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

23:39You 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 you see our ask the 20 best Seas are out there best zeros 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 see our rubric do a see more rubric do a see for rubric Based on questions that all the people will I have told you about will have told you what to ask and that's what I do for every single role and I have what I do is very, very precise.

24:14It's not only like question that I write down. I put the question and then I put them into different parts and then I ask my execs that are going to be part of the process to really focus on every part and depending on how that interview went and what question they are, then I refine. 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 It's a huge amount of work. At the end of each expert call when you're finding out what great looks like in each role, I always ask like, hey, who are the three best people that you've worked with under 35?

24:48Yes. And I always look for the common aunties I find. There's always common people who came up four or five times, you know, it wow. Do you think people are destined for certain stages? People often say, ah, they're a great zero to one person. Do you agree with that? Or do you think actually people are much more flexible? I totally agree with that. I think, here, I see constantly, the skill sets are very different. And I think sometimes we make to bad things, 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.

25:16It 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're not scaling with you, but probably that's fine. What are your biggest lessons on title? People can often have egos associated. I want to be ahead of sales. I want to be VP of sales. What are your lessons on titles? When to give them, when it says about a candidate. I don't like when someone asked me for the title, they think it's 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 onigone and their own agenda, but because they want to build something great.

25:51I 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 you success. The day you start having people that think about that you are in politics and that's what you should avoid. Pays also another really hard one. People who want to be paid more, want to pay your biggest lessons on like salary requests, one to stretch, one not to.

26:24Going 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 it be or so you will pay but you cannot do that for every role. So you have to decide where do you absolutely need the superstar and when 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 You should be generous and make them happy with the living.

26:59The 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. How can you play effectively with equity? And do you think in Europe that we are appreciative enough of equity as employees? I think we could be more appreciative of equity. Employees, a lot of employees do not understand equity as well as US employees. And I also think that I have seen companies not being generous enough in terms of what they offer So the best executives out there to leadership team and that's again, if you want the best people out there You cannot compromise on that you just can't everyone makes mistakes when you reflect on a time when you made a hiring mistake Obviously don't share which mistake it is a bit brutal But what did you not see that you wish you'd seen and how did that maybe change how you think about your process?

27:50I have done so many mistakes already in six years. It's just been believable. You were asking me how I 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 candidate to 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 things you will have to solve. This is the sheet 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're when you're doing pigment.

28:19You put a deck together for that. Yes, yeah. Wow, you do that. Yes. And they put in writing 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 are? 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. How many people are in pigment today? About 400. We hear of our A player, B player, all these kind of things. I don't love the latter as a sign to it.

28:50But I do wonder, can you truly scale an organization to 400 A players? And in which case, where is it okay to have a B player versus it has to be an A -style player? If you apply very strong principles, I think you can really keep the pace of A players still at that size. I think we are not at a size where we can afford actually B or C 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.

29:34It's about being very, very fast at 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 pigments. How can we solve that? You find me, for example, each of where we have politics, you tell me where, you tell me in which team and we try to fix that. What made you think you had too much politics? 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.

30:14So finger -point these things and try to find the point of failure in your org and try to fix them. What process do you have inside pigment that you would most like to remove? So we did a list actually two weeks ago of that, I asked my team as well, I was like, probably too many process at pigment at our stage, I'm pretty sure. So what do we do? And I got a list and then we voted what are the biggest ones. And so there are things that are insane at our stage that I'm not appeared at all about procurement process that is crazy, expense, policies, that is way to complex things that are slowing down the company for zero reason.

30:48And so when we see that, we have to remove immediately. And I have no patience for that. Everybody at PIGMUD should be spending pretty much all of their time with the customer. You're getting into a stage so now where it can be dangerous. You bring in exacts who are brilliant at managing people in process. And they basically just put in more and more process. They're kind of managers and managers, so to speak. Do you worry about that? I do. That's what kids, or large company. I interview them for 20 sales, 20 product, 20 gross. And I'm like, ah, you're a manager of managers. And you see it very clearly whether like just process to the end of the world.

