2 million in bridge financing for team software startup awork

In a bridge financing deal, Hamburg-based team software startup awork secures a total of 2 million euros. The money comes in roughly equal parts from the three founders and from a special pre-financing model from Berlin-based fintech re:cap.

At the beginning of 2022, the Hamburg-based startup HQLabs, which would have turned ten this year, announced its exit. Out of around 15 takeover candidates, the founders Tobias Hagenau, Nils Czernig and Lucas Bauche chose BID Equity, also from Hamburg. This is an investment firm that specializes in software companies. The trio of founders invested 3 million euros from the exit proceeds in their new startup awork. While HQLabs was primarily tailored to the needs of agencies, awork addresses an even larger target group and wants to compete with providers such as asana, Monday.com or Trello.

In the current tense economic situation, it has become more difficult for startups to find investors in the short term. Bridge financing, usually in the form of a loan, can help. awork has chosen a different path. On the one hand, the three founders have injected additional capital from the sale of HQLabs into their new company. On the other hand, they are using an offer from the fintech company re:cap, which is aimed at all companies with a subscription model. Tech startups that sell software-as-a-service (SaaS), for example, can benefit from this.

SaaS is a popular business model because it can count on secure revenues over a fixed period of time. re:cap now temporarily takes over contracts with a longer minimum term, pays out the expected revenues in advance and retains a fee for this. Up to 60% of the annual recurring revenue (ARR) can be monetized in this way. Awork, with an ARR of over 2 million euros, has secured around one million in this way. The amount goes primarily into optimizing the product and sales and marketing activities.