You may have read about Holvi before, the modern Finnish banking company that do things quite differently to your ordinary bank. Today they are launching a new, fun tool for startup companies, an Apple Template. This will allow startups to compare their budgets and finance with that of Apple circa 1976, their first year in business. So what does that look like? Come and see.
Fed up with the way banking processes have stagnated compared to the way we live our lives these days the team behind Holvi have developed new services and tools to make banking as easy and painless as possible. Firstly accounts can be shared very easily so multiple parties can see what is happening without lots of red tape slowing down the process. The next shock is in the very different was that a user’s account details are displayed. Instead of simply showing a current balance with a historic list of incoming and outgoing financial transactions you see two columns, Income and Expense. These break down into different categories for all the different revenue streams a company, business, association or event might have coming in and out. Each can have a set goal or limit and has a simple pie chart to show you how close to the target you are.
Another of their features is the online shop, a function available so that products and services can be sold through Holvi, for some making another major requirement of a bank account easier and simpler to manage. After all the bank account is tracking all the sales for you.
Their new Apple Template comes out of a wider Template function they have developed. The idea began from a recognition that since banking accounts can be used for a wide variety of different purposes, why do all bank accounts look the same? Shouldn’t the functionality they offer reflect the use the account will have? Out of those questions have come Templates, pre-created account formats for different purposes. There are some for LAN Parties, Sports Teams, Startup Companies, and more. The community of Holvi users has the freedom to create new templates and make them available for others. It is through this collaboration that the Apple Template was created.
Some of the team at Holvi went deep into searching out the historical financial details of Apple’s first year as an operating company to create a template that would show others just how Apple raised their finances and how they spent their money. They hope it will be fun for other startups to compare themselves to the now tech giant, to see how they measure up against one of the industry’s biggest successes. It should also encourage people to play around with Holvi and see how their banking system works, and if that drives interested and curious people to sign up, then I’m sure Holvi won’t mind one bit. It should be noted that Holvi is only available in Finland right now, and that they have a competition running, so if you sign up here right now then you will be entered into a raffle to win either a Jolla phone or iPad mini.
It is with these modern, new ideas that Holvi hope to attract a lot of clients, and it already appears to be happening. At Slush in November 2013 they announced that they had passed €10 million in payments taken and have over 2,000 business and organisations using their services, just in over one year of operating. They began by just focussing on associations and events but are now attracting businesses more and more, as they always planned, and finding that their automatic VAT calculation is very much appreciated in that sector.
So are you a young budding startup, do you think you might be the next Apple, or the next Steve Jobs? Why not go visit Holvi’s Apple Template and compare your business with Steves.
