[Startup story] DDD Invoices | Rubik Garage Accelerator spring of 2023

[Startup story] DDD Invoices | Rubik Garage Accelerator spring of 2023

May 28, 2023

DDD Invoices is one of the 24 startups selected in the 2023 spring cohort of Rubik Garage Accelerator, from over 170 applicants from all over the world. Discover its story below. 

First of all, we would like to know who’s behind the keyboard.

Hello, my name is Denis Vehovec and I am the founder and business development manager of DDD Invoices. 

We specialize in electronic invoicing software that is globally compliant and can be integrated with 1 API.

Tell us more about your startup. What problem do you solve? Who’s your audience?

In Europe, B2B electronic invoicing will be mandatory in 2 to 3 years, affecting over 45 million companies. We provide global electronic invoicing solutions for these SaaS, ERPs, independent software vendors and enterprises. By using our product, companies gain instant compliance with the latest regulations in their desired e-invoicing countries. The electronic invoices can then be easily distributed to local tax authorities and global e-invoicing networks by email, PDF, or .XML. This allows our customer base to scale with ease through the ability to sell anywhere instantly and acquire new markets. 

Our clients experience flawless connectivity without any further maintenance. They can send electronic invoices globally without worrying about syntaxes. These invoices can be safely stored for up to 10 years in our digitally signed and legally approved archive. 

The DDD Invoices product allows businesses to automate their invoicing process by setting it up for a specific client and never again. This frees up time for employees to work on more complex processes and leave the repetitive tasks to us. We provide a management module where you can take care of invoices for you or your clients.

The DDD solution is built on a powerful back-end development platform, currently responsible for projects of both private and governmental nature. We aim to create long-term partnerships with independent software vendors (ISV) throughout Europe and beyond. Our potential clients in addition to ISVs, are marketplaces and e-commerce platforms, software development houses, digitalization companies and enterprises with their own software.

What motivated you to create this startup? What’s your „why”?

I wanted to create this company after seeing a gap in the market after hearing about the recent changes to electronic invoicing legislation. We started by creating a web application for SMEs to solve electronic invoicing and fiscalization in Montenegro. From there, we realized that there was a need for a global API. With our CTO, we decided to pursue this venture. 

By nature, I want to push myself out of my comfort zone and I was thrilled by the opportunity to lead my own team in a constantly evolving industry that is transforming how businesses operate. It is also very gratifying to see the effect of my decisions in action and have a big impact on the beginning of an enterprise.

How is your startup different from competitors?

Our startup is based on a capable cloud platform that can scale extremely easily and offers compliant e-invoicing to the whole EU in a very short amount of time. Our user services platform (USP) can help companies streamline their operations, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction by providing users with a single, integrated platform that offers a range of services and features. Our platform is designed to be user-friendly, so even those who are not tech-savvy can easily navigate and utilize our system.

We already have 35 years of experience in the field of business informatics and have led our team to develop a straightforward, effective solution with direct integration. With a single API integration that takes only 1-3 days to install, we allow our clients to focus on their core business processes and skip the development of e-invoicing & real-time reporting in multiple countries.

We have made our system invisible to the end users by utilizing a white-label UI that integrates seamlessly with our client’s interface. This approach not only adds more features to customers existing products but enables them to preserve their brand identity. It is done by embedding visualizations or editable UIs directly into software branded with their logo.

Tell us more about your team. 

Our CEO and head of business development is Denis Vehovec who established a successful e-invoicing and fiscalization application in Montenegro and Serbia for over 1000 SMEs.

Dušan Pondelak developed the DDD Invoice solution over 10 years and collectively has over 30 years of IT and e-invoicing projects at a governmental level.

Tomaž Grosman is the head of our marketing team and had previously worked for one of the leading Slovenian e-commerce brands where he managed accounts with an annual budget of over 6M EUR.

Stefani Josifovska, our front-end developer and UX developer, is a mechanical engineer turned developer who is an Engineering Ring holder for one of the best engineering graduates in the Republic of Macedonia.

