The Job Isn't Disappearing. The Ladder Is. Séverine Nolf, CEO and co-founder at Pleasefix.ai

Everyone assumes AI is about to wipe out the junior analyst job in finance. Séverine Nolf thinks it's about to get more interesting, not less.

Séverine Nolf climbed through McKinsey's generalist track before jumping to the tech side, where she met Max Lahy, her co-founder and CTO. A year ago, the two of them left to build pleasefix.ai, a platform that automates document production for private equity, investment banking, and consulting teams, running on Claude and Gemini rather than locking into a single model. 

She's one of us at Syndicate One, backed alongside Pitchdrive, 100IN, and Entrepreneurs First. Séverine sat down with Robin Wauters to talk about what actually happens to the junior analyst role once AI takes over document work, and why she's building the team in Brussels while running go-to-market from New York.

• She'll tell you why killing the junior analyst job misses the point: the work shifts, but the ladder stays put.
• She gets into why a single platform wins out over a point solution, even as the underlying model changes every few months.
• PleaseFix.ai keeps rewriting its own engineering playbook, since just following fast isn't enough anymore.
• She lays out why building in Brussels while selling into New York works for them, and what that split looks like in practice.
• She flips the 'rare female founder' question on its head: the bias that worked against her at the start flipped in her favor once people saw what she built. Founder first, female second.

Recorded following pleasefix.ai's pre-seed round.

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## Transcript (cleaned, confirmed names applied)

**SÉVERINE:** So I'm Séverine Nolf. I'm a co-founder and CEO of pleasefix.ai. In short, what we do is we're building the AI workforce for finance and strategy.

**ROBIN:** Great. So, Séverine, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the Syndicate One podcast. At Syndicate One, we know you very well. For those who have no clue who you are and what pleasefix is, what's the basics?

**SÉVERINE:** Yeah, so maybe about myself — I first studied data science and finance, then joined McKinsey, where I met Max Lahy, my current co-founder. Max has a technical background, worked a few years as a software engineer, then also joined McKinsey. That's where we met. We both wanted to move more to the tech side of McKinsey, so we ended up building an AI platform for McKinsey, and then decided to bring that experience to the full strategy and finance industry. Started a year ago. Basically, we automate all document production tasks for people in private equity, investment banking, M&A advisory, and strategic consulting.

**ROBIN:** I'm going to ask the very difficult question from the beginning, because you've already touched on this. The problem you're solving for these big management consultants and financial services firms is a problem that will probably be solved by the LLMs themselves, or the layer on top. How do you differentiate? What makes you different?

**SÉVERINE:** I like to take one example — Legora has found a really good way to do that. It's exactly what you said: it's the layer on top. How do you create a platform where people can collaborate, where you have a memory on an individual, team, and firm level? Your clients can also interact on the iteration. Document production is about iterating on the same content over and over until it's exactly perfect. So it's about making it possible to collaborate within your teams and your clients on one single platform, and then leveraging the best models behind it. I don't believe models have reached a plateau yet, and even when they do, they won't plateau in the same expertise fields. So there's a lot of value in centralizing all of that and using the best of each model, so your clients don't need to orchestrate the AI layer themselves, switching from Claude to OpenAI back to Gemini every time a new model releases.

**ROBIN:** True. What models are you currently building on, or does it vary?

**SÉVERINE:** It changes a lot over time depending on releases. For now it's a mix of Claude by Anthropic and Gemini by Google. A few months ago I'd have said the majority of the agents we're building were using OpenAI's models. But that's the cool thing — we can constantly test, readjust, and use what's best for each agent doing your work.

**ROBIN:** That's the great thing about pleasefix — you have a front-row seat into how these models are evolving and how quickly it's changing. What's your impression of where this is going? Because I can't even keep up.

**SÉVERINE:** I love it. It's super cool to see models evolve that quickly. The smarter they get, the better it is for us, because then we can go into doing tasks end-to-end with more of an intelligent layer that can provide insights, give a bit of feedback on what you've just done. That's really the level you want to get to — something that's not just doing stuff, but that can have a real opinion and build that opinion because you use pleasefix. The cool thing is pleasefix builds skills, a memory, and formats while you work with it — it remembers how you formatted something last time, uses the same skills to do the same reporting, but based on memory it'll also tell you, "maybe we should model this differently" or "you got that feedback from that partner, we should incorporate it from the beginning." So you build a product that helps a junior directly get the power of a senior.

