Jorge Lluch, COO & Co-Founder, Abacum
Today we're meeting Jorge Lluch, COO & Co-Founder of Financial Planning and Analysis mid-market leader, Abacum.
Over to you Jorge. My questions are in bold.
Who are you and what's your background?
Personally, I am a husband and a father of three. Professionally, my educational background is in engineering, but I went into management consulting and on to investment banking after graduating.
My first foray into the tech scene was when I had the opportunity to join a tech scaleup in the M&A team. Off the back of this, I was then a CFO and COO in high-growth companies for 10+ years, which allowed me to work with great entrepreneurs and those were the individuals who inspired me to pursue the entrepreneurial route myself.
In the summer of 2019, my friend Julio Martínez from my MBA reached out and said that he wanted to start his own company by building software for finance teams. I got really excited by the idea of building the solution that I wished I’d had for many years. Being forced to work manually from spreadsheets for years had been a particular point of frustration throughout my time as a CFO, especially while other companies and teams had embraced the SaaS revolution. From there, Abacum was born.
What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?
I am currently the COO and Co-Founder of Abacum. I oversee the product and engineering team alongside customer success and implementation, as well as the corporate side of our business - i.e. legal, finance, and HR.
Every week, around 40% of my time is focussed on customer specific work - i.e. meeting customers and managing the customer success team. The rest of my week is divided up between product development matters, sales support actions, and corporate work. Naturally, I also have my regular day-to-day founder tasks too (prepping for board and investor meetings, management team organisation, large-scale events etc.).
Can you give us an overview of your business?
Abacum is the leading FP&A solution for mid-market firms. We enable companies to access much faster reporting, more accurate forecasting, and better budgeting.
Our platform means that finance teams can be much more impactful across their organisation as they can deliver faster and more reliable information and insights seamlessly. They can also collaborate more effectively internally and enjoy a much friendlier user experience, rather than being forced to rely on spreadsheets like Excel or Google Sheets.
Tell us how you are funded?
We are VC-backed by various investors, including Atomico, Creandum, Y Combinator, PROfounders Capital, FJ Labs, Kfund, and s16vc: Portfolio News & Jobs among others, and have raised a total of $45 million in total in the last five years.
What’s the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?
We launched Abacum because we wanted to create a product that we truly wished we had ourselves. Julio and I have finance backgrounds, and we had seen and experienced the very issues that our solution mitigates against.
Both of us therefore got very excited by being so close to the problems experienced by finance teams and understanding the pain points. It didn’t make any sense to us that the finance department was stuck in the past, while other teams had already embraced the SaaS revolution.
Who are your target customers? What’s your revenue model?
We are targeting companies between 200 and 2,000 employees - i.e. proper mid-market businesses across the globe. We don’t have any problems with localisation as finance is an international language and we can support firms all over the world.
Abacum works with some of the world’s leading high-growth, mid-market companies, including the likes of Strava, ezCater, JG Wentworth, RapidSOS, Lendable, Cabify, Freepik, Aiven, among others.
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or fintech sector?
I think we need to find the right balance between regulation and keeping customers safe with enabling and encouraging innovation and improving technology services. We need to allow for innovation and not block it with heavy regulation, whilst also preserving the security of our users. It’s a tricky balance to strike.
What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?
In a world where finance departments are constantly under pressure to optimise operations and adapt quickly to market changes, this can be made a whole lot easier by eliminating spreadsheet-driven inefficiencies and fragmented workflows.
By centralising financial data and automating processes, it not only eases the burden on the finance department, but also means the leadership can make more confident, clearer, more accurate, and faster decisions. Beyond pure software, Abacum truly enables finance teams to shift their work from transactional tasks to strategic delivery.
Where do you get your Financial Services/fintech industry news from? (Give us one or two publications or sources that you turn to every day or week.)
In Spain specifically, you can’t go wrong with Expansión for national business and finance news. Globally, Bloomberg and The Economist are the top of the pile for me. The live market updates from the former and the in-depth analysis from the latter are excellent.
Can you list 3 people you rate from the fintech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?
Somewhat of a self-nomination for Abacum here, but my co-founder Julio Martínez genuinely puts out some excellent content on LinkedIn. He’s consistent with his topics and provides some excellent insight on a range of subject areas.
Nik Storonsky of Revolut and Patrick Collinson of Stripe have always been two of fintech’s biggest innovators and leaders. Young entrepreneurs can learn an incredible amount from them about how to build and scale an early-stage fintech company into a global machine.
What fintech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?
Personally, I use Revolut and Trade Republic. Professionally, at Abacum, we use Ramp , Payhawk , and Brex .
What’s the best new fintech product or service you’ve seen recently?
This has to be Belvo for me. I know the founders well, and they are building an exceptional product that will help so many users across Hispanic America. I believe it will truly democratise access to financial services and improve overall financial inclusion levels in Latin America.
Finally, let's talk about predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the fintech sector?
The next few years are going to be very interesting as the prominence of AI in the fintech space grows. Consequently, it’s going to be really difficult for regulation to keep up with innovation.
As AI continues to evolve, it will result in transformative changes in fintech, including more personalised financial services, advanced fraud detection, and streamlined customer experiences. However, this rapid innovation also raises significant challenges for regulators, such as ensuring data privacy, preventing algorithmic bias, and maintaining transparency in the decision-making process.
Striking the right balance between fostering innovation and protecting consumers will be critical. Fintech companies will need to work closely with regulators to establish frameworks that adapt to the fast-paced changes, while also maintaining trust and fairness in the financial ecosystem. The next 36 months or so will undoubtedly define the future of coexistence between AI and fintech in a sustainable and ethical manner.
Thank you very much for taking the time to participate Jorge!
Find out more about Jorge Lluch on LinkedIn and visit his company Abacum at https://www.abacum.io/.