Source: Morning
Maybe the name Morning doesn’t sound familiar to you right away, but if we say “green invoice”, you will surely recognize it right away. After all, the company founded by Lior Wilchinsky, the company’s CEO, and Rami Gabai, the CTO, is the most popular platform in Israel for business management, and serves over 130,000 active businesses, most of them small businesses, that benefit from various digital tools that help understand better your business, and makes complex administrative operations easier: generating invoices, documents and financial reports, managing expenses, clearing credit, online sales, etc. In addition to the business management system, Morning also offers a lot of community content that includes a magazine, guides, a podcast, and a user community. Before In about two years, the fintech company raised 20 million dollars.
Why did you change the name of “green invoice”?
“We did a process to clarify for ourselves who we are, and we realized that we are many things, and we don’t want to limit ourselves. We already have many solutions today that help businesses manage themselves properly, and the thread that connects them all is that we make the complex life of the independents and small businesses much simpler “. Wilczynski says and adds, “We paint the gray things with color and give a lot of energy and time to deal with the really important things and not with everything around that the businesses have to deal with, that’s where the name ‘Morning’ came from – a new day, new opportunities, the sunrise comes and colors the gray and black night in colors and wakes you up, there is a new day.”
Wilchinsky and Gabay have a rich technological background. They met for the first time during their degree studies in computer science and both worked as freelancers for years, before teaming up and founding “Green Invoice”. Lior is a mother of 3 and lives in Nes Ziona, and Rami, also a father of 3, lives in Tel Aviv, where the company’s offices are also located.
Wilchinski tells us that Moring has received a license for open banking, and that it will also connect to banks: “What this will allow is to present the banking information to our users so that they can see everything in one place.” Also the credit cards, the bank accounts, the flow, the payments – all in one place. “A lot of businesses don’t report their expenses because they simply lose them, they don’t notice that they spent. Most small businesses manage their personal account together with the private account so they have no idea how much money they spend or bring in,” she says.
Are there steps you took that made you the market leaders and founders of the category in Israel?
“Listening to customers,” says Wilchinski, “to understand their pain. It’s not that they know exactly what solution they need to answer their pain, they know what doesn’t work and what bothers them. From listening to what’s difficult for them and what their daily life consists of, I think it’s Which helped us.”
Gabbay adds that even today they have conversations with customers, “even customers who left, to understand why, and also when we launch features or try to promote, we share with the customers and ask their opinion in order to feel close to the market. It’s a challenge when there are 130 thousand customers, but we understand that they We know best what they need, our job is to enable their wants and needs.” Regarding entering new markets beyond Israel, he says that “we have tested markets and we are always grappling with this question. It is a world where there is competition, in Israel at the beginning the market was less crowded and part of the considerations is what added value you bring with you” Gabbay notes.
Let’s talk about the trend line, are you going for freelancers and SMB? Why them?
“We came from this place, it is close to our hearts, it is the main part of the economy and the neglected sector. The banks don’t know how to eat them,” says Gabbay, and Wilchinski adds, “Today they already want to know, but it is a segment that is not so clear – on the one hand, private individuals , on the other hand, businesses. They don’t bring their salary slip, their income is not fixed – so they are not understood, and we understand them very much. The world is going there for the market of freelancers and small businesses.” They point out that according to the current trend, the estimates are that in 2030 about 50% of the American labor market will be freelancers.
You have built a brand that leads a category in Israel, do you see any kind of responsibility with the regulator?
“Our mission is to help businesses, and this side is critical to the success of the business and that’s how we see it. We are talking to the authorities and the banks, the Securities Authority and the Bank of Israel and the Tax Authority and we are in dialogue with them about how we can change this reality and there is an openness,” Wilchinsky says, “There are great people who want to change things and move reality and understand that the cheese moves. It is in the interest of all of us – ours, the businesses and the authorities – to change the reality we live in now.”
What do you see when you look ahead?
“The center of our activity is the freelancers, the self-employed and the micro-businesses. In the end, this population needed tools to manage the business, but beyond that – tools that support businesses to develop and grow. We are going to this place that is more financial like financing or Banking as a service as is accepted in the world. The customer meets a place Someone you identify with and you trust him and through him you consume all your business needs” says Gabbay and adds “We think that if we know how to elaborate on the emotion and the place of belonging and value, we can produce something significant”. Wilchinsky adds that “we have the right and the ability to influence the market, this change that everyone is going through and to lead it. This is something that excites us the most and does it for us and leads us – that we can really influence the lives of people here in Israel and hopefully also on the target market the next”.
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