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Eléonore Crespo

lines on the record: 72
first: 2025-05-09
most recent: 2025-05-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“No, but I think, first of all, I don't know where it's going to lend us, but nothing is preventing me from thinking how can I create a trillion dollar company out there. So what I'm constantly thinking about, and this is where you need to think slow, is what is the second, the third, the fourth act of pigment? Because a platform we have today will not bring us there. And we need to start innovating now on this other act if we actually want to build a large company and be a true platform. So that's what's an obsession for me every day is trying to, even if it's not something we are necessarily starting to execute on right now, is knowing exactly where we're going. And we keep showing that vision actually to the entire company to explain it to them how far we want to go and that we might not know everything there, but trying to know what are the technical debt we cannot afford so that we can build these acts because that's the only way to create something large.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I would say probably I would love to add one of these AI funders also to my board because that's the future of pigments. That's what we are building every day is really building the future of how company will work. And so being at the forefront of innovation is key.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An open AI or could be entropic, could be openAI definitely one of these companies. I do believe that we need to understand the future better than anyone. And I think there is no other company that can work with more forward-looking customers than them today”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Understand where to go, what is right, have more of a critical mindset. So I would say, of course AI will perhaps never give you like the most perfect answer, but oh gosh, now you will have time to think if it's a perfect answer or not. So I would say I really understood that a lot of companies were not thinking the right way about where AI could bring value on how.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably on the way enterprises think about AI in the sense that we saw that companies were very serious about AI day one. But I think I didn't understand to which angle they actually didn't know anything about how to be furious about AI. I understood now how much we need to actually help them understand how to use AI for their own good. So I can give you a concrete example for pigment. A lot of customers were telling me AI is going to, it's super hard to use AI in finance because AI is going to do so many mistakes and it's impossible. And then, you know, you think about that, you're like, wait a minute, today all of you analysts are doing hundreds of mistakes. AI is actually going to remove the part of preparing the data so we are, for instance, with Pigman, you know, we have our agents. So with our agents, we are removing a lot of manual tasks. And now the analyst has actually time to check more their data, to reflect on their data, to do more business partnering.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if it's completely BS. I think there is probably truth to that. It depends on what vertical AI apps you're doing. So if you're doing an app that if you are building a layer, like a marketing tool that is just a layer, probably you can be killed by AI. If you're building something more fundamental that requires, for instance, at pigment, we have this huge database, huge compute power, UX that needs to work with workflows for hundreds, if not thousands of people in your company. There you will need more AI on the shelf coming from SaaS. So I would probably split the word of SaaS into different buckets. Some will be killed, certainly, but the one that will embed AI in the right way will kill the game.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Creating a company is harder than they think is one. Some people think that a company did so well and funder was almost lucky. I don't think any funder is lucky. I think funders work harder than anyone out there”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so what I do is obviously I work a lot on US time zone, so I try to come home to take care of them for basically best time having dinner, putting them to bed, and then I work the entire evening until very, very late. That works well for me. That works well for him. He also works super hard and he's also big into sports. So, you know, he also has his own work-life balance. And again, what I try to remember to think about is doing enough to make him happy? Am I doing enough to make my kid happy? I'm trying to really never settle on that either because I know that's too easy to lose that.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only thing he knows about is things that are very serious that are losing a customer, of course it's a big problem for pigment, but is it a big problem for my life? Probably not, you know. So I always think what is critical, what is really the biggest problem at pigment for me are always people problem when someone comes to me and tells me that they have a huge health issue or that something is going very wrong in their life. These are the things that I'm super worried about or where I have a big people problem. The rest I would say are he doesn't even know I'm on the show today. He doesn't know anything about what I do. And that's our way of working. It's just that when I go home, I don't have a lot of time with him. I don't have a lot of time with the kid at all. So we optimize to be a family and to talk about what it is to be a family.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, probably you should ask my husband about that. Maybe he will give you the right answer. I would say we've been together for a very long time, so he knew me way before I started pigment and I think we have both evolved a lot. I tried to, I'm going to tell you something. Maybe you won't believe me, but it doesn't know anything about pigment. We never talk about work together.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unplay is different is thinking every day how can I have fun whether it's for you with your own funders and investors how can I reinvent the way I work how can I be more creative how can I have fun with my friends how can I make them happy that's also I'm always going back to that because when you're a founder you're so autocentric you know everything brings this back to you even like your interview is all about me who cares like what I care about every day is not me it's pigment and so The question is in order to be happy how can I make others happy, how can I make my kids, my family, my friends, my employees, etc. And so think about that and think about making them happy through playing with them, playing, having fun.