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How Sleek is Redefining the Accounting Landscape with Adrien Barthel
Adrien Barthel, co-founder of Sleek, shares how a frustrated French e-commerce entrepreneur built a cloud accounting platform now operating across Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, and Australia.
About the guest
Adrien Barthel
Co-Founder of Sleek
Adrien Barthel is the co-founder of Sleek, a cloud accounting and company registration platform operating across Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, and Australia. Before Sleek, he spent seven years in e-commerce in Southeast Asia, including as CMO of Luxola, which he helped scale to 11 countries before selling to Sephora in 2015. He has never worked in France.
Episode overview
Adrien Barthel joins Steve Grace on Give It A Nudge to talk about how a French entrepreneur’s frustration with traditional accountants turned into Sleek, a cloud platform handling company registration, accounting, tax, and payroll in four countries. The conversation covers Sleek’s expansion from Singapore to Australia, the challenge of entering new markets from zero, and what Adrien learned about trust and team-building as the company scaled.
Born from frustration with paper-based accounting
During seven years building e-commerce businesses across Southeast Asia, Adrien’s constant frustration was his accountant. Paper-based, expensive, and indifferent to clients. When he and his co-founder mystery-shopped competitors before launching Sleek, they found firms making 40% margins with terrible customer satisfaction scores. The opportunity was obvious: bring accounting into the cloud with transparent pricing and genuine client obsession.
“I decided to stop being French at some point and build a solution instead of just complaining about how miserable it is.”
Adrien Barthel 01:30
From Sephora exit to Sleek
Adrien’s first encounter with Australia was selling lipstick. As CMO of Luxola, a high-end cosmetics e-commerce platform, he helped scale the business to 11 countries before selling to Sephora in 2015. After two years inside the Sephora machine, he realised his real pain point was not cosmetics logistics but the accounting and admin that came with expanding into every new market. Sleek launched in Singapore in 2017, expanded to Hong Kong in 2019, and used COVID to remotely open the UK and Australia.
Launching Australia from zero
Adrien moved to Sydney less than a year before the episode to personally lead the Australian launch. He loves the zero-to-one phase of startup life, calling it “the most painful but also the most interesting” because you are learning how to make fire. The Nudge Group helped set up Sleek’s business in Singapore years ago, and Steve notes the seamless experience as an example of what the product promises.
“Launching a new market is again like going from zero to one. And that’s really the phase in a startup life that I really cherish the most.”
Adrien Barthel 00:30
Key takeaways
Chapters
00:00Introduction and the zero-to-one phase01:30What Sleek does and how it started05:00Adrien’s e-commerce journey and the Sephora exit10:00Expansion from Singapore to four countries15:00Building the team and trusting at scale20:00Cultural adjustments in new markets
Mentioned in this episode
Frequently asked questions
What is Sleek?
Sleek is a cloud platform that handles company registration, accounting, tax, and payroll for entrepreneurs. It operates in Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK, and Australia with transparent pricing and digital-first workflows.
Who founded Sleek?
Adrien Barthel co-founded Sleek after seven years in e-commerce, including scaling Luxola to 11 countries before selling to Sephora. His frustration with paper-based, expensive, and unresponsive accountants was the direct inspiration.
What countries does Sleek operate in?
Singapore (2017), Hong Kong (2019), the UK, and Australia (both launched remotely during COVID in 2022). Adrien moved to Sydney to personally lead the Australian market launch.
Does Sleek only do accounting?
No. The original product was streamlined company registration. After incorporation, the platform extends naturally into accounting, tax filings, payroll, and business activity statements.
What was Luxola?
Luxola was a high-end cosmetics e-commerce platform that Adrien helped scale to 11 countries across Asia Pacific, including Australia. It was acquired by Sephora in 2015.
Topics discussed
Full transcript
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Show full transcript (28 minutes, 6 sections)
00:00 Introduction
Steve: Welcome to Give It A Nudge. Today we are extremely lucky. We have Adrien from Sleek on the show. I met Adrien gosh maybe three, four years ago when the Nudge Group launched into Singapore and they were epic in terms of setting up our business there. He is now launching all over the world.
Adrien: Launching a new market is again like going from zero to one. That’s really the phase in a startup life that I really cherish the most. The most painful one but also the most interesting one because you’re really learning how to make fire.
01:30 What Sleek does
Adrien: At Sleek we like to say that we’re giving back time to entrepreneurs by taking away all of the admin and tax pain. I spent seven years as an e-commerce entrepreneur in Southeast Asia and during seven years the rock in my shoe was the admin part of the business. I was dealing with accountants that were super traditional, everything paper based, very expensive, and they could not care less about their clients. I decided to stop being French at some point and build a solution instead of just complaining.
05:00 The Sephora exit and e-commerce background
Adrien: I started in Indonesia as head of e-commerce for Carrefour. After two years I joined the founding team of Luxola, a high-end cosmetics e-commerce website. I was their CMO. We scaled to 11 countries including Australia and New Zealand. My first encounter with Australia was actually selling lipstick. In 2015 we sold the business to Sephora. I stayed two years and then realised my true pain point was in the accounting space.
10:00 Expansion from Singapore to four countries
Adrien: We started in Singapore in 2017, launched in Hong Kong in 2019, and during COVID we were blocked in these two clusters. We took advantage of COVID to actually remotely open the UK and also Australia back in 2022.
15:00 Mystery shopping the competition
Adrien: At the very beginning when my co-founder and I were assessing the market, we started to engage as mystery clients with a few operators. Each time the sales experience was horrendous. Then we downloaded their financial statements and they were making 40% EBITDA for a negative satisfaction review.
20:00 Team building and cultural adjustment
Steve: As much as you employ professionals to do these things for you, you need to learn these things yourself. You need to educate yourself not to the point of the real technicalities but as to the ways things work.
About the host
Steve Grace is the CEO and co-founder of The Nudge Group, a talent and advisory firm working with Australia’s fastest-growing tech and professional services companies. He has spent two decades recruiting and advising executive teams. Give It A Nudge is where he shares unfiltered conversations with founders, operators, and investors building something worth talking about.
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