Curriculum vitae - Lena Varga

Lena Varga

Software founder and writer

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Summary

Founder and CEO of Tallybook, an invoicing service for freelancers run without outside investment since 2019. Co-founder of Paperweight (acquired by Northfold in 2019). Writes The Small Ledger, a monthly newsletter on running small, profitable software companies.

01

Experience

  • 01

    Founder and CEO

    Tallybook · Lisbon

    Built an invoicing and payment-reminder service for freelancers from one paid plan to 20,000+ paying customers and $2.1M in annual revenue, with a team of nine and no outside investment.

    2019-10 – Present
  • 02

    Co-founder, product and operations

    Paperweight · Lisbon

    Co-founded a paid note-taking app for university students with Tomás Reis; grew it to 38,000 paying users and led the sale to Northfold in 2019.

    2014-05 – 2019-12
  • 03

    Founder

    Quietdesk · Vienna

    Designed, built and sold a paid focus timer for desktop computers; closed it after a year and wrote up what went wrong.

    2013-02 – 2014-06
  • 04

    Billing analyst

    Danubia Freight · Vienna

    Rebuilt the payment process for about 200 self-employed drivers, cutting the average time from delivery to payment from 41 days to 12.

    2010-09 – 2013-01
02

Education

  • 01

    B.A. Economics

    Department of Economics, Budapest · Budapest

    Thesis on late payment among small suppliers in the Hungarian printing trade.

    2006-09 – 2010-06
03

Writing

04

Skills

  • Pricing and packaging
  • Billing and payments operations
  • Product design
  • Hiring small teams
  • Technical writing
05

Languages

  • Hungarian Native
  • English Fluent
  • Portuguese Professional
  • German Professional
06

Talks and recognition

  • 01

    Forty small companies to watch

    Makers Quarterly (Tallybook)

    2025
  • 02

    Charging from day one, again

    Kettle & Code podcast, episode 140

    2026
  • 03

    The price page is the product

    Receipt Club, Lisbon

    2023