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gosh, I will quit you, Harry No, I think about your own limits, for instance, on my side as a founder, yeah, I don't drink, I try to have a very good rhythm because I'm so tired otherwise, I have to say. So it's like I need a good reason because every day I need to show that happiness and optimism to my company and my customers. But I do it to the limit that I will never do something that makes me unhappy. And so if one day I actually want to go and party, I would never fast, for instance, that would make me unhappy. Think about what, you know, what are your own limits and play is, I would say, being healthy is different from playing. I do believe that I'm like you in the sense that I want to be here forever. I love life. We are so lucky to be in this world, to be, you know, living in the most extraordinary condition. I have wonderful kids that are super healthy. So you watch your horror ring. That's amazing. You need to be healthy. And it's good that you don't drink these are things that makes you healthy. That's great. But that doesn't mean you cannot.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, do you list because I'm going to tell you if you list of happiness actually puts that what you care about is only you work, your ambition, and I have to say, I had no clue about kids before having my own, and I still have no clue, by the way, but in a different manner.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say you nuts. Why would you worry of performance is my question to you, is that what is important in life, going back to that, to the fundamentals? So what is important in life? What is critical is to be happy. So what makes you happy in life? What makes you happy?”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some things get easier for you as a funder because you have hired people that can scale with you, so you can delegate a lot more. You have people that are truly empowered to build the massive business with you so that much easier than when you have to do everything on your own. But the complexity of the company gets harder because you know that every decision you take is going to now have a big impact. So you better think slow about your cultural change but act fast on putting them in place because your company still needs to change very fast but you need to do it right now that you have a larger team.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First customers to find is so hot, that's so hard, like nobody believes in you, nobody knows what you're doing, why would they buy your platform? That's so hard. And I would say now that the company is getting bigger, everything is becoming harder as well, because you know that every decision”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a lot of things that I do wrong, is that sometimes I have a tendency to act very fast and act when someone tells me something, I'm very pragmatic. Let's go, let's fix that. And sometimes actually you need to make sure you understand what it means to act fast, but also to think slow about the problem and not make a mistake between the two, making sure that I understand where I can take more time or when I can act very fast.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, a very big one. He called me and I call my team and my team is amazing. So they are always on top of everything, passion, customer, customer obsessed. And they started to work straight away. Luckily, I have a team in the US. And we did the deal in the fastest fashion. These are things that I've not seen yet happening in Europe.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The subway. I'm drenched. I'm completely soaked. And I receive an email and it's probably about 1.30 in the morning from one of the biggest tech CEOs in the valley of one of the largest tech companies out there. He said, can I call you now? I'm like, sure. And he calls me and it's 2 a.m. He says, Eleanor, I want to do the biggest rep and replace of one of your competitors right now. And I want you to start tomorrow. I'm buying you right now. I don't care. Like, let's go. And literally this deal was done in not even 15 days. He called me, it's 2 a.m.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of people say it's harder than you think, where I think it's actually easier than you think because I said it's hard, yes, but it's easier than Europe. People buy faster. People buy and are very brave to have the courage to actually go in front of the leadership team and say, in order to be successful, I need the best technology. I think a lot of companies in the US are wired this way. And so they are not buying a brand. They are not thinking, oh, I'm going to buy SAP or IBM because the brand is trustworthy. They understand the power of the biggest technology. I can give you a fun example. It was actually one of our largest deal at pigment. I was at the Olympic Games at the ceremony of the Olympic Games. It's pouring rain. We are with customers. It was like hell. So we were there. The ceremony finishes quite late, it was probably midnight, and then Paris was completely locked down. I had to go back home pretty much working. Then I take the subway super far.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it's true that that's on our favor is that there is nobody else in front of us today. It's a world where a lot of companies out there are private equity owned and so unfortunately not innovating at the pace at which they used to innovate and most of our competitors are 20 years old plus 15 years old plus and I've lost this speed of innovation and this customer obsession. So we are lucky and that's why it made a successful so early on by the way in the US and in Europe but nothing is easy and I say that because I think funders should never think that something will be easy when it comes to selling. Nothing is easy. You always especially when you do strategic sells like pigment. We do strategic sales where when you buy pigment you buy it for a very very long time almost forever. It's going to be a backbone in your company. So you will have many stakeholders involved. And so putting the first foot in the door is what's going to be the hardest part.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I'm not joyless. No, it's super hot. It's hard because nobody knows you, and even today a pigment is almost six years old. We have zero brown awareness still in the US. So thanks to this show, maybe I will get a few leads, Harry. But it's hard. Every single lead because the reality is...”