I am thrilled to announce that Notion is investing in the €40 million Series B of Cobee. Cobee is an employee benefits and flexible remuneration platform that makes both the company and employees love it. I met the Founder and CEO, Borja, back in 2020. At that time, he was starting the business and, since then, I have been impressed with his ability to deliver consistently and according to the plan. There is a lot to like about Cobee but there are 3 main elements that make me believe  that it can become a $100 million revenue business over the next few years:

1. The market is moving from a rigid benefit package to a flexible model of benefit options; the market of benefits is changing rapidly. Companies use benefits to attract and retain employees. To date, most businesses give employees a pre-defined and rigid package of benefits. Unfortunately, many of the benefits are not suitable or valuable for employees. As a result, companies have started to look for solutions that provide more flexible options to their employees; businesses have already a budget assigned for benefits and Cobee is giving employees the opportunity to get the maximum value out of the budget that has been assigned to them.
   
   
2. Building the OS for benefits: Cobee is building a platform that allows employers to plug in their benefits and have full control and visibility of what their employees are consuming. What’s unique about Cobee is the OS for benefits. It solves two main problems for mid-market businesses: (1) it provides one single point of contact for all the benefits offered to employees in mid-size businesses and (2) it increases visibility and makes it easy for employees to use these benefits through a single app or card. The solution is easily transferable across borders. The company is already operating in Spain and Portugal, and it is about to launch in new territories in the next months.
   
   
3. SaaS plus commissions. The revenue is not only based on a fixed fee (SaaS) that companies pay to manage their whole employee benefit packages, but also the commissions on the GMV that flows through the marketplace of the platform.

In 2019, I invested in the Series A round of YuLife. Both Cobee and YuLife are operating in the ever-growing benefits industry. YuLife has just raised $120 million in June 2022 and continues to grow very rapidly. I am sure there are opportunities for these two companies to collaborate and provide a stronger value proposition to companies that want to provide the best experience to their employees.

I am very excited to be investing in this Series B round with Nick Sando from Octopus and previous investors (and old friends) such as Suranga Chandratillake from Balderton, Oliver Holle from Speedinvest and Oriol Juncosa, who introduced me to Borja back in 2020. I am looking forward to working with you!

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Why Notion? A note from the Founder

We were familiar with Notion for some time before the investment, as they were hosting great content and sessions for founders, which we had taken part in, so we were already impressed by their amount of contacts and knowledge.

However, once we engaged deeper, this initial impression felt small compared to the amount of help they started providing us - even before investing. Their internal platform team really does add value; they put us in contact with several experts that helped a lot with different aspects of our business. Their deep specialization in SaaS makes them really knowledgeable when it comes to both B2B go-to-market and product matters, two areas which were absolutely key focus areas for scaling our business at this point in time.  

In addition, we were keen to avoid opportunistic investors and, with Notion, it did not feel like that at all. They had a thesis about our market, they had been looking at other opportunities and they really bought our vision. That was critical for us as we are building an ambitious vision and we were looking for a long term partner.

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