Benford raises €5 Mn in pre-seed funding led by firstminute capital to build the new generation of tech-native audit firm

The funding round was led by firstminute capital, Global Founders Capital and Sondo. The round also included several experienced founders and leaders from the accounting software industry, including Peter ter Maaten of HSO, Arthur Waller and Quentin de Metz of Pennylane, Alexandre Prot of Qonto, and the Spandow family of Amesto.

Instead of selling software to traditional audit firms, Benford plans to operate as the auditor itself. Its goal is to use technology to make the audit process more efficient and modern while handling the full audit process for businesses.

"Audit is one of the few services where the customer experience has got worse every year while the bill has gone up," said Thibault Mallion, co-founder and co-CEO of Benford. "We are not changing what an audit is. We are changing how it is delivered."

"Every attempt to modernise audit has been aimed at the auditor's desk. The firm around it was left untouched.” explains Mads Bogen Øye, co-founder and co-CEO of Benford.

“For twenty years, innovation in audit has meant selling tools to auditors, and most audits are still done the old way. Audit is a huge, structurally overlooked market that nobody has tried to rebuild from first principles,” said Michael Stothard, partner at firstminute capital. “The Big Four are pulling back from the mid-market, and the technology to do this properly has only just arrived. Mads, Thibault and Andreas are the rare team that can both build the software and handle the execution of a full end-to-end service in a complex industry. That combination is exactly what it takes to build the next generation of audit.”

“No process is better suited to automation than audit’s groundwork, and few are less automated” said David Sainteff, Partner at GFC. “It is the clients who pay the price, both in fees and in the internal hours spent facilitating a process that software should be doing.”

Benford is a new technology-focused audit firm that handles statutory audits from start to finish. Instead of selling software to other auditors, Benford works as the auditor itself. It holds the required licence, develops its own technology platform and employs the auditors who sign off on the final reports. Its proprietary platform, AuditOS, connects to a company's systems, collects the required information and carries audit work forward from one year to the next. This allows technology to handle routine tasks while human auditors focus on important decisions. A qualified auditor reviews each engagement, handles exceptions and signs the final audit opinion.

Benford aims to reduce the overall cost of audits without lowering quality. The company was founded by Mads Bogen Øye, Thibault Mallion and Andreas Rystad, who previously worked at Palantir, Goldman Sachs and One Peak. Benford is a registered audit firm operating in Norway, with teams in London and Oslo. The company is backed by firstminute capital, Global Founders Capital, Sondo and founders from HSO, Pennylane, Qonto and Amesto.