YouSaid · the spoken record

Eléonore Crespo

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

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I have a couple of things. So, first of all, if I'm actively doing a search, I ask my search firm to track that and to tell me what are the people that actually have these triggers that are going to happen. If I am just tracking them over time, well, I try to actually track them. And we have a team internally, which is called my growth team that is also helping me track people with attributes to see where they have gone, what they are doing, etc. And that helped me think if there is a moment. A bit like what you would do anyway with your own CRM, you always try to see with a prospect when they are becoming warm and hot and when they are going to buy pigment. Well, it's the same year. I'm trying to see when these people are going to be able to be interested. So that's one thing, but then you also need to start talking to them early. So you need to find ways to get introduced to 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
“List of people. What you need to do on these people is to try to understand now how you're going to approach them because I think the hardest thing is not so much to know who are the best out there, but it's how are you going to get to them. Because usually they are so good, trust me, they're going to be locked in their companies forever. So then you need to find the defining moment on when they are going to leave their companies or when you will have a trigger moment where you know that this person might become available. So it might be a couple of things. It might be a change in leadership. It might be a company that is bought by private equity. It might be there are so many events that can trigger these things. And so you need to follow that closely as well to know, okay, these people, this is the timing because timing is everything with hiring. So you do that, sorry.”
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
“Look for new people. And the other thing that is important is also trying to find the best schools out there, best schools of something. For instance, I hire very recently an executive in my go-to-market team. The thing is you realize as a founder that there are so many things you don't know. You don't know, you know what amazing looks like. So I asked literally 20 executives that are doing exactly like him what good looks like. So what do they think is amazing and what are the best tools out there for what I do? And again, it has to be very specific to what you do. And so for me, I did the list of, okay, these are the best companies coming from Judd McMahon, like the School of John McMahon. This is what they do so great, et cetera. And then from there, I found into these schools the best people in these schools and as them for the best people. And then that gave me my list of people to go after. Then, after that, you have your list of people, so you are always recruiting, always be hiring everywhere you go, conferences, you ask people everywhere. Then from there, you have...”
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
“good to add to the organization exactly so when i when i do sourcing i will give you a couple of examples but think about when you want to hire the best full board player in the game like imagine you are the best football club in the us or the best soccer club in europe what will they do they will go on the field they will go look at you know like 16 years old they will see how they play and they will try to source them very early i try to do the same every day i lose a deal against another company i always ask the name of the rep. I do something, you know, where I hear that there is giving you a recent example. We had the Olympic Games in Paris last year. And I met the other day the CFO of the Olympic Games, the one that organized that. And obviously he has to fire his entire team now that the Olympics are over. So I ask him, I said, who was the first person in your team? This guy. Okay, I went to him and I said, I want to hire you now. And I do that with every single person I meet when I'm always trying to find something extraordinary out there. And I say, who are the best people you know? Where do you think I 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
“But again, partner, as I said, it doesn't mean your husband or your wife. That's not about that. Having a partner who will tell you the truth. Maybe it's your brother, maybe it's someone else.”
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'm sorry, Harry. Why? Why? When he says a partner, it can be also your sister, your brother. And for me, actually, you know, and that's why I'm saying Cusio can work too, is having someone that will tell you the truth. Having someone that will not be afraid of telling you the truth. And that's very rare. Especially as your company grows. He was telling me that most of the best founders out there, they actually have 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
“And maybe the stories you need to tell when you revolute is more tell stories, first of all, to investors and also tell stories to the public and the stories to the public are not necessarily coming from Nick. But again, he has one of the best marketing team in the world, full stop.”
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, first of all, I don't know Nick enough personally to tell you, but what I can tell you is that Nick knows how to hire.”
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 they were actually quite different, first of all being very good at psychology, understanding people in and out. Understanding the human better than anyone because that's what you will need to hire the best of the best. Second is being an incredible storyteller. That is something that probably you don't understand. You know I'm an engineer. And so you think your French engineer, you have nothing right there. You have nothing right because you think it's only your product that is going to win. You're like, I'm building the best product. I have Roma. You know, stories done not at all, my friend. The reality is that you can see the power of many US companies out there is a power of marketing how much they have understood the importance of marketing and storytelling. And that's what I'm learned at Index, the importance of storytelling. The third one, a little bit controversial.”
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
“Completely, I think I would be so different if I hadn't been that index. Index was the best school of life for me. It's something I would advise to any funder, pretty much being a VC, because it created so many things. First of all, I think I saw what Amazing looks like. I was very lucky to be close to people like Olivier Datadog or DNA Figmar. I learned to Peter at Adienne. I learned to see how they would do and I still learn today from them. And it gives you an edge that nobody else on earth is capable of seeing. What great looks like.”
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
“On what's next for you, and in order to do that, you need to be challenged every day by someone that is almost like your partner.”
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
“With your customers, well, when you are COSIO, you actually have that superpower of being able to spend twice as much time with your customer, listening to them. And the reality, if you think about, for instance, you take example of like a boutique coffee that is in the street that maybe won the price of the best coffee in the world. There is a coffee like that next to my house in Paris. And you look at what makes them so great. Is a focus on the customer? This is the only thing, right? Is that they are able to do something at a boutique level that you are probably not able to do at the level of a Starbucks, right? This time that they are spending listening to the customer, sourcing the best product, trying to refine their coffee, when you have twice the time as a COSIO, that gives you a superpower. It also gives you a balance and a way to always think on your feet. At the end of the day, when you are co-CEO every day, I challenge myself and ask Roman to challenge myself. And I think that every day we can do better. You know, yesterday is yesterday. The most important is to focus.”
