--- title: "From Frustration to Fix: Rillet Founders Drop $100m on Legacy Accounting Pain" description: Rillet's founders turned frustration with legacy accounting into a $100M cloud ERP startup. The story behind the company disrupting enterprise accounting. author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2025-08-06T12:01:00.000Z updated: 2026-04-29T14:17:37.297Z canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/from-frustration-to-fix-rillet-founders-drop-100m-on-legacy-accounting-pain image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/Rillet-CEO-Nic-Sitting-on-Couch.webp categories: Startups content_type: Spotlight region: Europe publication: Sovereign Magazine about: - type: Organization name: Rillet description: "Rillet is the AI-native accounting platform made to tailor fit the workflows of accountants and a full replacement for legacy ERPs. Scaling and hyper-growth companies like Windsurf, Bitwarden and Decagon use Rillet to enable a smarter close with native integrations, automated journal entries and AI embedded workflows.\n\nThey have raised over $100M from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ and others with offices in New York, San Francisco and Barcelona. Find out more at www.rillet.com" url: https://www.rillet.com/ --- Nicolas Kopp had built one of Europe’s most successful digital banks, but there was one thing that made him want to throw his laptop out the window. As US CEO of N26, he would ask his world-class finance team for basic business metrics and then wait. And wait. Sometimes for weeks. ![Rillet ERP 1024x542](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/Rillet-ERP-1024x542.webp) ‘My finance team was world-class, but simple requests took weeks because the systems were stuck in the past’, Kopp recalls. The problem wasn’t talent – it was the tools. While N26 had revolutionised banking for millions of customers, its own financial operations were trapped in the same spreadsheet-heavy, manual processes that have plagued companies for decades. That frustration has now turned into a $100 million business opportunity. This week, Kopp’s company [Rillet](https://www.rillet.com/) announced a [$70 million Series B funding round](https://www.fintechfutures.com/venture-capital-funding/july-2025-top-five-fintech-funding-rounds-of-the-month) co-led by Andreessen Horenz and ICONIQ, bringing total funding to over $100 million in under a year. The AI-native accounting platform claims to solve the exact problem that drove Kopp to distraction: turning weeks-long financial processes into work that can be completed in days. ## The Hidden Bottleneck in Modern Business Kopp’s experience wasn’t unique. [Research shows that only 26% of US companies](https://www.equationtech.us/sage-intacct-blog/sage-intacct-and-the-month-end-year-end-close-checklist) can close their books in less than a week, while many still take multiple weeks for monthly closes. The majority are stuck with legacy ERP systems that, at their core, are what Rillet calls ‘dumb databases’ – they store transactions, but all the real analytical work happens in spreadsheets and bolt-on tools. Finance professionals spend their time on [manual reconciliations, data entry](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/zalos-agentic-ai-finance-seed-round) and wrestling with systems that haven’t fundamentally changed in decades. PostScript, a unicorn with over $100 million in annual revenue, used to follow this painful pattern. Now, using Rillet, they close their books in just three days. Windsurf, one of the fastest-growing companies in recent memory, runs their entire finance operation with just two people. Meanwhile, [traditional ERP implementations](https://medium.com/@anirudh-manthaa/navigating-the-implementation-journey-netsuite-vs-oracle-erp-03052c2b2eff) like Oracle NetSuite can take 12-18 months and cost upwards of $75,000 for complex setups. For manufacturers and other businesses looking for [ERP systems that actually adapt to their needs](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/bonx-bets-mid-market-manufacturers-want-erp-that-adapts-to-them-not-the-other-way-round) rather than forcing companies to change their processes, the challenges are even greater. Rillet’s customers report implementing the system in as little as four weeks. ## Why Start from Scratch? Rather than build another layer on top of broken systems, Kopp partnered with Stelios Modes, the technical architect behind N26’s payment infrastructure, to completely rethink enterprise accounting. Their approach was radical: instead of retrofitting AI onto legacy platforms, they built an AI-native system from the ground up. The decision to start fresh wasn’t made lightly. The accounting software market is worth over $500 billion globally and dominated by established players owned by tech conglomerates: NetSuite by Oracle, Intacct by Sage, Dynamics by Microsoft. These incumbents have had decades to solve the speed problem, yet [many companies still take more than 10 days](https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/accounting/improve-months-end-closing.shtml) to close their monthly books. Rillet’s approach flips the traditional model. Instead of storing transactions in a static database and then exporting to spreadsheets for analysis, their platform applies AI directly within the system. This enables real-time collaboration, automated workflows and instant reporting the moment something happens – not days or weeks later. ## Building with Accountants, Not Despite Them The