Every client invoice is a small investment in our product
We've had investors since day one. They just never asked for equity. How 300 € and client invoices paid for every product we've built.
Leer más →New rules are also an opportunity for small companies
When a new regulation arrives, most small businesses groan. I groan too. Then I remember that complicated rules are where small, careful companies tend to earn their keep.
Nobody starts a company to read regulations.
I certainly didn't.
And yet some of the best work a small company can do starts exactly there.
The groan
Lately, the word in every conversation about invoicing in Spain is Verifactu. New requirements for invoicing software. Questions from clients. Uncertainty about who has to do what, and when.
I'm not going to explain the regulation here, and I'm definitely not going to guess at dates. Others know it better, and the details keep moving.
What I want to talk about is the reaction. Because I recognise it in myself.
The first feeling is a groan. More work that nobody asked for. More things to check. More ways to get it wrong. For a small company that already does too many things, a new rule feels like someone adding weight to a backpack you're already carrying uphill.
That feeling is fair. I just don't think it's the whole story.
Every new rule is a problem for someone. For a small company, the question is whether it's your problem or your client's.
Complexity is a market
Here's the thing I keep coming back to. Our clients are clubs, rural lodgings, cultural associations and small businesses with websites. Most of them don't have a legal team. Many don't have an IT person. A lot of clubs and associations run on volunteers' spare time.
When a rule changes, they don't want a lecture. They want someone they trust to tell them what changes for them, and then handle it.
That's not a burden for a company like ours. That's the job.
We've built our business on boring, necessary things. Maintenance nobody notices. Fee collection nobody wants to do by hand. A new invoicing requirement is the same kind of problem: unglamorous, mandatory and stressful for people who'd rather be doing something else.
I suspect big players will handle it for big clients. Small clients will look for someone closer. Someone who answers the email.
Why small has an edge here
I think small companies have a few advantages when rules change.
We're close to the client. We already know their setup, their tools, their habits. We don't need a discovery phase to understand what a new rule means for them.
We can adapt quickly. No committee, no roadmap meeting. If something needs to change in a product, Yeray and I can decide it the same week.
And we have something to lose, which makes us careful. A big company can afford to get a few clients wrong. We can't. That's a good incentive to read the small print twice.
The trap on the other side
There's a version of "opportunity" I don't like. The one that sells fear. Emails with alarming subject lines, promises nobody can keep yet, pressure to sign before the rules are even settled.
I'd rather be the company that says "we don't know yet, but we're on it" than the one that sells certainty it doesn't have. Trust takes years to earn and one overpromise to lose.
So yes, new rules are an opportunity. But the opportunity isn't to scare people.
It's to be the one who reads the regulation so they don't have to.
Nobody starts a company to read regulations.
Some of us just end up being the ones who do.
P.S. If you're a club treasurer reading this with a sinking feeling: breathe. Then ask whoever handles your software. Preferably not at midnight.