development?

We as a team have learned so much during this time. Really incredible. To list them all would definitely go beyond the scope of this article. Basically, I simply recommend that everyone puts together an excellent team. Getting a start-up off the ground requires an incredible amount of perseverance, strength and flexibility. You can only do all this if you have people around you who are better than you in some respects… Fortunately, this is the case with us. It fills me with joy and pride to see how our team shows us time and again how to solve problems.

What are your plans? What about international expansion?

We are currently expanding into Germany. Our aim is to target other European countries from Q3 2017. But of course we are not ignoring our home market. We want to continue to grow as we have done so far.

Phil, good luck and thanks for the interview!