Lista

Lista was founded in September 2021 by Kenneth Villegas and Khriz Lim to give Filipino small businesses and individuals a simple way to track income, expenses, and cash flow from a phone, rather than relying on paper ledgers or spreadsheets that most sari-sari stores, freelancers, and micro-entrepreneurs never had time to maintain properly.

The app started as a straightforward bookkeeping and budgeting tool and has since been expanding toward payments and credit products, positioning Lista to eventually serve as a fuller financial operating system for Filipino SMEs and gig workers rather than a record-keeping app alone.

In June 2022, Lista closed a $5.1 million Series A led by Openspace Ventures, with participation from 1982 Ventures, East Ventures, and Saison Capital — funding that has gone toward product expansion and reaching over one million downloads.

Most Filipino micro, small, and medium businesses — sari-sari stores, freelancers, small traders — have historically tracked income and expenses on paper or informally in their heads, making it hard to know real profitability, plan for slow months, or present any kind of financial history when applying for credit.

Filipino small and micro-business owners, freelancers, and individuals who want a simple mobile way to track income, expenses, and savings without adopting full accounting software built for larger companies.

Lista built its bookkeeping tool specifically around how Filipino micro-entrepreneurs actually manage money — simple, mobile-first, and forgiving of informal record-keeping habits — rather than adapting a generic accounting product. Backing from Openspace Ventures and other regional funds at Series A, plus over a million downloads, gave it a real base of transaction data to expand from pure bookkeeping into payments and credit.