Elevating Mission

Elevating your financials
Case study

Overview

In 2016, Mission Founder Tom Whittle embarked on a charity cycle ride covering the length of South America. Cycling 12 hours a day for 9 months straight, he wanted any energy boost he could find. He turned to what he so regularly did in his old office job – coffee and artificial energy drinks – which saw him struggle with huge spikes and slumps in energy levels.

After discovering Yerba Mate (pronounced yer-bah mah-tay), he became obsessed with the link between performance and tea. On his return to the UK, Tom – with the help of sports scientists, nutritionists and master tea blenders – set to work testing over 700 blends and researching different ingredients that would truly make a difference when it came to performance and wellbeing.

Mission was born.

Client details

Mission Industry | Health & Wellness Retail Link

Right from day one Altitude have been an incredible support. Whenever and whatever me or my team have needed, Graham and Hayleigh have not only delivered but have gone beyond expectations in terms of timescales, quality and support. They have taken the stress of finance away from me and I love working with the team. Altitude are not just my accountants, they’re my soundboard, my advisors and most of all my partners as Mission has gone through an exciting and critical growth stage.

Tom Whittle Founder

Business challenges

When Mission closed its first SEED fundraise, they had a vision of becoming a multi-national brand and wanted to reach for the heights as quickly as possible. When Mission’s founder, Tom Whittle, first met with Altitude there was a real alignment of values. As one of Altitude’s first clients, the start of the Mission journey was aligned with our own.

Mission wanted to move from a start-up to a multi-national brand but needed to achieve key milestones along the way to successfully manage the fundraising process. The growth trajectory for the first two years saw Mission plan to move from a handful of sales to a £1m company. This level of growth needed clear support and accurate reporting and planning to manage initial seed investors and to lay the groundwork for the next fundraise. There were many opportunities and channels to consider and plan and Mission successfully navigated through this to close the next fundraise of £1.6m in early 2021 with a pre-money valuation in excess of £3.5m.

How Altitude is helping

Altitude engaged with Mission at the earliest opportunity and were able to grow our services with Mission’s growth. Initially, we completely took over the accounting process from the small team at Mission and using Xero and integrating to the Shopify ecommerce marketplace, we were able to streamline the accounting function. Altitude also took this accounting to the next stage by adding a budgeting and reporting tool, FUTRLI, to our offering. Through this, we were able to help scenario plan and produce monthly management reports and quarterly investor reports to help manage the business as well as demonstrate the value of the business to the Investors that helped to lead to the successful fundraise.

Find out more about how we support finance teams by elevating your financials.

Inspired by Tom's story?

Whether our bookkeeping, management reporting, forecasting and budgeting or payroll support slot in alongside your existing finance function, or you want us to take the lead, we’re here to elevate your business whenever, however and whatever the future holds.