Lynne Darcey Quigley, the founder and CEO of Know-it, gives an exclusive interview to Dimitra Triantafyllaki and emeastartups and talks about a range of topics concerning female entrepreneurship, Startups and fintech among others.
emeastartups: Can you tell us a few things more in-depth about Know-it?
Lynne Darcey Quigley: Know-it is a revolutionary new platform as it is the only credit management platform that offers a true end-to-end credit control solution.
It works by automating the complete credit control process, allowing businesses to effectively mitigate credit risk, reduce debtor days and boost cashflow!Know-it works by bringing together the 3 key elements of the credit control process, we like to call the 3C’s; Check-it, Chase-it and Collect-it.
– Check-it: Facility to credit report and monitor, alerts to any changes to your customers behaviour through real-time integrations with several public and third-party data sources.
– Chase-it: Automatically chase overdue invoices using customisable email, letters and SMS, seamlessly synchronising with your accountancy package.
– Collect-it: Helps facilitate the collection of unpaid and overdue invoices through our partner Darcey Quigley & Co, UK leading commercial debt recovery specialists.
emeastartups: How did you create it, what was the aim and the idea behind it?
Lynne Darcey Quigley: Late payments are a massive problem for SMEs in the UK with businesses chasing £61 billion in late payments. This is an increase of 22% since 2020!The impact of this on UK businesses is devastating. 400,000 small firms are already threatened by late payment as costs surge.Until now, managing cashflow involves juggling numerous platforms and dealing with late or unpaid invoices is stressful and resource intensive.
Know-it was founded to help combat the dramatic effects late payments are having on businesses.
emeastartups: What challenges did you have to face and how did you finally overcome them?
Lynne Darcey Quigley: We have high ambitions for what we want Know-it to achieve so this combined with some user-feedback has meant our product roadmap is ever expanding with tight deadlines. Due to constraints internally we have decided to expand our operations and brought on additional staff and resource, almost doubling our development team!
emeastartups: Did the pandemic affect you? How?
Lynne Darcey Quigley: Much of the early development of the platform was done during the height of COVID which made collaborating effectively more challenging as our team were all remote working.
However, we weren’t hindered too much. We were still able to deliver the full platform and launch our beta version all during the pandemic.
emeastartups: How has fintech affected companies? Do you think that in the near future every business will turn to fintech?
Lynne Darcey Quigley: Technology as a whole has hugely affected companies, for many businesses our processes and tools are totally different to those we used even just a few years ago.
Our financial processes are next in line to be disrupted, presenting a massive opportunity for fintechs.We are beginning to see it now with Making Tax Digital and open banking.
Technology is so ingrained in our day to day lives, applying it to our business finances is no different. Businesses are seeing the value of running more efficient processes and having access to wealth of data they otherwise wouldn’t have without fintech.
emeastartups:How is the tech sector in Scotland? Please give us some details and tell us how do you see the future of the sector in the coming years.
Lynne Darcey Quigley: The tech sector in Scotland is extremely rich and vibrant. We’re all extremely proud to be part of it and the community here is booming.
Organisations such as Fintech Scotland, Scottish EDGE and FutureX all give tremendous support to tech companies in this country.
The sector will only go from strength to strength thanks to the strong ecosystem we have here for tech companies all the way from startups to full fledging multi-nationals, who still call Scotland their home.
emeastartups:How do you see female entrepreneurship nowadays?
Lynne Darcey Quigley: There’s never been a better time to be a female entrepreneur!
Schemes such as AccelerateHER and Business Women Scotland are helping female entrepreneurs thrive.
emeastartups:What are your goals and ambitions for the future?
Lynne Darcey Quigley: First things first our priority is to help resolve the crippling late payment problem that is impacting so many businesses in the UK.
We launched our beta at the end of last year and received a lot of praise and some valuable feedback. As I said we want to make Know-it the best platform it can possibly be so we’re always optimising the platform and working on bringing even more features to the table that will all help businesses maximise their cashflow!
Late payments are a global problem. We have big plans to expand globally beginning with markets such as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
emeastartups: How would you use a seed funding? How would it help the company?
Lynne Darcey Quigley: There is a huge opportunity for Know-it and potential investors and our seed funding round will help us seize it!
Our seed investment will be used to develop and launch new features we have planned that will help businesses maximise their cashflow to combat late payments.
We’re in the process of developing our mobile app and investment will help accelerate the development and launch of this.
Acquiring new users will always be a priority of ours so we will be allocating a large proportion of investment to our marketing spend.
To meet our ambitious growth plans we’ll need to make a few key hires to bolster our team across all functions of the business.
There’s definitely a lot to be excited for in the very near future!
emeastartups: What would you say to young entrepreneurs who enter the field especially now after the consequences of the pandemic?
Just go for it!Your biggest regret will always be “what if I had just went for it.”There is so much support available to entrepreneurs, particularly in tech. Use this support and embed yourself in the community.