We currently serve 350 clients, which include the Volvo Group, Cushman & Wakefield, Atrium European Real Estate and Kross, among others. We acquired our first client, Going. in mid-2018, and it is still with us today. In the enterprise customer segment, we have not lost a single contractor, and we already have more than a dozen. We make no secret of the fact that we are keen on gaining more and more clients within the industry – the largest shopping center management companies use our tool: Atrium, Savills and Cushman & Wakefield.
In the last 12 months, we tripled the number of clients to about 350 today. Our revenues in 2021 have more than quintupled. In 2022, we already expect several million zlotys in revenue.
The first to invest in us – PLN 1 million in 2019 – Simpact fund under the Bridge Alpha program. It was bought out in a January 2021 round worth PLN 3 million, which included JR Holding and Nunatak Capital. The latest round received $1.2 million. It was led by the German fund Sunfish Partners, and FundingBox and the Lower Silesia Investment Development Fund also participated. We will use the capital we receive primarily for three purposes:
- Developing the technology for, among other things, introducing the product into complex contracts.
- Increasing employment from 25 to 40 people this year – we plan to increase the sales team threefold.
- International expansion – we want foreign customers to account for at least 15 percent of revenue this year, and as much as 50 percent in 2023. We are looking primarily at German-speaking countries and the US. We already have global customers who are ready to use our technology also outside Poland.
The PLN 5 million we have received will be enough to implement our plans for several months. We are considering realizing another investment round earlier, if it proves necessary to accelerate overseas expansion. We depend primarily on international funds to support us in achieving this goal.
Our pre-money valuation in the last round was PLN 22.5 million, which is triple the value since the JR Holding and Nunatak investments. We hope to at least triple the value in the next round. In total, Pergamin has already raised more than PLN 9 million from investors.
About Pergamin
Kuba Barwaniec, Piotr Łuczak and Antek Wędzikowski met in college. Later, their professional paths diverged. Years later, they decided to combine their legal and business experience and improve streamlined cooperation between the two. Over time, they became convinced that they had created a product that fit the needs of medium and large companies.
Pergamin has two main categories of competitors. The former include programs like Word or Google Docs, and the latter include electronic signature tools – both of which have significantly less functionality than Pergamin, which is much better suited for contracts. The U.S.-based DocuSign has a similar profile, but its technology was created by combining various tools bought from the market – our advantage is the creation of a unified platform from the very beginning.
A lot of time elapses from handshake to signature on a contract for two reasons. The first is the preparation of the contract, which is why we enable automatic drafting thanks to, among other things, the ability to create templates and integrate with systems such as CRM and ERP. The second is waiting for approval: so we provide sending a link to the contractor, e.g. via SMS, and various, including our own, electronic signatures. In this way, everything can be done on the spot.
An important function of Pergamin is the mass creation of documents by one click, important, for example, when annexing employee contracts.
Among other things, contracts can be divided into two categories. The first are those based largely on a template, bulk – the lease of an apartment, advertising space or the sale of a product. They involve relatively small amounts and are not subject to prolonged negotiation. The second category is contracts prepared for a specific project or that are the result of individual relationships. Usually the negotiations are long and force a lot of amendments, and the process involves highly paid people, including management and lawyers. Our clients have pointed out that despite the smaller number of such agreements, they consume a lot of time and money, so later this year we will prepare a customized product for them in the SaaS model. This will be an additional module, also purchasable to the current package.