**ROBIN:** And that's a pain point you and Max experienced yourselves at McKinsey. Does that make it easier to sell to companies like McKinsey, or is it still tough to break into?

**SÉVERINE:** It's so helpful. A big strength of ours is that we both worked at McKinsey — both did a generalist track first, then moved to the tech side. Really experiencing the pain is super helpful in building the product, because we understand each other when we talk about what we want to build next and what the user actually wants. On the client side, my discussions with users and buyers aren't classic sales pitches. They're more like conversations: "tell me what you do," "I used to do this too, and it was painful." Everyone in our space is pro-technology and wants this out of their way so they can focus on building conviction on a deal, or working more closely with clients. It's super cool because you share the same problem and build from there. And in our space, people are pretty positive about where it's going.

**ROBIN:** Fantastic. It's interesting you mentioned junior analysts, because what I hear from big consultancy firms and PE houses is that junior roles are becoming commoditized, even unnecessary at some point, which means less inflow of talented people, where it used to be: start at the bottom, move up, learn as you go. That aspect of the ladder is being eroded, from what I hear. Do you see it the same way, or differently?

**SÉVERINE:** I'm not sure it's completely eroded. I think the content of the job will change drastically, which, in my opinion, is a good thing, and clients agree. The junior layer will spend time on other tasks than just producing documents. It'll reshape the pyramid rather than remove the bottom part entirely. But you still need someone to orchestrate everything, interview experts, get closer to clients, meet more founders, and I think there'll be much more value in a more liquid market, so network becomes even more important. You'll analyze a deal you wouldn't have had access to before, thanks to pleasefix, but you still have to earn your spot to get in contact with a company, sign them, or get the mandate to sell the business. That's where you still need a lot of manpower, building relationships is what humans are good at, and that creates more market liquidity, which converts into more deal-making.

**ROBIN:** Super interesting take. Playing devil's advocate though, it's a red ocean. A lot of companies are trying to make these firms more productive, efficient, customer-centric. How do you play this? How do you build a defensible moat at scale?

**SÉVERINE:** Good question, we get it a lot. Like I said, we look a lot at Legora, how they're building that platform, positioning, branding, and having one place instead of switching between ten platforms for small things. A lot of our competitors build one small thing that works, but nobody wants to context-switch just to source one deal or model one thing in an Excel plugin. People want a solution that does everything, or close to it. So we sell that single platform, and we'll keep integrating everything, moving away from context-switching between databases, emails, etc. That's the product answer. The rest is branding and positioning, a lot of work there, a lot coming soon. I think legal went first because it's text in, text out, and lawyers are less technical than finance people. Finance is harder, it's math, and slide-making that needs to be beautiful, which isn't a science. But the potential is way bigger in finance, way more money, which is why it's more of a red ocean. I think that's a good sign, market validation, in a way.

**ROBIN:** How has AI impacted the way you're building the company, processes, and workflows? You've only just started, but a lot has changed already with how fast models evolve. Does that affect how you think about building the company?

**SÉVERINE:** Massive impact, we don't spend one lunch as a team not talking about it. It's also the biggest opportunity, the best moment to build something, because we can move quickly and change how we engineer with AI. Over the last months we've implemented so many new things that make us faster. Speed is the biggest advantage of startups, if you can be quicker than everyone else in what you use, and use it the right way, you go faster. On the engineering side it's impressive how much we've evolved, we should be first adopters in everything, it's not even a question. It's also impressive how much I've managed to automate on the commercial and admin side. Everyone joining the team knows they need to be up and running with the latest and greatest.

**ROBIN:** You have a great story, great technology for great clients. You raised from Syndicate One, but also brought on other great investors, Pitchdrive, 100IN, Entrepreneurs First. From a distance it looks like you're surrounding yourself with a network of mentors who've done it before, to help you scale. How are you leveraging that today, and how do you plan to going forward?

