Earlier this yr, an enormous French tech firm began requiring an e-mail to the CEO for each buy above €1,000. That’s as a result of they didn’t have the fitting software to handle procurement.
Meet Pivot, a brand new French startup that wishes to overtake spend administration options. Pivot needs to work with younger corporations which are rising quick and really feel like they want a procurement resolution. As an alternative of choosing a legacy enterprise spend administration system from an ERP vendor, Pivot needs to be the primary (and final) procurement system for these corporations.
On the helm of the startup, you will discover three skilled co-founders. Romain Libeau was one of many first workers at Swile and extra lately acted because the Chief Product Officer for the French unicorn. Marc-Antoine Lacroix has spent a number of years working for Qonto because the Chief Expertise Officer after which Chief Product Officer. Estelle Giuly has been a workflow engineers for a number of enterprise corporations and for Wave.ai.
“I labored so much on operations at Swile, and particularly on all the interior instruments. I truly noticed a sequencing the place first we tried to get as many purchasers as doable, so first we centered on all of the instruments for our go-to-market technique and gross sales — mainly Salesforce. Then, you’ve gotten a variety of prospects, and also you wish to maintain them completely satisfied. So we structured our customer support, our buyer success staff,” Romain Libeau informed me.
“And then you definitely get to the final brick, which is how properly you handle all of your monetary flows,” he added. And that’s the place Pivot is available in.
When corporations rent a head of procurement, that particular person often begins by itemizing all the necessities and points a name for tenders. Often, they get to decide on between Oracle NetSuite’s procurement element or possibly Coupa. It then takes a number of months to combine the product within the firm and procurement groups really feel like they’re solely utilizing 10% of the function set.
Pivot isn’t the one startup attempting to enhance procurement. Within the U.S., Zip and Levelpath have each raised tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}. “There are some regional options, European options relating to compliance and the cost ecosystem,” Libeau stated.
However the truth that some American startups are thriving additionally proves that there’s a actual market alternative. That’s why Pivot has already raised a $5.3 million pre-seed spherical (€5 million) from a number of VC corporations (Visionaries, Emblem, Cocoa, Anamcara and Financière Saint James) in addition to entrepreneurs and traders akin to Loïc Soubeyrand (founding father of Swile), Steve Anavi (co-founder of Qonto), Hanno Renner (co-founder of Personio), Oliver Samwer (co-founder of Rocket Web), Pierre Laprée and Alexis Hartmann.
And issues have been advancing at a really speedy tempo. After this funding spherical in April, the corporate began growing the product over the summer time and launched it in September with a primary shopper — Voodoo.
“We’re rolling out regularly, as a result of, as I at all times inform our staff, extra haste, much less velocity. However we’re going to finish the yr with round ten prospects. So we’ve received the offers, however we don’t wish to rush into something,” Libeau stated.
A PO workflow for people
When you work for an enormous firm and also you typically fill out buy orders, you already know that it’s a painful course of. There are too many fields, you’re unsure what you’re supposed to put in writing in every subject and you’d quite discover a workaround to keep away from buy orders.
Pivot is properly conscious of that and has designed a software that makes the PO workflow much less painful. Admins can arrange workflows from Pivot’s interface immediately — no coding expertise required. For example, a really giant buy with a software program vendor would possibly set off a safety assessment, an IT assessment, a authorized assessment, and many others. That’s why Pivot is betting on third-party integrations and an interface that works for everybody.
Pivot integrates immediately together with your current tech stack. It fetches the corporate’s org chart for the approval workflow from the HR system, it retrieves budgets from Pigment, Anaplan, and many others. It then communicates together with your communication instruments, akin to Slack, Microsoft Groups and Jira.
And, after all, Pivot integrates with ERP software program (NetSuite, SAP…) in order that distributors, value facilities, compliance guidelines and extra are immediately propagated as soon as a purchase order order is validated.
Too many corporations waste time in approvals and countless workflows. Pivot needs so as to add a layer of spend administration with out slowing down enterprise groups. And the timing appears proper as many corporations are reviewing how they spend cash.

