Spend, Scale, Sell: Yokoy’s Path to TravelPerk Acquisition
Welcome back to Scaling at Speed.
Summer’s officially here — and if last month’s conversation with TourRadar’s Travis Pittman had you dreaming of multi-day getaways, this month we’re staying on theme (sort of).
This time, it’s not about planning the perfect holiday — it’s about planning the perfect acquisition.
We caught up with Philippe Sahli, co-founder and CEO of Yokoy, the AI-powered spend management startup recently acquired by TravelPerk.
From door-knocking for first customers to navigating a saturated market, Philippe shares how Yokoy scaled smart, focused deep, and ultimately joined forces with one of Europe’s leading travel tech unicorns.
Scroll down to read the full story, learn what made the acquisition make sense, and get Philippe’s advice on building enduring businesses (even in crowded categories).
An excerpt from Philippe's interview 👇
One of Yokoy’s key innovations was the then-novel but now ubiquitous use of AI to analyse receipt pictures to create invoices. “We were the first kind of launching that app where you could just take a picture and it would actually not only read out a couple of things, but read out everything necessary to build a finance posting."
Beyond the challenges of building AI tools that could read receipt data, Yokoy also pushed to develop tools to make integrations more straightforward for finance and accounting teams at companies. In particular, the team built out a machine-learning technology model that managed VAT rates for different countries, working out tax deductibles on behalf of businesses.
Even with a strong AI backbone, integrations have often proved to be a challenge for all providers in the space, with different services often requiring vastly dissimilar APIs, software management, and even language.
"Integration is one of the biggest difficulties in the entire expense or spend management industry. And the one to travel is especially difficult because there are so many exceptions,” Philippe said.
"To make an integration perfect, it is almost impossible, because both tools are also developing at the same time."
Upcoming Events: Will we see you there?
Catch the Speedinvest team attending & speaking at leading conferences and exclusive events across EMEA. We would love to meet you!
- Tech BBQ – [August 27-28, Copenhagen] We'll be in Copenhagen in August for the city's annual summer Tech BBQ. Join us and 10,000+ founders, investors, and industry leaders at the largest startup and innovation summit in Denmark.
- Out of Office – [August, Various Locations] Research has proven that taking a vacation not only improves our health and well-being, but also benefits the bottom line. That's why many of our team will be enjoying a healthy summer hiatus. We hope you'll join us!
👉 Check out future events we'll be attending on our blog.
From the Investors' Desk
From deep sector expertise to our take on the future of tech and venture capital in Europe, here are some of our recent musings from social media.
Our GP Andreas Schwarzenbrunner weighed in on news that European VC Fundraising is on path for a decade-low. A weaker exit market environment and limited returns have taken the total raised to its lowest point since 2015, once again highlighting the importance of secondaries and DPI for European VC.
Despite these trends, the exit market is still real and alive!
This month, our portfolio company, Fertifa, acquired insurance player Juniper – a move our partner Andrea Zitna was quick to congratulate. Plus, product analytics startup, June, announced it's joining forces with Amplitude. Our partner, Fred Hagenauer, celebrated the news and the long-term working relationship with the founding team.
👉 What else we're reading:
Whose job is safe from AI? - The Financial Times
EU Inc: 'If Europe wants global champions, it must play to win' - Sifted
Germany and France Vow to Help Europe’s Startups Tap Financing - Bloomberg
Thanks for reading — see you next month,
Have feedback, suggestions, or topics you'd like us to dive into? Email us at press@speedinvest.com.