31:24I think process can mean different things. There are process that are amazing because it will help you scale. You have to put in face 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 speak about planning, that's a process or more that should not exist.

31:56It 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. Everyone in Europe says the biggest problem with Europe is that we don't have senior execs who've seen scale before and that's what's stopping the next generation of companies, scale into really big companies. Do you think that's true? It's probably partially true and my full executive team pretty much is in the US.

32:28I think that there are specific jobs that we have very small pools of talents in Europe. So we were talking about marketing, PR, CUMS, enablement. There are several, I think, roles where unfortunately we haven't seen scale enough, I would say, especially when you think like size, B2B, etc. 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 worlds and make sure that you know again going back to what we're saying about talent We're to find the biggest pool of talents for the role you're looking for your exact team is in the US.

33:06Yes. How do you make that work with a largely French and European based team? I go to bed very late. But what about the inspiration, the motivation that comes from them for the team? 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 in the US are largest customers are all in the US. We are legitimately almost more US companies than a European company I would say from a head count standpoint.

33:45Did every VC tell you to move to the US? 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, one of the key strengths of pigments is that we have the best engineering team in Europe, we have one of the best engineering 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, it's 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.

34:23There 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 logistic standpoint, I am a mum of young kids. I have to be in France these days and I am also managing my engineering team here with Roma. Tomorrow, you know, maybe at some point I will have to move. I don't know, but for now there is no good reason to For me, US. We've spent a lot of time talking about hiring. We talk about hiring people in the US. That's expensive. That needs funding. You raised quite a lot, quite early to be blunt.

34:53I remember when you raised one of your first rounds. It was your first round was how big? The very first one, maybe five million. No, three million. I don't know. And then you raised like a big round after that. Yes, yeah. What is your biggest lessons, advice, thoughts having raised quite a lot, quite early? I would say never me wanting to raise, first of all. So we got all of our runs 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.

35:26He 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 the 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 runs or anything.

36:01How does that make you think on dilution? Founders would say, God, if you've got two prior fundraisers of cash, you're not optimizing for dilution. That's inefficient. 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? Okay, 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 term sheet 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 gonna happen that if one day you go public maybe you will get price twice as much with one background It doesn't matter at all what matters though is to put in place the what governance early So making sure for instance that when you create you shall do agreement Maybe you can make sure that if one day you are public, you don't have activist investors that can actually knock at the door and get in your cap table.

37:03These are probably the things to worry about 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. How do you think about price? I think we're seeing a situation where a lot of SaaS companies in particular, having to live into or grow into just extraordinary prices. We mentioned before, a thousand X, ARR revenue, kind of multiple rounds. How do you think about pricing getting comfortable on that? The last round was expensive. Don't go for too much, I would say, because it can really hurt you.

37:40When 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's where you have to start to be careful, because at some point, you know, if one day you are public or if you're getting bigger, the price will matter. So be careful of not going again with a higher valuation. What do you think of the biggest mistakes you see founders make in their early fund ratings?

38:11To go for the brand, to go for... It's brand overrated. 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, it's first of all, will they have a board seat on us? 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.

38:44Well, you better think about it because there are a couple of things that are going to happen. Personally, there are people like you that are founders of their fund. So, Harry, unless something bad happened, you're here forever. That's a great thing. That's a great thing for a founder because it means that if I have you on my board, I probably have you for a very long time. 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, even if they are there, they are there for 15 years and maybe you haven't done your proper duty on that person.

39:19And I would suggest you do exactly the same as what I described before, is CIA due diligence on the person, as many back 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 and he trusts me, they're gonna kill you. So what do you do? You cool founders who have not worked out for them in the past and say, hey, how did it go? What happened when it was not going well? Is there anything else? I would really try to do some truth seeking that goes way beyond that.