Picture Credit: Pivot
Earlier this yr, an enormous French tech firm began requiring an e-mail to the CEO for each buy above €1,000. That’s as a result of they didn’t have the fitting software to handle procurement.
Meet Pivot, a brand new French startup that wishes to overtake spend administration options. Pivot needs to work with younger corporations which are rising quick and really feel like they want a procurement resolution. As an alternative of choosing a legacy enterprise spend administration system from an ERP vendor, Pivot needs to be the primary (and final) procurement system for these corporations.
On the helm of the startup, you will discover three skilled co-founders. Romain Libeau was one of many first workers at Swile and extra lately acted because the Chief Product Officer for the French unicorn. Marc-Antoine Lacroix has spent a number of years working for Qonto because the Chief Expertise Officer after which Chief Product Officer. Estelle Giuly has been a workflow engineers for a number of enterprise corporations and for Wave.ai.
“I labored so much on operations at Swile, and particularly on all the interior instruments. I truly noticed a sequencing the place first we tried to get as many purchasers as doable, so first we centered on all of the instruments for our go-to-market technique and gross sales — mainly Salesforce. Then, you’ve gotten a variety of prospects, and also you wish to maintain them completely satisfied. So we structured our customer support, our buyer success staff,” Romain Libeau informed me.
“And then you definitely get to the final brick, which is how properly you handle all of your monetary flows,” he added. And that’s the place Pivot is available in.
When corporations rent a head of procurement, that particular person often begins by itemizing all the necessities and points a name for tenders. Often, they get to decide on between Oracle NetSuite’s procurement element or possibly Coupa. It then takes a number of months to combine the product within the firm and procurement groups really feel like they’re solely utilizing 10% of the function set.
Pivot isn’t the one startup attempting to enhance procurement. Within the U.S., Zip and Levelpath have each raised tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}. “There are some regional options, European options relating to compliance and the cost ecosystem,” Libeau stated.
However the truth that some American startups are thriving additionally proves that there’s a actual market alternative. That’s why Pivot has already raised a $5.3 million pre-seed spherical (€5 million) from a number of VC corporations (Visionaries, Emblem, Cocoa, Anamcara and Financière Saint James) in addition to entrepreneurs and traders akin to Loïc Soubeyrand (founding father of Swile), Steve Anavi (co-founder of Qonto), Hanno Renner (co-founder of Personio), Oliver Samwer (co-founder of Rocket Web), Pierre Laprée and Alexis Hartmann.
And issues have been advancing at a really speedy tempo. After this funding spherical in April, the corporate began growing the product over the summer time and launched it in September with a primary shopper — Voodoo.
“We’re rolling out regularly, as a result of, as I at all times inform our staff, extra haste, much less velocity. However we’re going to finish the yr with round ten prospects. So we’ve received the offers, however we don’t wish to rush into something,” Libeau stated.
A PO workflow for people
When you work for an enormous firm and also you typically fill out buy orders, you already know that it’s a painful course of. There are too many fields, you’re unsure what you’re supposed to put in writing in every subject and you’d quite discover a workaround to keep away from buy orders.
Pivot is properly conscious of that and has designed a software that makes the PO workflow much less painful. Admins can arrange workflows from Pivot’s interface immediately — no coding expertise required. For example, a really giant buy with a software program vendor would possibly set off a safety assessment, an IT assessment, a authorized assessment, and many others. That’s why Pivot is betting on third-party integrations and an interface that works for everybody.
Pivot integrates immediately together with your current tech stack. It fetches the corporate’s org chart for the approval workflow from the HR system, it retrieves budgets from Pigment, Anaplan, and many others. It then communicates together with your communication instruments, akin to Slack, Microsoft Groups and Jira.
And, after all, Pivot integrates with ERP software program (NetSuite, SAP…) in order that distributors, value facilities, compliance guidelines and extra are immediately propagated as soon as a purchase order order is validated.
Too many corporations waste time in approvals and countless workflows. Pivot needs so as to add a layer of spend administration with out slowing down enterprise groups. And the timing appears proper as many corporations are reviewing how they spend cash.

Picture Credit: Pivot