Insight
Hiring senior talent from day one accelerates startup growth, says Crespo
“Finally, something we did with Pigment was to hire very senior talents day one. And I can tell you that this is a very big accelerator as well of growth for two reasons. First of all, senior people, they have their own network, so they are going to bring also,…”
Insight
SaaS founders should prioritize customer quality over revenue, says Eléonore Crespo
“Why you should actually pay more attention into your customers than into your revenue.”
Insight
Crespo makes prospective VCs introduce portfolio companies before accepting investment
“What I love to do, you know, when someone is interested in pigment is to actually tell them that, you know, if They start making a couple of intros to their portfolio companies. Not only their portfolio companies will benefit a lot from probably, you know, loo…”
Insight
Recommend competitor tools to bad-fit prospects to build trust, advises Crespo
“If some people look at the door and want to buy your product, but yet are too small or too big for you, I would strongly advise you to build trust with them by recommending competitive alternatives.”
Insight
Iconic early customer logos signal product trust to VCs, says Crespo
“One thing that always got up our attention at Index was when companies very early stage would come and talk about some iconic brands they managed to sign very early on, and that would always trigger our attention because we would think, well, You know, they pr…”
Assertion Contradicted
Pigment signed Figma, dbt, Carta, Brex, and Gong within six months
“Some are actually iconic SaaS brands, so you probably know the Figma, the DBT of this world. Some are very famous brands for CFOs, Carta, Brex. Some are iconic brands for sales team. I can talk about Gong, for instance.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Economic crisis will severely constrain enterprise IT budgets, predicts Eléonore Crespo
“We have a very big economic crisis ahead, and the IT budget are going to be very much constrained, and so this trust and credibility you can create with your customer is going to be even more critical.”
Insight
Founders should define their Ideal Customer Profile before launching, says Crespo
“What is going to be key for you is to first of all draw a picture of your ideal customer profile. And you shouldn't do that three, four years down the line. You should do that even before starting your company. You should do that when you're actually designing…”
Disclosure
Pigment targeted post-Series B and C startups for its initial GTM
“What we decided to go is to say, okay, look, we still want to sign very big next generation market leader that experience still a massive pain, you know, companies that are post-series B, post-series C, that are struggling with spreadsheets, but yet are very c…”
Insight
Founders should select investors based on their customer acquisition networks
“So even before choosing the partners that you want with you around the table, my number one advice would be to think what VC, what advisor, what angel, what operator has the network that I need to actually unlock some customers.”
Insight
Treat investor networks as systematic outbound sales channels, advises Crespo
“You need to be systematic and to treat that as a proper outbound channel. So it should be a proper lead gen channel on its own to actually say I have a channel to sign iconic brands that are going to unlock my next wave of customer.”
Insight
Startup CEOs can make binding customer commitments that sales reps cannot
“The CEO, you know, can commit himself to things that your sales team will never be able to commit to.”
Disclosure
Pigment maintains an average contract value of roughly $70,000, says Crespo
“For us, you know, we have an average contract value of pretty much 70 K.”
Disclosure
Pigment co-founders spent nine months interviewing market stakeholders before starting
“With my co-founder, Romain, before starting Pigment, we actually spent nine months speaking to the ecosystem, defining our ideal customer profile, understanding what would be the persona that would have the biggest pain at a certain point in time, and yet woul…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Julien Codorniou helped Pigment unlock its initial customer logos
“Julien Codornio from Facebook that helped a lot, you know, with his network of companies to unlock obviously the first logos.”
Disclosure
Pigment built mini CRMs for every VC and advisor to track leads
“The playbook we did at Pigment is simple. We started to create some mini CRMs with all of our VC All of our advisor tracking all the P zero, P one, P two priorities of the companies we wanted to sign and making it a win-win, meaning that basically we would all…”
Disclosure
Pigment co-CEO Eléonore Crespo spends one-third of her time with customers
“I can tell you that I spend at least a third of my time with customers.”
Disclosure
Pigment built its Google Sheets connector based on feedback from Deliveroo
“We built a connector to Gsheet thanks to the team at Deliveroo. We are building a sort of spreadsheet mode within Pigment thanks to some feedback that we got, and we accelerated that, that that roadmap to feedback we got from Brex and Figma.”