39:48Because the problem is always the same. Is every VC they will call their founder and they please sell for this company and you never get the truth because it's a small world 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 step deeper and so what you do is you can ask exact the company you can ask them because they will not Do actually that you're maybe fundraising with that fund and you can say hey, I know that on your board You are for instance CFO of X company. You have this person like how is it going like what what what you know How are there with with the CEO you can even as the fund Himself right you can ask people at the fund that you know you know that you know completely unrelated as 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 at index too many founders doing that mistake, that's the biggest mistake you can make, because the power of the board is bigger than you think.

40:42On the path, the power of the board is bigger than you think. If 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 founders that you would not even think of that actually were in very, very difficult situation because of the bought. 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 you company and you cannot divorce.

41:19You just cannot divorce. Do you think it is right to move to a more founder -controlled US model? You see people like Parker Conrad, who we've had on the show multiple times, he's removal from Xanafitz was very public and he now very much favors a founder control led company. Do you think that's actually better? I like the governance I would say so a deep so if you have the right board member actually governance is great but I would say if you don't of course you know that's when things can can be difficult so I would say you need to find my answer to that is more that you need to find board member that understand that the founder probably is right that's what I try to have at pigments is people that understand how hard to create a company and that give me enough freedom to take my decisions at pigment.

42:03So 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. I think the other benefit of you said they're not going to, you know, they know that the founders write. I think the other benefit of having a founder of a firm is they don't feel the pressure from their partners. And what I mean by that is, no one's going to find me if I do bad deals.

42:34My LPs may not give me more money, but none of my partners in big firms can get let go. And they bring that pressure sometimes to founders. And I sometimes see that in founders' people who are aware, a partner from a big firm is feeling the heat from their partnership. That doesn't help a founder. No, definitely not. It can be counterproductive. You might have some things that are happening today in the market, the market that is shaking for whatever reason. What what you see is 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.

43:07And so, for instance, I have warbwa around around the table and robots in the movies so many times. And Rob is always saying me when there is a crisis, it's time to invest. Let's go. Let's go because you competitors cannot invest right now. Or I have other people, so for instance, Dives from iconic, who has helped so many, so many founders, as 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. That's so interesting, Rob is about so I'm like, hey, whenever one else is pulling back, be aggressive.

43:41Because I think the biggest thing that I see is one time to get hard, marketing gets cut super fast. And what you actually see when you look at the data is the ones that win, the ones that thoroughly continue to invest in marketing and write it out when they come out the other side. Is that what you see? Yes, I would say not only marketing but innovation more importantly. What is that? Innovation are indeed investing 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's both taking market share and building the best product.

44:13What's your biggest advice to founders on secondaries? There's different thoughts on whether it's write how much is right what advice is good for different stages, how do you think about it and how does having a little bit change your mindset. I think the best founders out there they are never here for the money, 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 or a good reason to do it but I would say always think about what will put you mind at ease on making sure you can focus all of your time on energy on building the company.

44:52For 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. I do just want to get back to the building from Europe in the US, though, because I think it's so important. Knowing all that you know now, how do you advise founders who are told in Europe? You've got to be in the US, like what have you done that's worked to scale so effectively in the US? I think probably keep pillars. First, we went very early to find customers in the US. First year of selling pretty much, we went to the US. First year of selling.

45:22That is counter most advice, which is like get local champions and then scale from that. Yes, I did that because I knew that the market there was much more ready to buy than in Europe. It depends on what you do, but we sell to CFOs. And CFOs are duty is to be conservative not only, but it's one of the duty because they need to be the gatekeeper of the company. They need to have the right governance, the right trust. That's what they are here for. And so bringing a financial platform that is new to the market is quite crazy. It's quite counter -intuitive. So when we were one year old, doing that in Europe where people are probably slightly more conservative that in the US, it's probably harder.

46:03So we went very early to the US, but we did that from Europe. And we were lucky because that was just post -COVID where all of our customers were on Zoom. And so we didn't even have to travel or to have anyone on the ground. We just sold directly from Europe. And that helped a lot because a lot of companies turned to this. We started first with tech companies. We sold to tech companies. And there are four world -looking companies that everybody else in the world is looking up to to say, how can I be gone as good as a Figma? Or, and that's the first company we went on sold to. Figma. Figma was one of the first, yeah.

