Juan Moliner (Burgos, 28 years old) tells the story of Invopop, the accounting software company founded by him and Sam Lown (co-founder of Cabify) through entertaining life episodes. Moliner had studied industrial engineering at the Polytechnic of Madrid and liked programming, so he specialized in electronics. “I decided to do a master's degree in Industrial Management in Madrid, Milan and Toulouse,” he explains via video conference. He finished and joined the giant Boston Consulting Group. Three and a half years later he had an offer from the company to study an MBA at Columbia University and a promising career ahead of him. Anyone would have called him crazy for quitting, but an inner voice, he confesses, told him: “Don't be a consultant all your life.” “I wanted to set up my own company,” he smiles. Just at that time, a German fund that was dedicated to promoting start-ups contacted him to propose a series of projects. The deal didn't work out, but Moliner saw an opportunity in electronic invoicing, a sector with competition but with gaps to do something different. The other half of the story has to do with Sam Lown, who after eight years at Cabify left the group without losing his fascination with entrepreneurship. Before helping to launch the transport company, he was self-employed, and had already developed his own accounting program, called Autofiscal, «which in itself could have been a start-up,» says Moliner. It was the same program on which Cabify based its accounting. But when the transport company expanded throughout Latin America, they had problems unifying the way of issuing invoices in various jurisdictions. Especially when a good part of the subcontinent's governments were introducing electronic invoicing to avoid fraud. «This forces companies to send the document to local tax authorities, which means that if you are in 10 countries you have to deal with 10 collection agencies or 10 local suppliers,» explains Moliner. Lown couldn't understand it, so he developed a tool to avoid these setbacks, and Invopop was born. “He put an ad on LinkedIn looking for a partner. We had a coffee and within a week we were signing the papers to join,” says the Burgos native. In 2021, the year it was founded, the company obtained half a million euros in financing and last year they closed a second round of 1.7 million. Currently, 500 companies invoice through Invopop, which has won the award for the best start-up at South Summit 2024. “Many of our clients have software that in turn helps other companies issue invoices,” explains the co-founder. Its users are in several countries around the world. “The problem we solve is global, we comply with the electronic invoice of 25 jurisdictions.” A real headache, he confesses, was adapting to the bureaucracy in each place. How do they reach the client? “You're talking to the entire sales team,” Moliner answers with a laugh. “We focus on technology companies that speak our language, we have campaigns, contact via LinkedIn or email. We are good at selling specific software for an industry like the hotel industry.” With six employees and 100,000 euros in turnover, they want to cover all EU countries with their tool in the short term. “We are not going to go crazy growing like when interest rates were zero. We want to be profitable,” he warns, something they hope to achieve by mid-2025. Follow all the information on Economy and Business on Facebook and Twitter. Xor in our weekly newsletter