Can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do at BillGrid?
My name is Anton Mar and I’m a product architect at BillGrid.com.
What motivated you to start this business?
Sure, it’s kind of a usual startup story. A while ago I was running a small business company with several clients. In a typical low budget setup we used emails and Word documents to send invoices and tracked if they were paid by hand. There was a moment where it was painful, but we did not know any better. At one point, we were collecting the paperwork for the taxman and by chance we decided to net total received checking versus invoices for the last 6 months.
Guess what we were missing a huge check that was lost in the mail and neither us nor client realized this for almost half a year! At this point we looked into solutions for managing invoices online and found that too many systems are either too expensive for our use, extremely difficult to use, or not at all customizable in case we want to add our colors and logo. This is when BillGrid.com was born.
How does your online invoicing software integrate with payment systems and cloud accounting apps?
We integrate with online payment systems such as PayPal, Stripe and Google Checkout. We even have a feature to post memos on your Google calendar. At the moment we do not yet integrate with cloud accounting tools, but we might consider that at some point.
Which types of businesses use your software?
BillGrid.com is used by freelancers and small businesses from all over the world. Most companies are in digital media, contracting/consulting or wholesale markets where they frequently deal with sending an invoice to one or several clients.
How many customers do you have?
We have been in the invoicing market for two years and have gained many small business and freelance users from all over the world. Since we are a private company we choose not to disclose our financials publicly.
Which merchant account services can BillGrid users use to accept payments?
BillGrid.com invoices can be easily connected through PayPal, Stripe, Google Checkout and Authorize.net for accepting online payments. We are currently considering other integrations based on our users’ demands.
Can foreign businesses use your online app as well?
Absolutely. Users from over 80+ countries use our system because it supports multiple currencies and time zones.
What are your plans for the future of BillGrid?
We will continue investing efforts in making BillGrid more intuitive and fun to use. We plan on expanding our company plan offerings, which currently include multiple staff and company names, into an even better offering. Lastly, the more customizations we can support, the better, so we definitely have plans to expand there as well.
Are you planning on introducing mobile apps for your software in the future?
We are constantly optimizing our system to accept payments over mobile phones’ email client and browser, but we have not yet figured out a great way of adding a fully featured invoicing system on a small phone screen. We will continue to look into this, so the story is far from finished.
Which SaaS apps do you use at your company?
We are living and breathing SaaS since we believe this is the way of business services of the future. We use many apps, such by Atlassian, Pivotal Labs, UserVoice and others.
What advice would you like to give to other start-ups?
Starting a company is a lot of hard work. Growing a company into a successful one is even harder. The best way to not get discouraged is to keep an eye on the overall growth trajectory rather than short-term gains/losses. You don’t become a professional athlete by running one marathon, so buckle up for a lot of “training” until you get there.
What’s up with your user interface guru Kirill’s picture on your “About Us” page?
Haha, just making sure you were paying attention. 
Anything else you’d like to tell to our readers?
Best of luck to everyone running a small business company and definitely check out our client billing and time management tools If you have any questions, never hesitate to reach out!
Anton, thank you for your participation in this interview!
Daniel C.
Sander D.
