Some startup stories are built around explosive growth. Others are built one customer, one market and one month at a time.
Last week, Startup Wise Guys portfolio company CostPocket was acquired by Swedish fintech Mynt, bringing together two companies that already knew each other well. CostPocket had previously partnered with Mynt to launch its business cards using Mynt’s payment infrastructure, making the acquisition a natural next step in an existing relationship.
For us, the news also brings the story back to 2018, when CostPocket joined a Startup Wise Guys batch.
Back then, the team introduced themselves as some of the biggest “receipt nerds” we would ever meet. And they meant it.
Digitising receipts and removing manual work from expense management was not exactly one of the buzzier startup ideas of the time. But underneath it was a problem businesses dealt with every day, and one that the CostPocket team believed could be solved much better.
As Alexa Balkova from Startup Wise Guys remembers it:
“What they were building didn’t sound particularly sexy back then, and at times it felt almost impossible. But the need was clearly growing. They were diligent and incredibly consistent. It wasn’t hockey-stick growth, but every week and every month they were showing progress, adding customers and proving that the product was becoming something businesses genuinely relied on.”
Startup Wise Guys became one of CostPocket’s early customers as well as an investor. That gave us a different view of the product: once it became part of the company’s workflow, it was difficult to imagine going back to the old way of handling receipts.
That steady progress continued. CostPocket expanded into new markets and built deep integrations into the accounting ecosystem. Today, its platform connects with more than 40 accounting and ERP systems and serves more than 16,000 registered companies.
Now that journey enters a new chapter with Mynt. CostPocket will continue operating with its existing product, brand and team, while gaining access to Mynt’s scaled payment infrastructure. Mynt, in turn, adds CostPocket’s expense-management technology, local expertise and established presence across Finland and the Baltics.
For us, this is also a reminder of something we have seen repeatedly over the years: great companies do not always look spectacular at the beginning. Sometimes they simply find a painful problem, solve it exceptionally well and keep showing up month after month.
From the “receipt nerds” we met in 2018 to becoming part of one of the Nordic region’s growing fintech platforms, it has been a journey we’re proud to have been part of.