Aljaž Prah is our full-stack developer who participated in the implementation of numerous e-invoicing projects and electronic document interexchange systems.

Miha Jan is our head of APIs and documentation who created and maintained HRM for a Slovenian Public Institution and helped develop multiple fiscalization & e-invoicing projects in Slovenia.

Sara Bremšak is our digital marketing specialist who is currently also completing her Master’s degree in Business Informatics at the University of Ljubljana.

What are your plans for your startup in the next 6-12 months?

As a team, we have a couple of big goals to launch our startup to success in the upcoming year. In the next six months, we plan on having a monthly recurring revenue (MRR) of 10,000 EUR with over 100 API integrations and 4000 clients. Within this period, we plan on growing our company by hiring new developers, sales staff and expanding our marketing department. We aim to partner with Shopify to offer our service as a plugin on their site. 

In a year, we plan on adding a payment processor, embedding UI, increasing the number of customizable builders and aiming to integrate with even more partners. We believe that through these valuable partnerships, we will be able to reach an MRR of 100,000 EUR with 1000 API integrations reaching over 100,000 clients. 

Through steady growth based on a foundation of a well-developed product, we believe that we could potentially become the number one e-invoicing API in Europe in the next 2 years and the top global provider in the next 5.

What are the biggest rewards of being a startup founder?

There are many positive aspects to my career journey as a startup founder. Firstly, it has been incredible to witness a company expand from being just myself, to now, my steadily growing team. The feedback from our potential and satisfied customers has also been incredible to hear and pushed me to be even more motivated to try to reach as many people as possible. Through the past year and a half, I have been able to expand my skill set from a BSc in Sports Science and event management to becoming a team leader and acquiring knowledge about marketing, sales, business development, and UX design. 

What about the biggest challenges?

Thus far, our biggest challenge has been finding the investors and customers through which we would be able to gain the monetary capability to grow our team and business. With increased funding, we would be able to reach our goals much faster, but hey, if becoming a successful business was easy, everyone would own one. 

What made you apply to our Rubik Garage accelerator?

We wanted to apply to Rubik Garage for many reasons, the foremost being that we were excited to hear that Rubik Hub had over 100 mentors and many startups who already attended the program had left good reviews of the event. Through applying to the accelerator, we hoped to gain some valuable insights into business development that would jump-start us into the market and possibly meet other companies to partner with or become potential clients of our service.

We specifically resonated with the “growth-oriented” mindset that Rubik Hub speaks of and the ability to tailor the workshops around our specific business model.

As previously mentioned, our most significant hurdle was financing and we were particularly excited to attend the accelerator after discovering that past alumni had secured millions of dollars in investment. We were eager to leverage the invaluable resources and networking opportunities provided by Rubik Garage to help overcome this challenge.

Top 3 learnings of the accelerator until now?

1. Connections are key.
2. Funding can be done in many different ways and stages.
3. We are not alone on this journey.

How was the bootcamp for you?

It was great! We got to network with many other startups and learned about their specific industries and challenges. We also got to speak with different mentors who already funded or helped to create many successful businesses. Moving forward, we hope to maintain a relationship with them and continue to create a strong community.

What do you like in the Rubikorns Startup Community?

The Rubikorns Startup Community was very welcoming and it was great to be in contact with so many like-minded, ambitious startups facing similar issues. We felt very comfortable asking questions and it was a fantastic learning environment where we were able to learn from each other and the mentors. 

What message do you have for other startup founders?

Seek out mentorship and support. No one can do it alone. Look for mentors who can offer guidance and support, and don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Companies like Apple and Google were once a startup too! 

We encourage you to support DDD Invoices and follow their journey on Linkedin.

Stay tuned to discover the story behind the other startups from our accelerator! #WeAreInThisTogether

Rubik Garage is an equity-free acceleration program aiming to support startups from CEE get to their first paying customer, raise investment or go international.