**SÉVERINE:** For now, honestly, very opportunistic, we talk with investors, know who's good at what, and leverage them for that. The founders from Henchman, for example, they're great at branding, making it look professional and fun at the same time. Getting their help there is super useful. The great advantage of Syndicate One is having so many different profiles within it, Reginald de Wasseige helped us on the fundraising side, he's in VC, really knowledgeable. Someone helped with the fundraising announcement, PR, we didn't have PR experience before, so that was super helpful. Same with Rydoo: a great example of a Belgian company that went quickly to tier-one clients. It's funny, they sold to McKinsey globally, so every consultant at McKinsey uses them to do expenses, and consultants do a lot of expenses. They managed to sell into a tier-one enterprise quickly, and they share a lot about how they did it behind the scenes. So, super helpful. We just try to know who's helpful on what, and whenever we need it, we WhatsApp or Slack. For now, it works well.

**ROBIN:** Are you a Belgian company, an American company, or what proportion of either?

**SÉVERINE:** Both, again, a bit opportunistic. We have a US holding company, a Delaware C-Corp, that holds 100% of our Belgian subsidiary. The tech is in Belgium, the plan is to grow sales in New York, so I'm splitting time between London, New York, and Brussels. We believe Brussels is a good place to scale a tech team, at least for the first years, we'll see what's best going forward.

**ROBIN:** Why do you consider Brussels a great place to set up a tech team?

**SÉVERINE:** Personally, we have a network here. We spent four months living in SF, and if you don't have a technical network there, it's super hard to hire. So in the beginning you should go where you have good talent and speed to hire, otherwise it doesn't help, that's the personal argument. But we both really believe Brussels and Belgium are well placed to shine in tech. Brussels is great because you can attract the best talent from Flanders, Brussels, and Wallonia into one city, great from a pure location point of view. And from an ecosystem point of view, a lot is going on right now, what Thibaud Elziere just created is kind of building a Station F for Brussels. Brussels was really lacking one central initiative like that. We're part of it, and the other companies involved are super ambitious too. It's exactly the right moment to scale our team here.

**ROBIN:** You're still young as a company, so you don't have 20 years of hindsight on the Belgian tech ecosystem, but I'd love your insights. Looking at the Belgian ecosystem today, not just Brussels, what are your observations?

**SÉVERINE:** Belgians get a lot of things done, that's the mentality, and you see it in tech. There have been a lot of successes, and that created ecosystems, like in Ghent with Netlog, Showpad, pushing it forward to the next generation. That's the best way to do it, it's how SF was built too. Now's the moment to make this even bigger. People are hungry for it, there have been successes to look up to and replicate, and it's now easier than ever to build something in Belgium and sell it to the world; twenty years ago that would've been harder. I think the double structure works well, we needed the US because that's where most of our market sits, that's clear commercially. But on the tech side, I'm excited for what's coming. I do feel like it's going to get big.

**ROBIN:** You often hear about risk-averse culture and mindset in Europe compared to the US. Are the conversations you're having in SF and New York, with investors or talent you're trying to attract, much different from the ones here?

**SÉVERINE:** With people who have the right ambition, not a big difference. It's a nice way to filter out people who aren't a fit for us, not in a pretentious way, some people like the European or Belgian way of life, and that's fine, but it's not a fit for us right now. A lot of ambitious people in Belgium used to think they had to move to have a successful career, and I don't think that's true anymore, you can build big things in Brussels with global ambitions. We moved to the US to build credibility and start our GTM motion there, and we expect people to be as ambitious as we are, that's also why they get shares and become partial owners of the company. In those discussions, you're talking to owners, same as you would with someone joining a startup in SF or New York. We're really clear about how hard we work and how ambitious we are, so it filters out people who aren't a fit right now.

**ROBIN:** You've shared a lot of positives about Belgium and Brussels. What are the downsides, or what needs improvement?

**SÉVERINE:** How fragmented Belgium can get. Before San Francisco, we spent a few months in Station F in Paris. What struck me there was how central everything was, a simple example: BPI France would nearly match your equity round one-on-one, for all of France. In Belgium everything is fragmented, non-dilutive help isn't one central application, which makes it more complex, and probably means smaller amounts too, so the process is painful and fragmented. That's one thing I think we should all improve on, and initiatives like the WAT initiative are helping. On the other hand, having different cultures in one country is also a real strength, you can easily adapt to clients from different countries and setups. But yeah, something to learn from the US, you're well placed to talk about it, but the Delaware C-Corp model, and now the EU Inc initiative in Europe, will help with that too. Trying to be more unified is something I hope we'll all work toward.

