Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Conversations with the founders, investors, and operators driving Belgium’s startup scene,
Exploring the ideas, stories, and strategies that accelerate the ecosystem flywheel 🚀.
So I'm Severine Nolf, I'm co founder and CEO of pleasefix.ai. And in short, what we do is we are building the AI workforce for finance and strategy.
Robin:Great, so Lorraine, 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?
Severine:Yes, so maybe about myself, I first studied data science and finance and then joined McKinsey, where I've met Max, my current co founder. Max has a technical background, then worked a few years as a software engineer, then also joined McKinsey, so that's where we've met. We both wanted to go more to the tech side of McKinsey, so ended up building AI platform for McKinsey, and then decided to basically bring that experience to the full strategy and finance industry. That's what we did, started a year ago, and basically what we do is we automate all document production tasks of people in private equity, investment banking, M and A advisory and strategic consulting.
Robin:Okay, I'm going to ask the very very difficult question from the beginning, because you've already touched on this. The problem that you're solving for all these big management consultants, financial services firms, is a problem that will probably be solved by the LLMs themselves or the layer on top. How do you differentiate that? What makes you different?
Severine:Yeah, think to answer that question I like to take one example. I think Legora has found a really good way to do that. It's exactly what you just said, right, it's the layer on top. How do you create a platform where people can collaborate, where you really have a memory on an individual team and firm level, your clients can also interact on the iteration. Document production is only about iterating on the same content over and over again until it's exactly perfect.
Severine:And so it's making it possible to collaborate within your teams and your clients in one single platform, and then, of course, leveraging the best models behind. I don't believe models have reached a plateau yet, and even when they will, they will not reach plateaus in the same expertise fields, if that's the right word. And so I think there is a lot of value to create one, the platform where you can centralize all of that and then use just the power of each, like the best of each model so that your clients don't need to to orchestrate the AI layer themselves and and and, like, switch everyone from Cloud to OpenAI back to Gemini whenever a new model gets released.
Robin:What are the models that you're currently building upon or does it vary?
Severine:It's changing a lot over time depending on releases, that's really cool, we can really change that while new models are getting released. For now, it's it's a mix of, Cloud, Myanthropic, and Gemini, by Google. Before, a few months ago, I would still say would have answered to that question that the majority of of, the the agents we we are building were using OpenAI's models, but that's cool, we can constantly test and readjust and use what's best for each agent that's then going to do your work.
Robin:That's the great thing about Pleasefix is you have basically a front row seat into how these models are evolving and how quickly it's changing. What is your impression overall of where this is going, because I can't even keep up,
Severine:Yeah, I to be love it, I think it's super cool to see those models evolve that quickly, I think the more they get they get smarter, the better it is for us because then we can really go into doing really the tasks end to end with way more, like, an intelligent intelligent layer that can provide insights, criticize a bit like giving a bit feedback on what you've just done, and I think that's really the level you wanna get to, right, having something that's not just doing stuff but that can also have real opinion and build that opinion because you use Pleasefix. So the cool thing is, like, Pleasefix builds skills, a memory, and formats while you work with it so it can remember how you formatted something last time, use the same skills to do exactly the same reporting. But then also based on your memory, it will tell you, like, hey. But maybe we should this isn't the the way we modeled last time. We should do it differently, or you got that feedback back from from that partner at that moment.
Severine:We should already incorporate it from the beginning. So you can really build a product that's going to help you improve and a junior will directly get the power of senior.
Robin:Right, and that's a pain point that you and Max have experienced yourself at McKinsey. Does it make it easier to sell to companies like McKinsey or is it still tough to sort of break into that?
Severine:I think it's so helpful, I especially think a big strength of us is that we both worked at McKinsey, but it first and generally strike and then moved to more the tech side of McKinsey, but having both really experience the pains is super helpful on building the product because then we really understand each other when we talk about what we wanna build next and how the user should like, what the user exactly wants. Like, it's something we we share deeply. So that's more on the product. Answering your questions on on clients. Yeah.