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think probably key pillars. First, we went very early to find customers in the US. First year of selling, pretty much we went to the US to sell.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the best founders anyway out there are never here for the money. A money doesn't buy them anything and they are just here to keep going and sometimes maybe they would do secondary to actually have an amazing person coming into the round. So it may even be something completely different, a good reason to do it. But I would say always think about what will put your mind at ease on making sure you can focus all of your time and energy on building the company. For me it was about an apartment and some logistics to make sure I had a lot of my logistics ready to take care of my kids, build an amazing company”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Innovation RD invest in engineers invest in spending more time when it's crazy smooth, building the best of the best product, when it's the end of the crisis you go out and you just kill the market. So it says both. Taking market share on building the best product.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No definite, it can be counterproductive. You might have some things that are happening today in the market, a market that is shaking for whatever reason. What you see that the most experienced investors have seen that movie before, and they know that maybe the market is shaking now, but in three years it's going to get better again. And so, for instance, I have Warbard around the table and robust in the movies so many times. And Rob is always saying to me, when there is a crisis, it's time to invest. Let's go. Let's go because your competitors cannot invest right now. Or I have other people. So, for instance, Divesh from Iconic, who, as helped so many, so many funders, has also this way of stepping back and being able to actually tell you the sort of macro picture and the long term is what will make any company successful.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like the governance, I would say. So if you have the right board member, actually governance is great. But I would say if you don't, of course, that's when things can be difficult. So I would say you need to find, my answer to that is more that you need to find board members that understand that the funder probably is right. That's what I try to have at Pigment, is people that understand how hard it is to create a company and that give me enough freedom to take my decisions at pigment. So I would recommend to try to find people that understand that I've seen some movies before and that understand that they can give me amazing advice on anything but that at the end of the day when you run the company you see more than them and you probably have more insight into what is right for the company.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The board wants to fire you one day. Probably they can. If the board wants at some point to influence your strategy in one way or another, I have seen the best founders out there having to do things that they would never want to do. And I have seen some vendors that you would not even think of that actually were in very, very difficult situations because of the bot. The problem is that when you start having this type of clash, it might be that this board member is great for another company. By the way, it doesn't mean that this person is not good. But if you start having this type of problems internally, it can literally kill your company and you cannot divorce. You just cannot divorce.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would really try to do some truth seeking that goes way beyond that because the problem is always the same is every VC they will call their funder and say please sell for this company and you never get the truth because it's a small word people so maybe if the founder is your friend he will tell you the truth but actually that might be half of the truth most of the time so I would go a step deeper And so what you do is you can ask exec at the company. You can ask them because they will not know actually that you are maybe fundraising with that fund and you can say, hey, I know that on your board, for instance, CFO of X company, you have this person, like how is it going? How are they with the CEO? You can even as a fund himself at the fund that you know that completely unrelated, ask some people to ask for you. I mean, you need to find ways to find spy in the industry to really get to know the person because I have done that mistake myself and I have seen that index too many funders doing that mistake that the biggest mistake you can.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's something that I've seen happening is that you give a firm a seat and then the person leaves and then you get someone else and that's a total disaster. And then the second thing that will happen is that this person will be there again. Even if they are there, they are there for 15 years and maybe you haven't done your proper due deal on that person. And I would suggest you do exactly the same as what I described before. Is CIA due diligence on the person as many bad channels as you can? It's spending as much time as you can understanding what is wrong about that person, deep diving into what is wrong, what is wrong, because the day there is something hard about the company, trust me, they're going to kill you.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on the brand, but people think about the brand before thinking about the person. And at your board, you get one person. You don't get a brand. And there are two things you need to think about when you hire someone and when you take an investor is first of all, like will they have a borse seat or not? Because that makes a big difference. Sometimes you can actually just have someone investing. They don't really have any governance power in your company. So then maybe that doesn't really matter who you take. But if it's someone that's going to come on your board, well, you better think about it because there are a couple of things that are going to happen. Firstly is that there are people like you that are funders of their fund. So hurry, unless something bad happens, you're here forever. That's a great thing. That's a great thing for funder because it means that if I have you on my board, I probably have you for a very long time.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't good for too much, I would say, because it can really hurt you. When you are very early stage, let's say you raise at 50 million and you know you have the ambition to create a multi-billion dollar company, maybe that's kind of okay, you know, between raising at 50 or raising at 20 that you can probably. But then when you start getting into the billion valuation that where you have to start to be careful because you at some point, you know.