Senta, a Webstart Bristol company that wants to help accountants worldwide run their practices via the cloud, has raised £75K on Seedrs in less than a week. Created by James Kilford and Phil Murphy, Senta’s ‘streamlining accountants’ software works by providing accountants powerful features to schedule tasks and deadlines, help with marketing and CRM, and to improve security and customer service. As co-founder James tells us: “We’ve started with Senta with a really simple concept: to build a great cloud service to help accountants run their practice really smoothly.”
You can see more in the video Senta made for Seedrs below:
It’s clearly a project that is getting noticed, just this morning the Seedrs newsletter announced that Senta was the ‘Biggest Mover by Percentage Raised’, ‘Biggest Mover by Amount Raised’ and ‘Biggest Mover by Number of New Investors’. So what do they plan to do with the money that is being raised?
“We plan to use investment for marketing, new features and integration with other products,” says James. “We want to extend the platform with features that will delight our customers, and we plan to run marketing campaigns that will get Senta in front of accountants all over the UK.”
James tell us that they are pleased with how the Seedrs campaign has been going: “Although there are a multitude of ways to raise money, working with Seedrs brings some major benefits. One of those is the way in which individual investors are so committed to what we’re doing. During the last few days we’ve had many offers of help, advice and expertise from investors and we really appreciate those very much.”
“Senta has spent the past year building and refining their product in conjunction with a group of test customers and now they are ready for rapid growth”
Mike Jackson, the man behind Bristol-based tech incubator Webstart Bristol which the startup was involved with said of Senta “Having identified a market opportunity to provide a new cloud service to help accountants worldwide with Practice Management, they have spent the past year building and refining their product in conjunction with a group of test customers and now they are ready for rapid growth.”
So what has it been like building a company like Senta in the South West? James explains: “Being based here in Bristol has been incredibly helpful. There’s an incredible tech buzz around the city and it’s apparent when we talk to people from around the country that Bristol has a great reputation as a really modern, cool city. That’s helped a lot. Plus there are loads of groups here that support tech businesses – SWUX, AWS, Bristol JS, SimpleWeb… it’s extraordinary.”
“Being based at Engine Shed, and being part of WebStart Bristol, have really given us a leg up”
“And, of course,” James adds, “being based at Engine Shed, and being part of WebStart Bristol, have really given us a leg up. Nick Sturge, Mike Jackson and their teams, along with Invest Bristol & Bath, have been so helpful. And so have the many entrepreneurs who are based at the Engine Shed or who have been through the WebStart incubator programme. There’s a really strong sense of teamwork among us.”
Talking of teamwork, we asked James if there is any way people can get involved with Senta. “Absolutely. Phil and I both have backgrounds as software developers, and I think the one thing that we both recognise is that communication is at the heart of any good software project. As we launch and work with our first customers, we want them to be totally involved with our product. We’ve got some terrific ideas about how we can make our practice management platform really great, but it’s the customers who validate our ideas… and help us deliver.”
We featured Senta on TechSPARK previously as the startup took part in the Silicon Gorge 1.1. pitching competition last year – we always knew they were going on to major things!
If you are interested in investing in Senta, you can still do so here: Senta on Seedrs. You can keep up with Senta at the Senta website or by following them on Twitter: @sentaHQ
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