Top entrepreneurs aren’t born that way, but rather aspire to greatness coupled to hard work, as in the case of Mark Zuckerberg who developed Facebook and its international social media success. Another aspiring leader is Murilo Pinheiro who has launched KOLEK which puts the finances of companies on “autopilot”.
After selling his stake in Smilink, Murilo decided that he wanted to create another highly efficient state-of-the-art business that would revolutionize operational astuteness. After searching for like-minded innovative ideas, he discovered Antler’s acceleration program and went to Singapore.
With the belief that innovating people is the key to building a better future, Antler partners are worldwide. Antler is an investor backing the world’s most driven founders, from day zero to greatness. KOLEK was born!
Kolek is a platform that orchestrates receivables, thus making the process of charging and receiving money from clients more efficient and effective. In other words, according to Murilo the proposal is to put the finances of companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, on “autopilot”. This will happen by consolidating information from different bank accounts into a single panel, taking advantage of the open banking/open finance movement.
With information in a single place, the idea is to allow for the automation of repetitive tasks.
“The proposition comes from the attention to detail that I felt during my career. With operational work finance, it cannot be strategically lengthy to set in motion, so while sales and marketing have advanced tools, finance does not have what it takes to turn revenue into cash”, says the founder.
This belief has given him the edge to create something that will really make a difference to facilitating businesses. By making financial management easier, Kolek wants to help companies control their risk, even allowing them to have better access to credit. “We want to structure the product in such a way that credit providers can place their offers on it”, he says.
Kolek received a pre-seed investment from Antler to start the operation. The amount has not been revealed, but it corresponds to a 10% stake of the company. The project was one of 7 selected among more than 30 initiatives that were born in the accelerator batch.
According to Murilo, the funds raised will be used for customer acquisition and product development, mainly in APIs for integration with banks. Currently less than half a dozen people are on the team, but expectations are to close the year with more. His partner and co-founder, Filipino Neil David, whom he met during the acceleration process will remain in Singapore.
Kolek's accounts receivable consolidation service is currently undergoing quality and performance assessment with a few customers. After validation, the plan is to raise a new round of investment. The expectation then is that the presentation to potential investors will take place on the demo day of the recently opened Antler operation in Brazil which has been scheduled for March 2023.
Murilo also wants to create new products such as Accounts Payable, Cash Flow Management and Access to Capital when seed funds are obtained. “We believe there is great value in being able to aggregate all of a company's bank accounts in one place. This will allow firms to operate more easily and manage their finances in a unified manner.”
“This methodology allows companies to have more flexibility in choosing services and products, and not being tied to just one institution. Open finance is something that allows this and we want to leverage companies in this sense”, explains the founder.
Take care!
Prof. Carl Boniface
I was lucky enough to have given Murilo advanced English classes. He struck me as an extremely smart IT professional then, and clearly, he has what it takes to produce excellence.