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More than you as a founder because it could not matter less. Again, what you should only care about if you really like what you do is innovation, impact for your customers and building something massive.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could not care less for a couple of reasons I would say I'm not being doing this money for money first of all so do I care that my financial outcome is X, Y, Z, I don't care at all. I'm here to build a big company, a massive business. I want to build a company that scales for the next 30 years and I want the best people around the table. So I will never take the best termsheet based on whatever is written in there because you just want the best people on your board. You want the best people to build an engineering company. The dilution that you get today anyway, what do you know what's going to happen if one day you go public, maybe you will get priced twice as much with one bank? It doesn't matter at all. What matters though is to put in place the white governance early. So making sure, for instance, that when you create your shareholder agreement, maybe you can make sure that if one day you are public, you don't have activists, investors that can actually knock at the door and get in your cap table. These are probably the thing to worry about.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say never me wanting to race, first of all. So we got all of our rants preempted by investors. I'm very lucky to have a big network of investors because of my past. So we got preempted. And the reason why we raised was always because of my co-founder who is paranoid. And I would say not because I would say thanks to him. He has seen the movie and I think he has seen that when you create a company, one of the key is to always have money to keep innovating and you never know what tomorrow looks like. So it's better to have good cash in your bank account than being in a very difficult position to your time, etc. So he always pushed me actually to have more than this. So every time we raise, we always had the money from at least a past fundraising, if not the past two fundraising. But that has always been in order to be able to see what the future will look like. So I don't really regret the large rounds or anything.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not every VC, several have told me to move to the US, but not every VC there is no playbook for building a massive company. And so far as one of the key strengths of pigment is that we have the best injuring team in Europe. We have one of the best injuring team in Europe. We have access to best talents that are loyal, that are incredible. And so that's a very big competitive advantage. Every company is different. The most important is for me to spend a lot of time in the US. So I go there very, very often. I am never shy of flying to meet one customer, to meet one person that I want to hire to have them come to France as well, visit Paris. There is never a customer that will tell you I don't want to come to Paris. So that's great as well. So I would say everybody has to work on their own strengths. For me, from a logistics standpoint, I'm a mom of young kids. I have to be in France these days and I am also managing my engineering team here with Roman. Tomorrow, you know, maybe at some point I will have to move. I don't know, but for now there is no good reason.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. So, first of all, the team is split between the US and Europe. So we have a global company. That was the ambition day one. And so it's not that they are managing people in Europe and sitting on their own US. Like half of the team today of pigment is in the US. Most of our business, 60% of our business is in the US, our largest customers are all in the US. We are legitimately almost more US companies than a European company, I would say, from a headcount standpoint.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's probably partially true my full executive team pretty much is in the US. I think that there are specific jobs that we have very small pools of talents in Europe. So we were talking about marketing, PR, comps, enablement. There are several, I think, roles where unfortunately we haven't seen scale enough, I would say, especially when you think like SaaS, B2B, et cetera, and where clearly there is a lot we can learn from other countries still. But there are things where we have big competitive advantages too. So I think you always have to pick the best of both words and make sure that you know, again, going back to what we're saying about talent, where to find the biggest pool of talents for, the role you're looking for.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think process can mean different things. There are processes that are amazing because they will help you scale. You have to put in place some processes in your company, otherwise you will never scale. Now they need to be efficient. If they put more time in the calendar of anyone at the company instead of removing time, it means the process is not good. So you need to think for every process, is it to improve the efficiency of the company so that everyone can spend more time on innovation and with the customer? To give you an example, even what we do with Pigment planning, that's a process almost that should not exist. It should not exist. And so what can we do to actually remove that process is the question is how can we make sure people don't spend their life on spreadsheets or how do you make sure that you don't spend your life doing performance review or all of these things that take forever. That's what you need to think about when you think about process.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nothing, but I'm sure there is politics. I'm trying to always think there is something there that every company has, politics, everything that can kill a company, process, politics, people that don't have the right attitude, people that are not nice, people that don't have managerial courage. So finger point these things and try to find the point of failure in your org and try to fix them.