46:36How did you get it? Brexit was a very first, I think, right after. Is it easier than people think to get brand name US? No. A lot of them say it good. No, it's super hard. It's hard because nobody knows you. And even today, a pigment is almost six years old. We have zero brand awareness still in the US. So thanks to this show, maybe I will get a shoe lid, Harry. But it's hard every single lid because the reality is why... Does it not get easier now when you have brand and you have social validity, you look at your amazing customer base from your Palo Alto networks, your figmas and your braces, and everyone in between.

47:14And then I mean it respectfully, and I'm probably going to lose friends here. But you know, you're competing against like Anna Plan. Christ is not like, you know, there's five others who are great products and amazing teams at. Yeah, so it's true that that's that's on off on off 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're used to innovate and most of our competitors are you know 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 sororlion by the way in the US and in Europe But nothing is easy and I said that because I think I think funders should never think that something will be easy when it comes to selling.

48:03Nothing is easy. You always, especially when you do strategic sales like pigments. We do strategic sales where when you buy pigments, 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. What do you think is the biggest BS element told to European founders about winning in the US? A lot of people say it harder than you think, where I think it's actually easier than than you think. Because they say it's hard, yes, but it's easier than Europe.

48:33People 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, I'm going to buy SAP OIBM because the brand is trustworthy. They understand the power of the biggest technology. I can give you a fun example. It was actually so 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. We are on the show.

49:07It 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 walking, then I take the subway super far. So I'm in the subway, I'm straight, I'm completely soaked. And I receive an email, and it's probably about one certain in the morning from one of the biggest text he used in the valley, of one of the largest tech companies out there. Is that can I call you now? I'm like, sure. And he calls me, and it's 2 a .m. He says, I don't know, I want to do the biggest This is a free -hand replay of one of you competitor right now, and I want you to start tomorrow.

49:45And by you right now, I don't care, like, let's go. And literally, this year was done in not even 15 days. He called me, it's 2 a .m. Is it a 7 -figure bill? Yes, very big one. He called me and I call my team, and my team is amazing. So they are always, you know, on top of everything, passion, customer, customer obsessed. And they started to walk straight away. Lequille, 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. What element of the Eoship do you find most difficult stay or have you not got a grasp on? 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 and very pragmatic, let's fix that.

50:32And sometimes actually you need to make sure you understand what it means to act fast, but also to sing 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. When was the hardest time in the pigment journey? I think about 20 BC, in my opinion, it was like COVID, we were all remote. I didn't really have the team at all that we had now, didn't have the funds that we have now. I was lonely. The first customer is to find it's so hard. That's so hard. Nobody believes in you, nobody knows what you're doing, why would they buy you platforms that's so hard.

51:05And I would say now that the company is getting bigger, everything is becoming harder as well. Because you know that every decision - It doesn't get easy. Something gets easier for you as a founder 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're a larger team.

51:45Speaking of changing fast, my brother just had a baby and I became an uncle for the first time and I'm just like obsessed with this wonderful little girl but actually to be very honest I'm actually quite nervous because I love children and I would love to be a parent but I'm worried that I will lose an inch or two inches or ten inches on performance. Because suddenly you have this little pavry that you have to spend a huge amount of time on. What would you say to me as a friend when you hear me talk about that, genuine worry? I would say you are nuts. Why? 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?

52:25So what is important in life? What is critical is to be happy. So what makes you happy in life? What makes you happy? DPI, liquidity. Lidwini, do you? 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, you know, only you work, you ambition, you're... And I have to say, I had no clue about kids before having my own. So, and I still have no clue by the way, but in a different manner. Did you always know what made you happy? I'm asking this question to myself pretty much every day. It's impossible to create a company if you don't think about that.

53:01You need to have a drive every day. You need to find more energy than anyone on the planet to actually build. And you need to know what will make you happy in life. So that first of all, at work, where you spend most of your time, you do these things that make you happy because this is where you're going to be excellent. And two, you need to think about your life outside work. What will make you happy? Because this is, first of all, to build a great company. You need the best balance in the world. You are true athletes. You are like an Olympic athlete out there that needs to be the happiest person every day for you customers for you employees for everybody People deserve to have a person that is balanced in front of them that knows why they are doing certain things what not etc And that brings them optimism every day.

