Investing in Plena Data

Many Finance and Accounting employees spend much of their day stuck on repetitive clerical tasks like processing and inputting data, preparing invoices, and navigating spreadsheets. For example, an accountant might spend hours every day reconciling thousands of purchases so that they match between the bank account and the accounting software — effectively acting like a robot. Manual processes are sucking life away from the uniquely human aspects of work that make people happy and engaged.

Plena Data eliminates the drudgery and delay of manual processes. The company builds Robotic Process Automation (RPA) robots that automate manual processes and complete tasks just like a human would, except the bots are a million times faster and make far fewer mistakes. Employees are then free to do the creative, social, human parts of their job that they love most.

When we met Dave Aditya and Jackson Ostler in early 2021, Plena Data was a small team building out their initial product offering. While we believed it was still the early days of process automation adoption, the RPA market was crowded with large incumbents and fast-growing startups. What attracted us to Plena Data was Dave and Jackson’s unique insight into the underserved mid-market. Unlike existing providers that focus principally on the large enterprise customer, Plena Data was target-built to serve the mid-market, unlocking RPA to organizations without on-staff technical expertise. The Company was uniquely able to serve this target customer because of Dave and Jackson’s ability to educate mid-market customers about process automation, which they had built into their go-to-market strategy.

Plena Data’s initial traction is promising, with the number of new customers and revenue climbing quickly month over month. The customers we spoke with fit the Plena Data target well, most had not been active in the market looking for an automation solution but were contacted by Plena Data with messages of simplification specifically of Finance and Accounting processes. They had similar commentary:  they lacked the technical know-how and understood that they were hiring Plena Data to bring a “turn-key” solution for automation, considered specific-customer customization vital in producing trust in automation, and planned to expand accounts to incorporate more automation. It was clear that customers love Plena Data’s product.

Dave and Jackson’s vision for Plena Data aligned with what we at Elevation Capital see in the future of work, and we are excited to partner with them beginning with the Series A round.