Spenz, a downtown Toronto startup that has created a personal budgeting app for the iPhone and the web, officially launched late last month at the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield event in New York City. After competing with almost 1,000 other companies to be included in the event, Spenz was the only Canadian company accepted.
The company was founded by Justin Hein and Pavel Choulguine in November 2010. They secured angel financing and moved into space at Ryerson's Digital Media Zone, and wound up growing their team to nine staff members in a little over six months.
According to Hein, "Spenz started off slow, with bumpy design, slow development and lost business guys. We were building a business model, coming up with feature sets and constantly changing what Spenz was." In a news release, he added that the Disrupt launch, "was grueling but ultimately rewarding that the judges view Spenz with the same enthusiasm as our investors and team do."
The company claims to offer many more features than standard budgeting applications, with an intuitive back-end that anticipates tags and inputs users will need. Most transactions reportedly take less than three seconds to enter, a major benefit in the market, and the program features a competitive game-like incentive system.
Next up, the company is pursuing another round of financing while it develops its application for the Blackberry, Android and other mobile platforms.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Calvin Sribniak-Jones, Director of Marketing, Spenz