Paris-based Pigment raises €63.7M to help unicorns and soonicorns grow in the right way; here’s how

Paris-based startup Pigment, a startup that claims itself to be the “Minecraft” of business planning software, announced that it has raised $73M (approx €63.72M) in its Series B round of funding. This fundraising comes a year after Pigment’s Series A round and the company’s promise to reboot the spreadsheet.

Investors and capital utilisation

The round was led by US heavyweight Greenoaks. Existing investors including New York-based FirstMark Capital and Blossom Capital also participated in this round. 

Neil Shah of Greenoaks Capital says, “Financial planning & analysis is a critical business function.  But today, most companies rely on software that hasn’t evolved in years — either outdated spreadsheets that are inflexible and don’t scale, or expensive and overly-complex FP&A suites that require an industry of consultants to support them. Today’s businesses demand agile and intelligent tools that will help them make better decisions more quickly. That’s why we were excited to meet Pigment. We believe that the company will rapidly become the market’s clear leader in planning software.”

The proceeds from this round will help Pigment to hire employees and increase resources to meet the massive demand from clients, and to expand their footprint in the US and European markets.

What does Pigment do?

Eleonore Crespo, a former data analyst at Google and investor at Index Ventures, and Romain Niccoli, the former CTO and co-founder of Criteo, an ad-tech company, founded Pigment in 2019.

The founders identified three key roadblocks in planning and reporting – lack of transparency and insight into underlying data behind their business, the sheer quantity of data they had to get their head around, and the static way it was presented, which made it hard to change and manipulate.

As a result, planning and reporting waste a lot of time and money and inevitable mistakes hamper almost all organisations.

According to Eleonore Crespo and Romain Niccoli, “In every category from sales to marketing, innovation has happened – but the most strategic decisions still rely on analysts spending long, painful hours on Excel. We want to help fast growth companies see, understand, and imagine the full spectrum of their business by creating a common language around the numbers that matter. And the proof we’re succeeding in that goal can be seen in our client’s recent successes!.”

Pigment claims to overhaul the painful experience of using error-prone spreadsheets and inflexible software to forecast the future of business.

The company’s platform allows leaders and analysts to understand all of their business data better and anticipate the impact of their decisions with speed and flexibility. Pigment’s technology offers a visually-driven experience that lets users play with different parameters and do continuous forecasting – animating future scenarios and bringing them to life through charts, models and simulations. This enables them to see their business clearly, and make strategic decisions in real time.

Recent growth

Since its Series A funding in December 2020, Pigment has further developed its platform to allow any leader in an organisation to adopt a common language around the numbers that matter, and to work on them in real-time with their teams. The platform has native integrations with Workday, Netsuite, Salesforce, and many other SaaS solutions.

In less than a year, the company has signed some of Europe’s fastest growing businesses, including ManoMano, Melio, Deliveroo, Spendesk, Blablacar, and Cheerz.

In addition, Pigment has also signed top talent. Tech hotshots Julien Lesaicherre and Rebeca Tristan recently left Facebook – where they were in charge of Workplace’s success – to join the Pigment mission as Head of Business and Head of Customer Experience, respectively. The company aims to triple the size of its business team by Q1 22.

The company, after signing new US clients Melio and Algolia, has grand ambitions for the US market. It plans to open US offices in New York and Silicon Valley, hiring across all sales and support functions in 2022.