**ROBIN:** Going back to pleasefix, are you happy with where you are now? Satisfied with the growth rate, or does a lot still need to happen before the next round of funding, for example?

**SÉVERINE:** We just raised, so yeah, a lot needs to happen, but that's a good thing, never enough, always pushing for more. We've hired great talent on the tech side, I'm really seeing progress on the product, it's cool to see that speed. We also got a lot of inbound thanks to the fundraising announcement, more locally in Belgium and the Netherlands. Now we need to push further, sign bigger clients, larger rollouts. That's where I spend most of my time, along with getting feedback from existing clients, I wish every piece of feedback could be instantly incorporated into the next push, but speed is really picking up on the product. Let's just keep pushing and we'll get there.

**ROBIN:** Interesting, because with so much feedback from different clients on which features to build, and it now being easier and faster than ever to build something, do you risk overcomplicating what you offer? Do you always need that north star of what you're actually trying to build?

**SÉVERINE:** The way we build products has changed a lot, not in our lifetime, we're probably too young to have made that observation, but compared to before: a lot of web apps were fixed, you toggle elements, upload a file, fields are fixed. That's the context-switching problem, it does one small thing great, but it's small, and derails you into switching elsewhere for something simple. Now there's a real opportunity to make a product super flexible, which is hard, because you want flexibility but also reliability every time you do the same kind of job. That's what we try to build for everything repetitive, like quarterly reporting to LPs for a PE firm: aggregating, mapping data, etc., repetitive, needs to be done consistently well every quarter, so you need a skill that does it exactly like last time. But you also need flexibility to dig deeper, find causes, find levers to help portfolio companies, that won't happen exactly the same way next quarter. So: keep it flexible, and make it possible that everything happens within pleasefix.

**ROBIN:** I'm always a bit hesitant to touch on this, but the fact that you're a female founder makes you a rare breed. At Syndicate One we care about that, we try to have a diverse team ourselves, and we're launching initiatives to stimulate this. Is that something you care about, maybe at some point wanting to be a role model? Do you already talk to other female founders as a mentor?

**SÉVERINE:** I've been asked this before. Not that I don't care, that's who I am, I'm just doing it while being a woman. But I do believe there need to be more role models, and if I can be part of that later, I'd be really happy, in the meantime I'm just pushing forward and seeing. I've also been asked whether it's harder in an only-male environment, and I think it's probably triple true for me, tech, finance, and consulting leadership is still very male, and VCs and fundraising too, mostly male. I don't know if it would've been different if I weren't a woman, but you need to be opportunistic and take what you can from it, maybe some people had a first bias against me because "how can a woman build something in tech or finance," but the people who actually met me, it reversed, if I can do this while being a woman, their bias becomes a strength for me, because they think I must be stronger than the others. So if that's the case in some people's heads, I'll take the benefit from it. I don't have a big opinion on it, I'm just doing it while being a woman, and that's it.

**ROBIN:** Founder first, female second, right?

**SÉVERINE:** Yeah, it's a bit easy for me to say, because I don't have kids. I think it gets really harder especially early on, when you're pregnant, or in the early days of being a parent, probably harder as a woman founder. But that's not my case, so I'm probably not the best person to speak to it. Even there, we have great role models, Aline Muylaert, Co-Founder of Go Vocal. Congrats to her.

**ROBIN:** Anything else, not that you have a world of experience in startups, but if you were facing someone who's trying to decide whether they want to be an entrepreneur or not, why would you tell them yes, go for it, and what would be your main advice?

**SÉVERINE:** I'd go for it ten times again, it's something I always personally wanted to do, tried a bit at uni and other projects that never really took off. You need to really want it, but timing-wise, it's the best moment to do it. You learn so much it's not even a risk. Some people say "I have a job that pays," Max and I are good examples, McKinsey's salary compared to the average Belgian salary was really good. But every day I spend building my own company is full of learnings that are valuable for the rest of my life, it's not a risk. First, think about whether it's something you want to do, because it's going to be hard, you'll work a lot, your work-life balance will change even coming from a firm like McKinsey. But it's never been a better moment to do it, and you learn so much every day that I'd just say: go for it. I don't see it as a risk. Just do it.