Danish fintech co-founded by Romanian launches with EUR 5 mln seed funding

spektr, a Copenhagen-based fintech company that aims to change ongoing due diligence processes in the financial sector, marked its official launch on Wednesday, February 21, after securing EUR 5 million support from venture capital funds. Its founding team includes Romanian Ciprian Florescu, as well as CEO Mikkel Skarnager, Jérémy Joly, and Jan-Erik Wagner.

Skarnager and Florescu successfully sold their previous startup, HelloFlow, to Canadian company Trulioo in 2022 for over USD 50 million.

Even before its official launch, spektr has secured EUR 5 million in seed funding from Northzone (an early investor in Klarna, TrueLayer, and Personio, among others), Danish PreSeed Ventures’ tech fund PSV Tech01 (Vivino and Trustpilot), and pan-European Seedcamp. Both PreSeed Ventures and Seedcamp were also investors of HelloFlow.

spektr’s platform offers financial companies an automated solution for risk assessments that is customizable to adhere to rules and laws across different markets. Recognizing the exponential growth of the compliance field globally, with an estimated cost of USD 10,000 per employee in larger financial companies, spektr aims to simplify risk-based monitoring with a user-friendly platform that does not require specialized IT skills for the user.

“With the spektr-platform, we can make ongoing due diligence an efficient function with commercial value for companies rather than being a costly expense. When looking at the explosion in the number of employees and expenses, I am convinced there is great potential in making compliance a better business,” said CEO Mikkel Skarnager.

Alexander Viterbo-Horten, general partner in PSV Tech01, commented: “As one of the earliest investors in Mikkel and Ciprian’s first startup HelloFlow, I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know them very well. Their execution power and strategic understanding of the financial compliance market are profoundly impressive This makes spektr one of the best bets on a future unicorn out of Denmark.”

(Photo source: the company)