Pigment simply closed an thrilling $88M Sequence C (TechCrunch protection right here). The corporate is quickly rising as the worldwide chief within the subsequent technology of enterprise planning platforms (aka Anaplan alternative), a testomony to the facility of a world-class group delivering nice execution constantly over years.
Whereas we at FirstMark are actually excited to have been part of the journey as traders because the seed spherical, this spherical can be noteworthy by way of what it might (or might not) sign concerning the broader market. A number of ideas:
Progress market: The final 18 months have been extremely sluggish within the development market. But this development spherical at Pigment was fully preemptive, and extremely aggressive, involving quite a few high corporations. What does it imply for the expansion market? Perhaps it’s an instance of continued flight to high quality throughout a downmarket section – traders searching for A+ firms. However possibly it’s additionally an indication of the expansion market coming again to life, progressively. I actually get an impression, speaking to my development pals, that everybody is antsy to do extra offers after largely sitting on their fingers for the final 18 months, and the market has recalibrated considerably to extra affordable ranges. The apparent caveat is that one shouldn’t derive sample from a small n, however anectodally, one other portfolio firm of mine will even announce a development spherical quickly.
Not AI: The one a part of the enterprise market that has been energetic, after all, has been Generative AI. Curiously, whereas it rapidly rolled out some nice AI options as a part of its platform, and whereas it has spectacular knowledge infrastructure on the core of it, Pigment shouldn’t be an AI firm. As a subsequent technology enterprise planning software program platform, it provides a mission essential product, going after a really massive market alternative. Maybe that is an attention-grabbing instance for quite a few firms on the market, that they don’t have to essentially reposition themselves as AI-native firms with a view to get curiosity from traders.
International firm, with European HQ: It’s nonetheless typically counter intuitive to some within the US that nice, startups might be in-built different geographies and go on to be globally dominant. Sure, the pondering goes, there’s been a technology or two of European and Israeli firms that dominated their classes, however every time the everyday journey was to begin in Europe, after which flip to the US — founders would transfer, firms would “flip” and turn into Delware companies, and the HQ can be relocated to San Francisco or NYC. None of this occurred with Pigment – each Eleonore and Romain, the corporate’s co-CEOs, nonetheless dwell in France; the corporate is a French legislation entity and whereas the US group is more and more massive, HQ stays in Paris. But Pigment has signed lots of the most seen logos within the US as clients – Figma, Brex, Carta, Airtable, and so forth., demonstrating that the world for nice SaaS merchandise has really turn into one huge market.
Congrats Eleonore, Romain and your entire Pigment group! Excited for the subsequent steps within the journey.