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 COSIOs only work in certain setups, first of all. Let's be clear. It works with your personality. For us, it works super well because we are so complementary. It focuses obviously on building the best product out there. I focus on building the best business out there. And we listen to each other every day. What makes us so strong is that we talk at least three times a day. And we spend, you have no idea the number of times the number of hours we spend on strategy, on product strategy. I talk to customers all the time and I come back to him and I said that's what we need to do. That's what we need to do. And we also try to think obviously outside the box in terms of the vision because there is only so much your customer can bring you in terms of what is the next product. They probably don't know what it is, right? So we talk all the time. And when you think about what is important for a company, what is the probably the most important is being customer first. You need to focus, be obsessed, obsessed, obsessed about the customer. This is what the best founders always do. And in order to do that, it means you need an indefinite amount of 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
“Him, how can we do better here? What can we do differently? After the show, I'm going to ask you, Ari, what can we do differently here? What did I do wrong? And that's the most important, and that's what makes Roma so great, is that it doesn't come with his own assumption about I've done Criteo, I know better, let me tell you. It's more, this is what I've seen. This is also the pattern that we've seen at other companies. And here's how we should think about it now in 25 with 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 would say, so first of all, having seen the movie always help, let's be clear. When I hire my executive today, I always try to find people that have seen the movie one time, at least, that have scaled. So from where I am in terms of AR to like multiple billion, if possible, because they will have learned things in the journey of building. So I still think that there is incredible value when you see that. You see that also with some repeat funders, you see the founder of WISE and you see other people. They've seen it. They are not first-time funder. And I can tell you that with Roman, he's probably my number one mentor. I learned from him every day. Every day I avoid one mistake because of him. But the most important is to have a value which we have at pigment, which is curiosity and never settle. That's what makes the difference, is to find a co-founder if he has already seen the experience that never settles and always try to learn to be better and always try to adapt. And with Roma there is not a single day where I don't call him.”
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
“Whoever you are with for your life, you will need to constantly adapt and change and everything. But I do think that there are traits of people that for sure are traits that make you want to stay with a person for the next 20 years of your life. And these traits are being very balanced, being very true to themselves whether the business is going bad or very well. People that haven't been attacked by the celebrity virus. And Romain was already very successful with his first company, Crito, a company that he put public 10 years ago. the most humble person in the planet, someone that people respect as well and that where people have followed him for the past 10 years, they are signed. You don't work for someone for 10 years. He's a person is an S. And that wasn't Roma. And so I think there are a lot of traits you can find. And it's the same, you know, when I do my executive recruiting is like, when you see that people have stayed at the same company for eight years, 10 years, and that people love working with them, that tells you something.”
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
“You're probably thinking I was a bit nuts on that, but I have a big, big philosophy on hiring that I actually keep refining. So I would say, first of all, you need to find someone that obviously works.”
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 you are wrong because you might think that challenging a fund is about thinking big enough. I don't think that's the case. I think challenging a founder is making them think about things that maybe you think they are obvious to them but that they tend to forget because there are so many things in their plates. The investors that are on my board and people that are helping me on a daily basis, they just help me become true to myself and finger point where things hurt. And that's what I try to do with my own team, right, is just making sure that every day I am alert on what can break my company tomorrow.”
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
“Reason that index is simple. All of the people at Index are my friends, and they were already helping me. And in a way, I already knew the way they were thinking. And so for me, it was really important to bring new people, fresh ideas to the table. And it's the same, I think, for everything I do at Pigment. Today, it's like, I'm not hiring my friends at Pigment. I'm hiring people that I don't know about that can bring things that I don't know. And in VC, something that I think is critical is to find people that can challenge you every day. And, you know, if I think about people like Martin Minu that I absolutely love or Jan or other people, well, in a way, they are more friends now than anything. And I wanted people that could be really true to me.”
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 it's a good question. So, first of all, I would say I knew that at some point in my life I wanted to create my own company and that was way before being a VC. That was really when I was even very young kid. I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Freedom was one of the most important things for me. But the word of venture was very new to me when I started at Index. And I absolutely loved it. I loved it for many reasons. I made the best of the best founders. I made the smartest people in the world. But at the same time, being at Index, I realized that really being a founder was something that was more important than anything for me right now because I felt why am I not on the other side of the table?”
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, very good question. I don't tell this story very often, but it happened that I had to be in bed for one year. That was just before pigment. I had to go through three surgeries in one row. It was the first time I think in my life that I could actually settle. So I was at Index Venture at the time, and that happened to me. And I had to settle and think. And so I started to think, and it was the first time I could be like, what do I want to do next? And that's where I had time to actually say that now I want to be a funder. And so I took the time to really think about that, think about what I wanted to do next, what type of adventure, and more importantly, who I would like to do that with. And this is where I started to do my list of who I would like to fund the company with. And that's how I found Roma.”
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 I'm not being digged this money for money, first of all. So do I care that my financial outcome is XYZ? 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. The power of the board is bigger than you think. If the board wants to fire you one day, probably they 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