difference with Rillet isn’t just the technology – it’s who built it. The company’s Chief Product Officer is a former EY controller, the Head of Customer Success came from PwC and the VP of Implementations is a CPA and former customer. This isn’t a group of technologists trying to disrupt accounting from the outside; it’s accounting professionals who got fed up with their tools. That insider knowledge shows up in the results. Since launch, Rillet has signed over 200 customers and formed strategic partnerships with major accounting firms including Armanino (top 20) and Wiss (top 50). The company has doubled its annual recurring revenue over the past 12 weeks alone. ## Perfect Timing for a Broken Industry Rillet’s growth comes at a crucial moment for [the accounting profession](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/black-ore-tax-autopilot-launch). [The American Institute of CPAs reports](https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/the-cpa-shortage-problem) that around 75% of current US CPAs are at or near retirement age and expected to retire within the next 15 years. At the same time, [Accenture estimates that up to 80%](https://www.accenture.com/content/dam/accenture/final/a-com-migration/r3-3/pdf/pdf-156/accenture-fast-track-to-future-ready-finance.pdf) of routine financial operations could be automated using AI and robotic process automation. This creates a perfect storm: finance teams are about to lose their most experienced professionals while being expected to do more with less. Traditional solutions like hiring more staff aren’t viable when [the accounting workforce has shrunk by over 17% since 2020](https://mondialsoftware.com/the-2025-accountant-shortage-why-its-happening-what-skills-are-lacking-and-whether-ai-is-friend-or-foe/) and fewer young professionals are entering the field. Rillet’s platform addresses this crisis head-on. Rather than replacing accountants with AI, it frees them from manual grunt work so they can focus on analysis that actually moves the business forward. Finance professionals can shift from being data entry clerks to genuine business advisors. This approach aligns with broader [AI adoption strategies that help businesses](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/7-key-ai-innovations-for-business-leaders-to-drive-growth-and-gain-a-competitive-edge) grow rather than simply cut costs. ## A Wake-Up Call for Finance Leaders The broader question Rillet raises is uncomfortable: if your finance team is still chained to slow legacy tools, what is it really costing you? While other industries have been revolutionised by AI and automation, finance has largely remained stuck in the past. Sales teams have CRM systems that predict customer behaviour, engineering teams have tools that automate testing and deployment, legal teams have AI that reviews contracts – but finance teams are still manually reconciling spreadsheets. Companies clinging to the old model aren’t just wasting money on software licences and implementation costs. They’re burning their most valuable resource: time. Every week spent waiting for financial reports is a week of delayed decision-making. Every month-end close that takes two weeks is two weeks when leadership is operating with outdated information. The most successful companies of the next decade will be those that recognise finance as a competitive advantage, not a necessary evil. They’ll demand real-time insights, automated workflows and systems that scale with growth rather than hold it back. ## Beyond the Hype Rillet’s ambitions extend beyond just faster book closes. The company envisions a future where businesses can achieve ‘zero-day close’ – completing their financial reporting the same day the accounting period ends. Several customers are expected to go public on Rillet’s platform in the next 6-12 months, which would prove that companies can scale from startup to IPO on truly AI-native financial infrastructure. The [recent surge in fintech funding](https://fintechmagazine.com/news/more-funding-helping-ramp-pick-up-pace), from Ramp’s $500 million round to reach a $22.5 billion valuation to other AI-driven financial platforms, suggests investors see this moment as a fundamental turning point for business software. As [non-financial companies increasingly enter the finance space](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/non-financial-companies-are-becoming-the-future-of-finance), traditional boundaries continue to blur. For Kopp and his team, the mission remains personal. They’re not building software for the sake of building software – they’re creating the tools they wished they’d had when they were trapped by legacy systems. As he puts it: ‘Our customers are building the companies that will define the next decade of business. We’re building the infrastructure that will take them there.’ The question for finance leaders isn’t whether AI will change accounting – it’s whether they’ll lead that change or be left behind by it. **About Rillet** Rillet is the AI-native accounting platform made to tailor fit the workflows of accountants and a full replacement for legacy ERPs. Scaling and hyper-growth companies like Windsurf, Bitwarden and Decagon use Rillet to enable a smarter close with native integrations, automated journal entries and AI embedded workflows. They have raised over $100M from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ and others with offices in New York, San Francisco and Barcelona. Find out more at www.rillet.com [Website](https://www.rillet.com/)