This Dutch Startup Just Raised $1.6M to Kill the 30-Day Invoice Wait

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-24

Imagine finishing a big project, sending the invoice, and then... waiting. And waiting. For weeks. Maybe even months. That's the reality for a huge chunk of businesses in Western Europe, where nearly half of all B2B invoices are paid late. It's a cash-flow killer, especially for small teams that can't afford to float thousands of dollars while clients take their sweet time. Enter Duqu, an Amsterdam-based fintech that just raised €1.5 million (about $1.6 million) in a pre-Seed round led by Curiosity VC and No Such Ventures. Their pitch? Give businesses instant access to the money locked up in unpaid invoices—without the usual headaches of factoring or loans. ### How Duqu Works (and Why It's Different) Most invoice financing options require you to sell your invoices. That means handing over control of your customer relationships and often paying hefty fees. Duqu flips that model. You keep your invoices, you keep your customers, and you get an advance on the amount—usually within 24 hours, often within one. There's no minimum or maximum amount, and you only pay a fee when you actually use the service. That's a big deal for freelancers and small businesses that might need just a few hundred dollars to cover a surprise expense, not a full-blown loan. Behind the scenes, Duqu built its own AI underwriting engine that automates 95% of the credit assessment process. That means they can profitably handle smaller applications that traditional lenders would reject as too costly to process. And they're not keeping this tech to themselves—they offer it as a white-label solution to banks, lenders, and leasing companies. ### The Brains Behind the Operation Duqu was founded in October 2025 by Maas de Goede, Victor Brouwer, and Diederik Nassenstein. De Goede summed up the problem perfectly: "Businesses can arrange almost everything instantly today, yet after completing the work they can still wait weeks to get paid. That no longer matches the pace at which businesses operate. Growth cannot wait for an invoice to be paid." He's got a point. We live in an era of instant everything—instant messaging, instant streaming, instant coffee. But when it comes to getting paid for work you've already done? Suddenly we're back in the Stone Age. ### What the Investors See Herman Kienhuis of Curiosity VC explained why they backed Duqu: "Small applications are relatively expensive for traditional lenders to assess and process. Duqu has built a fully AI-driven credit assessment and processing stack. As a result, businesses with smaller credit or working capital needs can be better served." Thijn van Helvoirt of No Such Ventures added that credit assessment is still a labour-intensive process for many providers. "Processing more applications often means hiring more people. Duqu automates a large part of that process while allowing lenders to retain their own credit policies." He also noted that the same technology can be applied to leasing, mortgages, and buy now, pay later—so Duqu isn't just solving one problem, they're building infrastructure for a much broader slice of the credit market. ### Traction and What's Next Since launch, Duqu has attracted almost 1,500 users and processed €4.6 million (about $5 million) in applications, with more than €1.2 million (around $1.3 million) actually advanced. That's real money flowing to real businesses. The new capital will be used to grow both sides of the business: the direct platform for businesses and the white-label offering for lenders. It's a smart dual strategy—one generates revenue now, the other could scale massively later. For now, Duqu is a reminder that sometimes the biggest opportunities hide in the most boring problems. Like waiting to get paid. It's not glamorous, but it's universal. And if Duqu can make that wait disappear, they'll have plenty of grateful customers.