How Abacum Became the Fastest Growing Tech Company in Spain
🎯 Summary
Podcast Episode Summary: Transforming Finance into a Growth Engine with Julio Martin-Ez of Abercum
This episode features an in-depth conversation with Julio Martin-Ez, Co-founder and CEO of Abercum, an AI-native Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) platform. The discussion centers on how modern finance teams are evolving from reactive back-office functions into proactive growth enablers by leveraging technology to automate manual processes and gain critical business insights. Abercum’s explosive growth—ranked as the fastest-growing tech company in Spain with 6,733% revenue growth over four years—serves as a case study for this transformation.
Key Takeaways for Technology Professionals:
1. The Mandate for Modern Finance: Growth Enablement
- Core Problem: Finance teams are pressured by regulatory changes and macroeconomic uncertainty, forcing CFOs to move beyond manual data wrangling to become strategic business partners.
- Abercum’s Solution: The platform focuses on three outcomes: saving time, ensuring confidence in data, and enabling faster, smarter decisions. This is achieved by automating data wrangling, cleaning, and normalization across financial and operational data, providing a single source of truth.
2. Strategic Importance of Granular Analysis (Shadow P&Ls)
- Fast-growing, multi-product companies (like Abercum’s clients: Moneybox, Banking Circle, Factorial) require deep visibility into performance across various dimensions (products, geographies, customer segments).
- The most pressing request from CFOs is often the creation of “shadow P&Ls”—analytical breakdowns that reveal the true profitability and impact drivers deep within the business, allowing for better capital allocation decisions.
3. Practicality of Scenario Planning
- Traditional spreadsheet-based scenario planning is “very cumbersome,” often turning simple “what if” questions from leadership into week-long projects due to messy data duplication.
- Abercum enables seamless scenario planning because its strong, interconnected data foundation allows users to easily manipulate variables, assemble scenarios, and surface comparative insights rapidly, aligning stakeholders faster.
4. Nuanced View on AI in Quantitative Finance
- Martin-Ez argues that current Large Language Models (LLMs) are fundamentally non-deterministic, making them unsuitable for precise, quantitative financial modeling where exact, repeatable outputs are required.
- The Near-Term Reality: AI/ML excels at automating repetitive, manual tasks. For complex financial use cases requiring judgment, context, and nuance, AI remains a “co-pilot rather than a substitution,” necessitating a human in the loop.
- Future Outlook: He notes that emerging algorithms like Large Time Series Models (LTMs), which couple LLMs with deterministic mathematical foundations, are beginning to address quantitative needs in forecasting and budgeting.
5. Strategic Insight: Efficiency Over Vanity Metrics
- In the current climate, investors prioritize efficient growth. Founders should focus on building strong business foundations rather than chasing pure top-line growth fueled by excessive capital.
- Real-World Example: Abercum achieved tripled year-on-year revenue with a flat headcount, demonstrating formidable scalability and capital allocation efficiency—a key indicator of long-term viability.
6. Spanish Tech Ecosystem Spotlight
- The Spanish tech scene (Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao) is booming, attracting world talent due to quality of life combined with successful scale-up stories (e.g., Factorial, TravelPerk).
- This success fosters a generous ecosystem where established founders advise and angel invest in new entrepreneurs.
7. Actionable Advice & Future Focus
- For Founders: Focus on core business foundations and efficiency; this ensures survival and profitability over the long term.
- For Abercum’s Next Phase: The company is focused on scaling globally, with the US as its fastest-growing market, while continuing to invest at the cutting edge of technology to serve finance teams better.
- Thought Leader Recommendation: Martin-Ez recommends “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius for guidance on decision-making and resilience.
Context: This conversation is vital for technology professionals as it bridges the gap between high-level technological innovation (AI limitations) and the practical, strategic needs of the C-suite (efficient, data-driven growth). It underscores that the next wave of successful enterprise software must deliver demonstrable efficiency gains that directly translate into business impact, moving finance from a cost center to a profit driver.
🏢 Companies Mentioned
đź’¬ Key Insights
"Tripling revenue with a flat headcount, I think, is proof that finance can be a true enabler of growth..."
"Efficiency isn't a buzzword. It's a foundation."
"We tripled year-on-year with flat headcount, which is what we mean by becoming better capital allocators."
"In the long run, what you want to do is to first of all, stay alive and stay profitable, right?"
"Investors are truly valuing efficiency and efficient growth, right?"
"In reality, of course, it matters to grow fast, but in the long run, what you want to do is to first of all, stay alive and stay profitable, right?"