EO StudioHow to Steal Customers From Giants 600x Bigger than Your Startup | Pigment, Eléonore Crespo
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Pigment’s playbook for beating SAP: enterprise-ready product and trust
- Pigment was created after Crespo saw even elite companies like Google relying on spreadsheets for planning that don’t scale to complex, multi-entity decision-making.
- To compete with SAP and Oracle, Pigment chose the “hard path” early by building a full, enterprise-ready platform (engine, UX, governance/security) rather than shipping a narrow feature.
- Enterprise sales requires trust and reference-driven credibility, so Pigment targeted fast-forward customers (e.g., Figma, Brex, Carta) to create a compounding “follow-the-leaders” effect.
- Pre-launch fundraising and early traction were enabled by team quality and investor selection, using VCs to open doors and add legitimacy with large U.S. tech buyers.
- Crespo emphasizes that hiring is the core scaling lever: clarify values early, “calibrate” roles against world-class operators, and use rigorous case studies plus deep back-channel references to avoid costly mis-hires.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasBuild for enterprise readiness from day one if that’s your target buyer.
Pigment chose to “climb Mount Everest” early—shipping an end-to-end platform with security, governance, modeling, and UX—because enterprises won’t adopt a partial solution for mission-critical planning.
If the buyer is a strategic decision-maker, trust is a product requirement.
Serving CFOs and finance leaders means perceived risk is high; Pigment leaned on top-tier customers and public validation to accelerate confidence and shorten the credibility gap versus incumbents.
The “hard path” can become the faster path through compounding references.
Landing a few respected, fast-moving companies created a follower effect—once leaders endorse a tool, others are more willing to switch away from legacy platforms.
Don’t underestimate how different enterprise sales is from SMB SaaS.
Crespo notes founders often believe they’re “enterprise-ready” too early; selling into large orgs requires broader functionality, multi-stakeholder rollout readiness, and stronger proof points.
Choose investors for operational leverage, not just capital.
Pigment “carefully picked” investors who could open doors, help recruit U.S. executives, and lend legitimacy—especially critical when selling from Paris into Silicon Valley brands.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesSo sometimes, you know, taking the hard route can bring you to an easier route over time, and sometimes, you know, you start easy and then it gets hard, so you have to pick your battle.
— Eléonore Crespo
I saw that whenever they had to make a strategic decision, they would have the best possible tools internally to do that. You know, Google is one of the most innovative company out there, so you would imagine they are very well-equipped. And I was very, very surprised actually that everything they were doing there was made on Google Spreadsheet pretty much.
— Eléonore Crespo
One difficult moment a lot of founders get wrong is how difficult it is to sell to large companies. You think perhaps that your product is enterprise ready, you're ready to sell to enterprise. That's not the case at all.
— Eléonore Crespo
If you want people to trust you, you need to have fast-forward-looking companies telling, "We love Pigment, we love that platform, and we will tell the entire world that this is true," and people will follow.
— Eléonore Crespo
Every hiring mistake that we've made has caused mistakes everywhere else in the company. That's where you start having a, a lower bar at everything you do.
— Eléonore Crespo
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
