
Stampli starts with the invoice and automates the work around it. Melio starts with the payment, keeps the entry price low, and asks small businesses to buy more control only when the workflow gets complicated.

Julien Bek is a Partner at Sequoia Capital's London office, one of the most storied venture capital firms in the world. A Geneva native who studied at Warwick Business School and the University of Cambridge, he started his career as an entrepreneur — founding one of Europe's first e-cigarette companies at age 18 — before transitioning into venture capital at Global Founders Capital and then Accel Partners. At Accel he backed breakout companies like Revolut, Melio, Miro, and BeReal. He joined Sequoia in September 2023 as a London-based partner focused on early-stage European and global tech companies. In March 2026, he published the widely-read thesis 'Services: The New Software,' arguing that the next trillion-dollar company will sell outcomes rather than software tools, using AI to automate service delivery at scale.