Freelancers, digital agencies, and software studios all have one common goal – to keep their clients happy, get paid for their good work, and attract more clients. However, having a quality product or service does not always mean you will succeed in achieving these objectives and sometimes the small operational details are the factor that makes or breaks a business at the end of the day. Delays can ruin client relationships, lack of proper onboarding and clarity can turn clients away and a not properly defined and controlled project scope can cause margins to fall.
Recognizing the need to prevent such scenarios, the UK-based startup SuperOkay co-founded by the two Romanians Maria Constantinescu and Radu Ceuca has developed a workflow platform that offers an end-to-end solution for managing agency-client relationships. SuperOkay recently secured its first €400k investment in a round led by the Bulgarian venture capital firm Eleven Ventures in which also participated the Romanian venture capital fund RocaX VC and several UK-based business angels.
Bootstrappers no more
This is the first investment that Maria Constantinescu and Radu Ceuca receive since they founded SuperOkay in 2018 with their own starting capital. As Eleven is a leading investor in the round with €250k out of the total €400k investment, one of the Partners of the fund will join the Board of Directors of the Romanian startup.
The solution of SuperOkay, which is currently used by more than 60 agencies in its beta version, aims to help digital agencies, software studios, and freelancers to improve the way they manage sales, workflow, and client relationships. On the one hand, the platform allows agencies to create their portfolios and select prices for their services and, and on the other hand, enables clients to create tasks and track progress, thus improving the efficiency and speed of communication between the client and the agency.
“Eleven is a hands-on value investor that is keenly familiar with both our market, as well as early-stage dynamics. They’ve run a deep, product-focused due diligence process, introducing us to valuable target customers. They also have an ace team in place that brings deep and diverse experience in the SaaS/ Future of Workspace to help prompt key insights and accelerate our growth. We feel so lucky to have such a supportive like-minded investor,” shares Maria Constantinescu.
What comes next for SuperOkay and Eleven’s presence in the region
The funds raised by SuperOkay will be used to boost the development of its sales and customer support teams as well as to power the development of the software solution of the startup.
According to Vassil Terziev, unlike the past two years, when Eleven was mostly investing in Bulgarian companies, the fund is now actively looking at young startups from the country’s neighboring Bulgaria. Terziev shares that there are a couple of more startups from the region which are in the process of finalizing investment rounds with the Bulgarian VC fund.