53:44So that's critical for you company But not only I'm talking about you first your life is short. Okay. I see that every day You know my grandmother tells me you have no idea how time went for me. I haven't seen anything here I haven't realized I'm now more than 90 years old and my life went super, super fast. And so I think about that every day, how can I endure every second of my life? I love being with you today because I love this show. I love what you're doing. And I love this conversation. I think you're always asking fantastic questions. You need to think about what brings this happiness.

54:16And I didn't know if kids would bring me happiness because I didn't have any. But what I knew what bringing me happiness was, I love my family and I know you do as well. I know you love your brother, you already shared some stories with me around that. You love your friends, I know that. And so you know that this will be a big part of your balance every day. So think about that and think that having kids is not going to be easy. Clearly, it's never easy. It brings you more joy than anything on earth because you have these human beings that are true to yourself that you can learn from every day, that every day you teach them something new and more importantly, that remind you every day what happiness is about.

54:55They are at the core of what happiness is in the world. They get so happy, they see a flower that looks at you and you're like, oh my god, they understand the power of nature, they understand what happiness is and for me, that's the biggest joy you can have in the world. I saw the other day play at the the opera Paris, opera garnet called Play, actually, it's from Alexander Ekman, and it's about reminding adults that playing is the biggest thing you should think about every day. How can you bring play in your own life? Because everything in your life should be about playing, not taking yourself to seriously and having fun.

55:36Do you think we've lost that? We are in an age where we optimize the shit out of everything. We have an Apple Watch with an aura ring and a weep on the other wrist. We go to bed at 8 .30 because it's the optimal time for our, you know, circadian rhythm. We've all stopped drinking. We all fucking fast. We, you know, I take longevity powder when I get up that's mixed in and fucking special mix. I don't eat carbs. I mean, it's like, have we lost play? So, first, it depends when... And that's why I'm single. Gosh, I will quit shoe hurry. No, I think 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 rhythm because every day I need to show that happiness and optimism to my company and my customers.

56:29But I do it to the limit that I will never do something that makes me unhappy, okay? And so if one day I actually want to go on party, I would never fast, for instance, that would make me unhappy. Think about what are you on 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 work, to be living in the most extraordinary condition. I have wonderful kids that are super healthy. So you watch your own. That's amazing. You need to be healthy. And it's good that you don't drink these sorts of things that makes you healthy.

57:05That's great. But that doesn't mean you cannot play. And play 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 or how can I be more creative, how can I have fun with my friends, how can I make them happy, is that also I'm always going back to that because when you have a funder, you're so autosentric. 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 other happy?

57:39How can I make my kids, my family, my friends, my own police, etc. And so think about that and think about making them happy through playing with them, playing, having fun. How do you think about bringing that to relationship and a marriage? When you are a CEO and a founder, it's just so intense. They have to be incredibly patient. And I'm gonna, I always start, and this is another is my single. I always start like, dating someone I'm like, listen, number one is my company. Always, always. That is always how it's gonna be. And I think you have to, if you're gonna build a $10 billion business, how does that work?

58:14Yes, it's 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 away before. I started pigment and I think we have both evolved a lot. I tried to I'm gonna tell you something Maybe you won't believe me but it doesn't know anything about pigment. We never talk about work together and Do you not want to have that thought partner where you can come home and say ah? You know we lost ex client and he goes oh no, why what happened? The only thing he knows about is things that are very serious that are And losing a customer, of course, it's a big problem for pigment, but is it a big problem for my life?

58:54Probably not. So I always think what is critical, what is really the biggest problem at pigment for me are always people's problem when someone comes to me and tell me that they have a huge health issue or that something is going very wrong in their life. Or these are the things that I'm super worried about or where I have a big people's problem. The rest I would say is you know, he doesn't even know I'm on the show today like he doesn't know anything about about what I do And that's all we're working is 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 What is the outcome of that both time like being there for bad time?

