In Conversation With Chris Pettit, CEO And Co-Founder At Revving On How Messy Industries Often Hide The Biggest Opportunities

Tell us about Revving

Revving is a fintech platform that exists to address a very specific problem: to end extended payment terms in adtech and the broader digital economy. In many parts of the ecosystem, publishers, agencies and networks are still waiting 90 to 120 days, or even more, to get paid – a practice that stifles innovation and growth.
Revving was founded to change that. Our mission is to transform when and how the industry gets paid, replacing month‑long payment cycles with immediate access to revenue.

We’re doing that through a Revving-pioneered, next-generation liquidity model called Transactional-Based Funding (TBF). This form of funding is purpose built to grease the financial wheels of the digital economy, demonstrating factoring as defunct in the current age.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

David Mandeno and I met while working in media investment and repeatedly saw great digital products hampered by cashflow. In mobile gaming, for example, developers have to pour money into user acquisition while waiting months to be paid for in‑app ads.
We realised that extended payment terms are endemic across programmatic advertising, affiliate marketing and the broader digital economy. Combining our backgrounds in finance and technology, we saw an opportunity to turn the wealth of real‑time transaction data into funding. We spent several years building the technology required to capture and underwrite that data. Revving is the product of that work – a platform that is purpose‑built to close the cashflow gap for digital businesses through TBF.

Tell us about your core technology, RevHub

RevHub is our customer portal, and it is at the heart of Revving because it is the interface through which TBF functions for our clients. It integrates directly with hundreds of digital marketplaces, capturing granular sales data and providing immediate access to revenue before an invoice is even created. Customers log into their portal to see their eligible revenue sources, draw down advances and track repayments. For finance teams, it’s also a centralised reporting tool, consolidating debtor data and giving full visibility over cashflow.

What most excites you about the adtech industry?

Adtech is one of the fastest‑moving parts of the digital economy, and new channels such as connected TV and AI‑driven targeting are opening up opportunities for publishers and agencies of all sizes. But the threat is that as budgets tighten, cashflow becomes the determinant of who thrives. So what excites us is being able to level the playing field with our TBF model: by enabling immediate payments, we allow smaller players to invest in innovation and compete on creativity, not on their balance sheets.

We also see a shift toward building sustainable relationships in programmatic, based on equitable terms and mutual trust rather than purely transactional deals. Revving’s role in promoting on‑time payments sits at the heart of that evolution.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome along the way?
The biggest hurdle, honestly, has been inertia. Late payments have been normalised to the point where the digital economy shrugs and carries on. Creativity and finance rarely sit at the same table, which is why building a solution meant integrating across the whole supply chain. Convincing partners and clients to change entrenched processes has required patience and education.

What is your number-one piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Focus on solving a real, painful problem and be prepared to go deep on one vertical. We could have built a general‑purpose finance business, but by specialising in the digital economy we were able to understand the contracts, relationships and data flows that really matter.

Don’t accept it when people say “that’s how it’s always been done” – messy industries often hide the biggest opportunities. Build transparency and trust into the product from day one, and surround yourself with people who complement your skills. Finally, be agile: listen to customers, adapt quickly and be willing to challenge your own assumptions, just as we encourage our team to do.

What can we hope to see from Revving in the future?

There’s a lot on the horizon. From day one, Revving’s TBF liquidity model has demonstrated factoring as outdated and defunct, in terms of what we’re trying to do. Our recent £107 million funding round – combining equity and debt – means we can finance up to £1.8 billion for UK digital businesses over the next three years. We’re expanding partnerships with affiliate networks and SSPs; our partnership with Awin, for example, gives publishers quicker access to commissions and advanced reporting.

You’ll also see enhancements to our customer portal, RevHub, including self-serve eligibility tools and deeper analytics, and we’re exploring opportunities in adjacent digital sectors. Above all, we will continue championing immediate payments and working to make late payments across the performance industry a thing of the past.