Bento for Business (“Bento”), the leading expense management platform for small and mid-sized businesses, has appointed Guido Schulz as its new chief executive officer.
Schulz, who has extensive experience scaling technology companies, will partner with Bento co-founder and chairman Farhan Ahmad to drive the company’s next phase of growth as it serves an increasing number of customers seeking to regain control of monthly expenses and improve cash flow at a critical juncture.
Thousands of businesses trust Bento to manage monthly expenses, eliminate cash leakage and misuse, and improve monthly cash flow. With its customizable suite of spending and expense management tools, business owners and financial controllers set daily, weekly, and monthly spending limits and parameters for where Bento’s physical and virtual cards can and cannot be used. To date, Bento’s customers have saved over $85 million using the company’s controls.
“Bento for Business has built an incredibly intuitive product that directly addresses the core cash flow and operational problems faced by the businesses that drive much of our economy, create jobs, and help build our communities,” said Schulz. “Now more than ever, expense reduction is the single largest area of opportunity for our customers. I look forward to working closely with our team and customers alike to help businesses improve monthly cash flow as they navigate uncertain times.”
Ahmad, Bento’s founding CEO, will remain as chairman of Bento’s board of directors. He will also maintain an active, day-to-day role leading product innovation, operations, and platform strategy.
“We started Bento for Business five years ago knowing that there was an opportunity to provide meaningful solutions to help the growing independent businesses that form the economic backbone of so many communities across the country, grow and prosper,” said Ahmad. “As we’ve reached a new phase of growth ourselves, bringing on Guido is an important step for delivering the same exceptional experience to businesses as Bento’s footprint continues to expand. Guido has an impressive track record scaling companies, and I’m excited to build on our founding vision together: to deliver a healthy bottom line for businesses through unprecedented visibility and control over monthly expenses.”
Most recently, Schulz was the Chief Commercial & Strategy Officer for Merchant Link, which provides a cloud-based payment gateway and data security solutions. Prior to that, he served as the Chief Commercial Officer at Bluefin Payment Systems, where he built a technology-driven payments security division with exponential growth. Schulz joined Bluefin after spending 6 years at AFEX, where he oversaw the strategic business planning, development, and marketing of their payment platforms and products, growing the business to become one of the largest non - bank FX providers in the world.
“Especially in the current reality, small and medium-sized businesses - which represent nearly half of U.S. economic output - need to exercise responsible controls for maximizing monthly cash flow,” said Michael Kopelman, General Partner at Edison Partners. “We’re very excited to welcome Guido to seize this incredible market opportunity and guide Bento’s next chapter of growth.”
Bento for Business, which has grown by an average rate of more than 200 percent since its inception, is coming off its most successful year to date. The company recently launched Bento Pay, a B2B payment product that removes the needs for paper checks for small and mid-sized businesses and introduced a new credit line for qualified customers. As a customer-centric platform that prioritizes the needs of American small businesses, Bento will continue to release innovative product updates driven by sharp insights and customer feedback throughout the rest of 2020 and beyond.