Billing is where the truth lives

Billing software never gets the keynote slot at a conference. It probably should.

Sequence, the London and New York startup that automates billing, payments and revenue management, has been bought by Intuit. The Times puts the price at around $200M, so read that as reported, not confirmed. Founded in 2021, about $40M raised, a16z and Passion Capital among the investors, and customers like Legora and Cognition.

Why I care about a billing company at all: the most honest data in a SaaS business is rarely in the product dashboard. It sits in the invoices. Who pays, how much, for what, and the month they stop. Usage tells you what people do. Billing tells you what they actually value.

And once pricing becomes usage-based, which most AI products already are, billing stops being an admin tool. It becomes part of the product. Get it wrong and your best customer gets a surprise invoice and a very good reason to look around.

Then the familiar part. Built in London, bought by an American company. Good outcome for the founders, and I don't see it as a failure. I'd just like to count more European companies on the buying side of deals like this.

I saw it via Tech.eu, who picked it up from the Times.