2019
Swan takes flight
Swan
Past and future
Their story
Since 2019, Swan has operated with an ambitious, kind-hearted culture, and a strong product vision. We move fast, like every startup, but our ultimate priority is to make sure our platform is secure and robust. This is necessary since we work in a highly regulated industry: banking.
We were founded in 2019 with startup studio eFounders, surrounded by the buzzy energy of other budding seed projects. Our founders are all fintech veterans, and our CEO Nicolas Benady is a serial entrepreneur, having already co-founded two successful payment startups - Limonetik and Antelop.
Swan helps over 100 European companies embed banking features into their products, and hundreds more are on the way. We’re a team of over 200, between Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, and more. If you zoom out, our work simply comes down to helping companies store and move money. And this is transforming the very nature of banking, putting its power into the hands of all kinds of tech companies, all across Europe. This is a cultural shift, and we are leading it in Europe. We believe Swan can become a generational company. Our focus is now on building up that long-term vision!
2021
16M€ Series A raised with Accel,
2022
Europeanization, Berlin & Barcelona offices launch 🇪🇺
2023
37M€ SeriesB with Lakestar. Amsterdam office launch
2024
Accepting payments, looking into credit, new regional office openings
Their vision
Our team must grow to reflect the diverse pool of EU tech companies we serve.
A growing team obliges a more sophisticated structure and a People department that’s truly caring. By now, Swan’s culture is well engrained and we’ve got our rituals down! We all come together for our Monday kick-off and Friday all-hands (whether remote or in person). Some online games have achieved cult status at Swan 👾; we play them during coffee breaks. There are running buddies, yoga buddies, and enough musicians to create a band (most of the time we keep our headphones on and share favourites on Slack, but we do have some original singles). Twice a year we go somewhere gorgeous (a chateau, a mountain) where we reconnect, deep-dive into big topics, and relax. We’re fast learning, internationalizing, and excited to see what’s next! 🙌
Company values
✨ Our values:
Swan’s core values guide our actions daily. Individually, they may seem obvious, but together, they form a unique culture.
Simplicity: Leonardo Da Vinci said: “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” If something's convoluted or confusing, we work extra hard to break it down. - Making complex things simple is what we do.
Long Term: We always play the long game, whether it's to support our partners in their growth journey, or make tangible commitments to climate action.
Excellence: We are a team of experts who consistently go all out to create pixel-perfect banking services and exceed our partners' expectations— whatever it takes.
Be Human: We believe in the power of kindness and the importance of acting with integrity. But embracing our humanity extends beyond interpersonal interactions, it means caring about greater issues that affect our planet.
Swan doesn’t want to be the company that pro-claims values but then doesn’t live up to them. We asked the Swan team a range of magazine interview questions as a pulse check at our last offsite. Here's the gist of what they said.
Describe Swan in 5 words:
Ambition, Collaboration, Kind, Joie de vivre, Product culture
What global issues does Swan care about?
Like everyone, Swan cares about a bunch of issues. But we’re especially sensitive to the environment and the planet. 🌍 We signed the Climate Act in 2021, with 100+ fast-growing companies, to make concrete commitments to climate action. We encourage each other to recycle, always. We avoid airplanes. Love trains. And we especially love cycling.
What’s the atmosphere like?
Serious and studious, but not too much. We love bad jokes at our weekly kick-off meeting and creating emoticons of each other on Slack. At offsites: a good party, a bad karaoke 🎤, and a bottle of bubbly. 🍾
Ideal teammate? Sociable. Skilled. Empathetic. Frank. We love to challenge each other, and we leave our egos at the door.
Brightest memory?
There was a range of answers for this one including “champagne night at the castle,” 🏰 and “hike in the mountains.”
How does Swan stand out as a workplace?
Every single answer mentioned the kindness of our team. Other popular answers: transparency, autonomy (we’re trusted to do our jobs well), down-to-earth.
How does Swan dance?
Not so well, by jumping around! (but always to Nicolas Saison’s amazing embedded finance music) 🎧🎶
What languages does Swan speak?
Our main working language is English, but our team also speaks:
Albanian, Arabic, TypeScript, French, German, Go, GraphQL, Kotlin, Japanese, Portuguese, Python, Russian, Scala, Spanish, Thai, TypeScript, Vietnamese...
What are your rituals?
Monday kick-off, Friday all-hands. We have a bunch of beloved online games 👾 we play during impromptu breaks. Twice a year we go somewhere gorgeous (a chateau, a mountain 🏔) to re-connect, deep-dive into big topics, and relax.
Commitments and CSR
On diversity
Swan is committed to providing a caring work environment for all employees, regardless of age, sex, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion, or belief.
When it comes to recruitment, we're interested in your work experience, skills, and overall personality. Because diversity makes the workplace stronger and is necessary for Swan's success, we are intensifying efforts to incorporate concrete actions to help us improve in this area.
We are actively seeking partners who can help us to always strive to be a more supportive and welcoming company for all.
Swan is proud to have launched a partnership with 50intech to boost our diversity and inclusion efforts.
Actions
- We are currently building our career development framework with a special focus on the acquisition of skills to support a fair career path.
- To ensure equal pay we are implementing a salary grid, and we use tools allowing us to have a consistency of salaries according to the level of responsibility and skills developed.
“Diversity matters to us - and it’s well documented that diverse teams perform better! That’s why, as we triple our team size, we’re determined to put more women into leadership positions. We've got our eyes open for talent across all departments. So if you’re a rockstar professional interested in helping a startup scale, get in touch! We think you’ll love the Swan atmosphere: the challenge of a fast-growing EU Fintech, within a caring, open, workplace.”
Amélie Berille, Talent Acquisition Manager at Swan