Airbase Taps Exec Talent from Robinhood and Dropbox, and Rounds Out Spend Management Platform with New Employee Expense Reimbursements Product

Airbase, the leading spend management platform available for small and midsize companies, today announced the appointment of two new senior hires by adding Jaakko Iso-Järvenpää from Dropbox as VP of Sales, and Archit Shah from Robinhood as General Counsel. Airbase also launched the third product in its platform solution for managing all non-payroll spend; an employee expense reimbursement product is now included alongside a fully automated accounts payable system and software-enabled corporate cards. Together they handle all outgoing payments, from employee request and approval, to payment and booking to the General Ledger. Airbase is the one-platform solution that companies can depend on to scale, from founding to IPO.

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As it races to keep pace with its growth, Airbase has doubled its headcount in the last 12 months and now employs a fully-distributed team located across nine countries. This number is expected to grow as the company seeks to add 50 new members in the next few months. Already in 2021, Airbase has made two senior hires by appointing new VP of Sales, Jaakko Iso-Järvenpää, and Archit Shah as General Counsel.

At Dropbox, Jaakko led sales and customer success teams across both Europe and the U.S. He also helped scale up B2B teams at American Express and Google. He is passionate about building people-first teams, and helping both individuals grow in their careers and customers digitize their businesses.

Archit joined Robinhood in 2016 as their first General Counsel and led the legal team to over 25 legal professionals, supporting several highly regulated businesses and advising on a variety of novel legal issues. Archit previously was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, who, as of 2020, are the largest law firm in the U.S. by gross revenue, where he focused on representing Fortune 50 companies in high-stakes technology litigation.

The new expense reimbursements product processes out-of-pocket expenses quickly and efficiently for employees and accounting teams alike. It does away with the need for cumbersome employee expense reports by providing a simple rule-based system that routes permissible expenses to approvers for rapid response on each transaction. Approval workflows automate even the most complex company policy, and once documentation and information conditions are met, payment is automatically made to the employee’s bank account.

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Airbase rolls out this product expansion on the back of a successful financial year, where the company continued to see strong growth. Notable highlights include:

• Posting a year-on-year ARR increase of 280%.
• 530% growth in payment volume on the platform.
• Adding notable new customers, including Gong, Instabase, Cameo, HackerRank, Lattice, Formstack, Docker, Kajabi, M1 Finance, and Finix, emerging as the spend management platform of choice for fast-growing companies
• Multiple product improvements, including integrations with Sage Intacct, Slack, and Okta, as well as an advanced approvals module, improved purchase order functionality, Apple Pay and Google Pay compatibility, and leap-frogging Bill.com by providing the ability to both pay bills by virtual card, and earn cashback.

Airbase lives its value of obsessing about making its customers happy, which has led to a rare 5 out of 5 score on G2 Crowd, as well as a high NPS score of 74.3 for the second half of 2020. The addition of reimbursements means that companies can fully consolidate multiple best-of-breed tools into one Airbase platform. Multiple companies have replaced financial tech-stacks that include Bill.com, Expensify, and their existing corporate card program, with Airbase’s single platform.

The integration of employee expense into Arbase’s spend management platform has been lauded by customers.
Long-time Airbase customer Desene Sterling, Accounting Manager at Airbase customer Heap, said, “With Airbase we replaced Bill.com, corporate cards and Expensify. This has led to a faster close, access to truly real-time reporting of all non-payroll spend, and a consistent experience for teams across our organization.”

David Coffman, VP Finance at Doximity, says “We’ve been an Airbase customer for three years, and I’m consistently impressed with the pace of development, and the rate at which they bring new products and features to market. My team cannot imagine life without Airbase.”

Airbase Founder and CEO, Thejo Kote, said “I’m very pleased with the momentum so far this year. I’m particularly excited to welcome Archit and Jaakko to the team at Airbase. Both of them arrive with a wealth of experience in their respective fields, and their appointments will enable us to execute on our ambitious goals. We are thrilled to have them on board.

“The promise of the Airbase platform is to deliver essential finance and accounting capabilities robust enough to replace legacy point solutions, like Bill.com, Expensify, and corporate card programs, with a single platform that’s a delight to use for accounting teams and employees alike. With reimbursements, we’ve delivered on this promise. We’ll keep up our end to serve the legions of amazing finance teams out there working to build great companies.”