59:38How do you think about optimizing that time? Yeah, so what I do is obviously I work a lot of 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 he also has his own work life balance and again what I try to remember To think about is am I 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.

1:00:15Listen, I want to move into a quick file. So I say a short statement. You give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? If you're advising Europe on how we could be more competitive with the US, what advice would you give? Play offense on AI. We have to be a lot more aggressive into our AI investments. I'm seeing bigger, single -bull like here, a lot of European companies thinking Europe, Europe only. We all need to think global, create global companies out there and just think how to invest massively, massively in AI as everyone in the US is doing today. What do you believe the most around you just believe?

1:00:50Creating a company is harder than they think is one. Some people think that a company did so well and you know, Fender was almost lucky. I don't think any Fender is lucky. I think Fender's work harder than anyone out there. People suggest that AI will kill vertical AI apps and that people will build their own tools in software. Why is that BS? 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 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, You know, we have this huge database, huge compute power.

1:01:33You are accepting to, you know, work with workflows for hundreds, if not thousands of people in your company. There, you will need more AI on the shelf coming from Stas. So I would probably split the world of Stas into different companies, into different buckets. Some will be killed certainly, but some, the one that will embed AI in the right way, will kill the game. What have you changed your mind on the last 12 months? 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 serious about AI.

1:02:11I understood now how much we need to actually help them understand how to use AI for their own goods. 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 like preparing the data. So we are, for instance, with pigment, you know, we have agents. So with our agents, we are removing a lot of manual tasks.

1:02:44And now the analyst has actually time to check more their data to reflect on their data, to do more business partnering, to understand where to go, what is right, have more 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 I could bring value on how. You can be CEO of any other company for a day, which company do you want to be CEO of? an open AI or could be an entropy could be open AI differently 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 customer than them today.

1:03:29I'd most like to be a CEO of DeepSeek. That would be a really interesting one. That could be a good one too. Penaltyment one, who do you not have on your board that you would love to have on your board? Do you have a name for me? I think. I mean my number one would be Bernardo, no. Best deal maker history in the last 50 years, understands the power of brand bad and anyone, understands human psychology, and storytelling bad and anyone. They never do marketing, which is just never did marketing. That's amazing. I love that. You will give me your list. On my side, I would love also to make it ravioli.

1:03:58Make it ravioli. Yeah, make it. Understanding how to set expectations with people. Good, great in the world class, knowing it's okay to have all three, but where to put them in an entity. I mean, Nick is just unbelievable. You will pitch them for me then. What for pigment? To gen pigment on the board. Neh, also says very little. He's not only pontificating board members, it's like, yes, that's it. That's all you're getting. Amazing. And I would say probably I would love to add one of these AI founders 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.

1:04:37And so being at the forefront of innovation is key. I love you, I'm the queen, I mean he's not my, I love you. And final one, when we think about 10 years, I asked you this when we were at an event that we did in Paris, and I was like, hey, what does it take for a pigment? I think it's a $10 billion company. And I think I have like an eggplant that's like the market comp with that market counter today, and you were kind of like, fuck you, what about a $50 billion company? What does it take for a pigment to be a $50 billion company? Like you, we need to be a 200 billion. This is going to keep going.

1:05:13I'm kidding. Not for a essay. No, but I think, first of all, I don't know where it's going to lead. 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 sing slow, is what is the second, the third, the fourth act of pigment? because the platform we have today will not bring us there. And we need to start innovating now on this other ax if we actually want to build that 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.

1:05:54And we keep showing that vision actually to the entire company, to explain to them how far we want to go and that we might not know everything there. But trying to know what are the technical depth we cannot afford so that we can build these acts because that's the only way to create something large. It is so hard to do. It is so hard to do well. Listen, I cannot thank you enough for going in very different tangents. This has been so lovely to have you on it. It's so nice to be in person. So thank you so much for doing it with me. Thank you. Thank you, Harry. Gosh, it was so special to see that show with Eleanor.

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