French startup pigment has raised another round of funding less than a year after raising a $73 million Series B round. If you are not familiar with Pigment, the company develops a business planning and forecasting platform.
For small businesses growing up, it can replace Microsoft Excel as it is generally more secure and robust. For larger companies already using a business planning product from Oracle or SAP, Pigment can replace these legacy platforms with something more modern.
The company is calling this new $65 million around a Series B+ because it’s more or less in the same ballpark as its Series B. While Pigment won’t reveal the startup’s valuation, it’s going up after today’s deal.
So why did Pigment rise again so quickly? Because there was an opportunity and because the current economic environment doesn’t look great. IVP and Meritech Capital lead the round.
Pigment co-founder and CEO, Eléonore Crespo, told me she doesn’t need to raise more money to make her business a stable, long-term business. Of course, market conditions may change and Pigment could collect more next year.
I also asked her if Pigment uses Pigment as a forecasting tool. The answer is yes, that’s obvious.
Pigment connects to the tools your teams already use, such as Salesforce, NetSuite, Workday, and Snowflake. Customers use the platform to import, clean and enrich data from those other products. Once the data is in, you don’t have to enter the same number on multiple sheets as you can automatically display your stats across the board. Pigment also supports Excel-like formulas.
In this way, Pigment becomes the single source of truth for all key figures in the company. As a software-as-a-service product, Pigment customers can also talk directly to each other on the platform.
After that, customers can create ‘what-if’ scenarios based on different data sets. Executives can change parameters to see the impact of a new product launch, a major customer coming on board, or – unfortunately – a series of layoffs.
Pigment currently has about 170 employees. Annual recurring revenue is growing nicely (5x in 6 months) and the company now has 100 customers, such as Webhelp, PayFit, Forto, Gong, Figma, Carta and ClickUp.
Business planning products are quite relevant right now as companies have to anticipate the worst. Having a tool that allows you to accurately view all the key metrics and make big decisions has become essential. And Pigment hopes its platform will differentiate itself from other tools in this industry.
Image Credits: pigment
