Gianluca Treu is the founder of WithLess, a finance automation solution designed to streamline the financial processes of CFOs and finance teams.
As a serial entrepreneur, Gianluca has built several successful ventures. Previously, he founded Guard.Social, a social customer care software aimed at helping enterprise brands deliver superior customer service via social media. He also co-founded Cubeyou Inc, an AI-powered consumer intelligence platform that supports marketers in developing effective strategies for new product launches. Additionally, he launched U3 – Cubeyou, a virtual tour software enabling local shops and restaurants to showcase their stores on social media.
Before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey, Gianluca worked as a Project Manager at Cisco Systems.
Gianluca holds a degree in Business Administration from Bocconi University and the University of Otago.
In 2022, you founded WithLess, a startup focused on software management for finance teams, using AI to optimise costs and streamline procurement processes. What inspired you to create WithLess?
Gianluca: After exiting my previous startup, I knew I wanted to get back to building. My focus has always been on creating businesses that solve real problems and can scale, but this time, I was determined to apply the lessons I learned from my earlier experience. One of the mistakes I made before was not prioritising the market. My last venture was in the market research space, which wasn’t exactly the most exciting or fast-moving sector. You can be mediocre in a great sector and get much better results than being great in a mediocre market. That’s why, this time, I started by choosing a market I’m passionate about and one with huge potential: fintech.
WithLess was born from my frustration with people wasting money in businesses. I wanted to help companies stop wasting resources.
My biggest takeaway as a founder was the continuous struggle with raising capital and managing various aspects of the business. Companies either keep wasting money buying things they don’t really need or to avoid waste they end up structuring complex processes that make them waste time – a significant pain point for me. I wanted to address that, as I’m convinced it’s a common problem for all businesses and founders. We could not start by creating a whole procurement-to-pay solution from day one so we began by identifying the biggest management problem, which was preventing wasteful spending. Through workshops with CFOs, we discovered that the real pain point lay in managing subscriptions and recurring costs. These are often the hardest to control, particularly when staff turnover occurs.
WithLess streamlines financial operations by eliminating unused software, managing renewals, and automating invoice matching. Could you tell us more about the company’s business model?
Gianluca: For me, our business model needed to align with the needs of our customers. At WithLess, our success is directly tied to the savings our clients achieve. We operate with a subscription fee and, in addition, we take a percentage of the savings we help them realise. Our solution is a procurement tool that manages the entire expenses and accounts payable cycle. Initially, we focused solely on managing subscriptions and recurring costs, but we are now expanding to cover the full procurement-to-pay process, including budget requests, approvals, vendor tracking, purchase requests, cost approvals, card issuance, payment methods, invoice retrieval, account closure, and integration with accounting systems.
WithLess aims to help businesses manage expenses and purchasing more efficiently, saving both time and money. AI is integrated throughout the entire process, from the initial procurement stage, where budget requests are challenged by AI, to the reconciliation stage, where invoices are automatically matched. AI also helps classify all transactions, providing an overview of payments already organised by project, etc. Additionally, AI is used to manage vendors. In addition to building a robust database of software and service vendors, our system automatically generates product and vendor profiles, extracting key features and company sentiment. Without any user input, you can instantly know if a vendor is reputable – all of this is automated.
In October 2024, WithLess raised €3 million in a funding round led by Primo Capital. What milestones has the company achieved so far? What is the development plan of the company?
Gianluca: In the past 7 to 8 months, we’ve saved our clients over €2 million and helped save more than 36,000 man-hours, equivalent to 150 working days. We currently have just under 100 clients. We typically serve businesses with at least 100 employees, facing significant organisational challenges, as well as smaller companies who recognise the issue and want to optimise their processes. Moving forward, we are focused on expanding our customer base.
We’ve also expanded our capabilities. Initially, we focused solely on issuing virtual cards. Today, we manage physical cards and bank transfers as well, enabling us to cover all payment types and integrate with Italy’s tax portal (Cassetto Fiscale) and other government systems.
Our goal is to further expand our capabilities, reducing clicks and automating the procurement and payment processes to reduce 85% of the manual work involved. A key challenge is that, in most modern businesses, finance is siloed from the rest of the organisation. Finance handles money and budgets, and operational teams execute tasks, often leading to a communication gap. Our product bridges this gap by uniting all departments in one environment with a single solution that facilitates coordination, collaboration, and leverages AI to reduce or eliminate manual tasks.
The key differentiator between what we offer and other alternatives is that businesses are already doing what we provide but using a mix of disconnected solutions, usually relying on email and Excel. By centralising the entire procurement-to-pay process in one solution, we offer companies the visibility they need, which results in significant time and cost savings. When businesses fragment their processes across multiple systems, inefficiencies and wasted time and money are inevitable. WithLess eliminates that by bridging the gap between finance and the rest of the company.
Reflecting on your experience with your previous companies, what have been the biggest challenges in your entrepreneurial journey so far? And what do you foresee as the next challenges for WithLess?
Gianluca: One of the major challenges I’ve encountered with Whitless is the complexity of developing a fintech solution. Licensing, card issuance, and navigating the regulatory landscape have proven to be more complicated and expensive than I initially expected.
In my previous ventures, the difficulties varied depending on the stage we were at.
In the early stages, the main challenge was the go-to-market strategy. The product itself is rarely the issue. If you know your target audience, understand their pain points, and know how to solve them, you’ll eventually develop the right product. The real challenge is positioning that product in the market and achieving product-market fit. Does your product truly solve a problem? Do customers recognise the problem and are they willing to invest in the solution?
As we moved to later stages, when we had multiple locations, maintaining team cohesion became more difficult. This is a challenge specific to businesses that grow, but finding the right talent is crucial. You need people who are aligned with your company’s current phase. The team that takes you from zero to €1 million may not be the right fit to take you from €1 to €10 million, and they certainly won’t be the ones to scale you from €10 million to €100 million. At some point, you must adapt your approach while still maintaining team structure. Ultimately, you either undergo a significant transformation or you help your team grow in that direction. It’s more of a shift in goals than just professional growth.
When it comes to exits, building a company solely with the goal of selling is one of the biggest mistakes an entrepreneur can make. It shifts the focus to short-term wins instead of long-term value creation. Wanting to sell your company is very different from having someone want to acquire it. That’s why actively chasing an exit is often challenging. Instead, the most interesting exits tend to happen when you put yourself in a position for them to come naturally.
The key is understanding the motivation behind the exit. Whether it’s a full or partial exit makes a huge difference. A full exit is straightforward – you’re stepping away. But a partial exit is more like a merger and requires a partner who is fully aligned with your vision. Ultimately, the decision depends on how much you want to remain involved in the business. If you plan to stay, the dynamics become far more complex.
One final question: What is your vision for the future of the fintech industry?
Gianluca: Finance has traditionally been entirely separate from the rest of a company’s processes. I see the future of fintech and finance as one where solutions are increasingly integrated with operational processes, accompanied by greater automation. At present, more than 30% of a finance team’s time is spent on manual tasks. This needs to disappear, and the only way to achieve that is through integration – finance and payments must become integral parts of the broader business processes, rather than existing as separate entities.
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For more info on WithLess, visit: https://www.withless.com/