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you apply very strong principles, I think you can really keep the pace of A player still at that size. I think we are not at a size where we can afford actually BRC player. Second is when we don't, we have to realize that fast, making sure that very early on you identify where someone is not an A and then really trying to think how is that going to impact the organization. If that person becomes a manager tomorrow, you know that the team, obviously that they will hire will definitely not be at the right skill set that you're expecting for. It's about being very, very facet managing performance. And it's also being have the courage, the managerial courage to finger point what is wrong in the organization. At Pigment last week with my leadership team, I went to them all and I said we have too much politics at pigment. How can we solve that? You find me free example each of where we have politics. You tell me where, you tell me in which team, and we try to fix that.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And they put in rating our values as well. And I explain, if you don't like these values, it's totally fine. Think about them carefully. Do you agree with them or do you think you don't like that? For instance, if you absolutely care about your title, if you like a lot of governance, if you like maybe more, you know, from one person to the next, things can be very different in what you enjoy in life.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have done so many mistakes already in six years, it's just unbelievable. You were asking me how refined my interview process over the years. Now I do something that I didn't know in the past. It's putting in front of my candidates a deck to show them what's going to be hard at pigment and make it very clear to them, saying you're going to work harder than ever in your life here. These are the impossible thing you will have to solve. This is the shit show you are going into for that specific team that you're going to lead. And that's what you will need to solve when you join Pigment.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we could be more appreciative of equity. Employees, a lot of employees do not understand equity as well as U.S. employees. And I also think that I have seen companies not being generous enough in terms of what they offer to the best executives out there, to your leadership team. And that's, again, if you want the best people out there, you cannot compromise on that. You just can't.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going back to the football analogy, you should think about if you want the best player, you will have to pay. So you will have to pay and you will do it because you know maybe it will be transformative or you want Antoine Dubon for Rubby. So you will pay, but you cannot do that for every role. So you have to decide where you absolutely need the superstar and where are roles that are maybe a little bit less critical. But my philosophy is always being generous with every hire because the difference they will make on the field is more than you can imagine. The lever, if you have found the right people, you should be generous and make them happy with the living. The other thing is that you can play so much with equity. And I have seen many founders that are not generous enough with equity, but I do think that the best hire you really need to make them part of the company.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't like when someone asks me for their title. Definitely not. I really don't like that because I think no matter what is the stage of the company, a person should come not for the ongo on their own agenda, but because they want to build something great. I want someone that comes for the journey, for the mission, for saying I'm here to have an impact at pigment, and I know that if you hire me, it's because you want me to have an impact and the rest doesn't matter. The title should be reserved for very large companies. Internally, I do believe that being horizontal as a company is key for your success. The day you start having people that think about that, you are in politics and that's what you should avoid.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I totally agree with that. I think I see constantly the skill sets are very different. And I think sometimes we make it a bad thing, you know, we're like, oh, we hired that person. It was a mistake. Now they're not scaling with us. I always think perhaps it's not a mistake actually. It was the best person for that stage. They did things that no one else would have been able to do at that stage. And of course now you need a totally different skill set they have never seen, so they are not scaling with you, but probably that's fine.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Execs that are going to be part of the process to really focus on every part and depending on how that interview went, on what question there, then I refined. So every process is tailored to the person to say, okay, he actually failed in these two questions. She actually did super well there. What do we ask next? How do we go to the next part? Because the next part will vary. That's a lot of work.”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the advice is to talk to 20 people in the field, 50 people, and ask them for what are the best questions. But guess what now? The thing is, even I think with AI platforms out there, you can refine so much what you are looking for as well. You can explain, you can even put profiles in there and say, I'm looking for someone like that, what traits do they have, etc. But for me, the biggest advice is go human to human. Ask when you're hiring UCRO. Ask the 20 best CROs out there, best CROs again in your category, what have they done so great? What makes them so different? That's really my number one advice to anyone. Do you rubric, do a CRO rubric, do a CMO rubric, do a CFO rubric based on questions that other people will have told you about, will have told you what to ask. And that's what I do for every single role. And what I do is very, very precise. It's not only like questions that I write down. I put the question and then I put them into different parts. And then I ask my”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, you need to know what obvious means. And that I didn't tell you, but that's the other thing I have to do in parallel, is to do my rubric of question. I need to ask them because the problem, usually when you make a mistake is because you didn't know what you were looking for. A great CRO for a company maybe for HubSpot is not the great CRO for pigment on HubSpot at the time of pigment or a great CRO for Figma tomorrow is not the great CRO for pigment. We are very different companies. Some are more product-led, some are more sales-led. That's probably what”
2025-05-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Four Traits of the Most Successful Founders | How to Hunt and Close Talent Like a Pro and Where All Founders Go Wrong | Lessons Raising $397M From the Best Investors in the World with Eléonore Crespo @ Pigment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source