Pigment raises €24.1 million

French startup Pigment, a business forecasting platform, has raised over €24 million. The Series A round was led by Blossom Capital, with participation from investors New York-based FirstMark Capital and Frst and angel investors including Paul Melchiorre, former CEO of business planning giant Anaplan, and David Clarke, the ex-CTO of Workday.

Founded in 2019, Pigment is trying to overhaul the painful experience of using error-prone spreadsheets and inflexible software to forecast businesses’ future. Instead of a rigid annual planning process, Pigment’s platform allows users to take control over their business data – presenting an intuitive, full-spectrum view of the company that allows users to play with multiple future scenarios in real-time through charts, simulations, and continuous modeling.

The funding will allow the company to scale up its operations and first-class engineering team, including senior hires from leading tech companies such as Criteo, Datadog, Aircall, and Payfit.

Crespo and Niccoli identified three key roadblocks in planning and reporting. First was a lack of transparency and insight into underlying data behind their business. The second was the sheer quantity of data they had to get their head around. The third was the static way it was presented, which made it hard to change and manipulate. As a result, planning and reporting waste a lot of time and money, and the inevitable mistakes hamper almost all organizations.

By contrast, Pigment’s technology offers an intuitive, visually-driven experience that lets users play with different parameters and do continuous forecasting – animating future scenarios and bringing them to life through charts, models, and simulations. This allows users to see their business clearly, take control over its dynamics, and make strategic decisions in real-time – rather than being forced to view the company reactively and through the hazy lens of a mass of abstract numbers.