Severine:I do think my discussions with with users and and buyers are not necessarily like sales classic sales pitches. They're way more like conversations of, okay, tell me what you do. Okay. I I also used to do this and, that was painful in this kind of tasks. And we've done a lot of the tasks they've done and so it's also super cool because you have that discussion of like everyone in our space is kind of pro technology and everyone says like, okay, please get it, get all this out of my way so that I can focus on, if I'm in PE, building conviction about the deal, if I'm consulting, it will be working more closely with my clients, understanding better how we can get to a successful delivery of projects.
Severine:So I think it's super cool because you just share the same problem and then you can build up on that and in our space they're pretty all positive about where it's going.
Robin:Fantastic. You may have already mentioned there is quite a lot moving in that space. It's interesting that you mentioned junior analysts because what I hear from the big consultancy firms and big private equity houses and whatnot is that these junior roles are becoming increasingly a bit sort of commoditized and not even unnecessary at some point, which means that there's less of an inflow of talented people where it used to be, you know, you start down the ladder and then you just move up and you learn as you go along. That aspect of those big businesses kind of being eroded from what I hear in the market. Do you have the same take on this or is it different?
Severine:Yeah, I'm not sure it's completely eroded, I just think that the content of the job will drastically change, like drastically, which is, in my opinion, a really good thing. And in the like, from what I'm hearing from from our clients, it's also a good thing. Like, the junior layer will just spend their time doing other tasks than just producing documents. It will probably shape that pyramid a bit differently. Now there is a really big bottom part of pyramid.
Severine:It will probably change a bit the shape of it, but I still think you need someone to orchestrate everything that needs to be produced. So you'll still need analysts to orchestrate but also to interview more experts, to get closer to clients, meet more farmers. And I also think there will be much more value in creating a more liquid market, so network will be even more important. You'll be able to really quickly analyze a deal that before you wouldn't even have had access to with Pleasefix, so that's a good thing, but you will have to earn your spot to then get in contact with that company, try to sign them and if you're an IB, to get that mandate to sell the business. And that's something where I think you still need a lot of manpower, right, billing.
Severine:Actually that's what humans are good at, it's like building those relationships and that's going to create more market liquidity that's really going to convert into more deal making.
Robin:Super interesting take, thank you for sharing. What you've been playing But devil's advocate because we love what you're doing obviously, but it's a red ocean, There's lot of companies in this space trying to make these companies more productive and more efficient and more customer centric in many ways. How do you play this? How do you build a defensible moat that's
Severine:It's at a good one. Well, I mean, it's a question we're getting a lot, And it's challenging yourself all of the time on making sure you're doing the right things. But it's, like I said in the beginning, we are looking a lot at Legora, how they're doing it. I think it's building that platform, building also like that, it's a lot about positioning and branding, but then in terms of products, it's having that platform where you can collaborate, having that single place where you don't need to switch context and go to 10 different platforms to do small things. I think that's what a lot of our competitors are doing, is just building one super small thing and it works, but no one wants to switch context to just go and source one more deal or model one more thing in a plug in that's only in Excel.
Severine:People want a solution that does everything or that's at least capable to go in there, and so we sell that. We sell that single platform where you can do everything and we'll just add, like, we're just going to continue integrating everything you're now moving away from, so context switching to databases, to emails, to have everything in a central place. So I think that's on the product answer, but then I think it's a lot about branding, positioning, doing a lot of work there, a lot will be released soon, so that's cool, but it's just an ongoing effort. It's not like you can I think law and first because it's text in text out, and lawyers are probably a bit less technical than finance people, but finance is harder because it's math and then it's abstract, like slide making that needs to be beautiful, which isn't the science, but the potential is way bigger in finance? It's way more, money, so that's why it's way more of a red ocean.
Severine:But I think it's a good sign, it's market validation in some way.
Robin:True, true. How has AI impacted the way that you're building these companies and building processes and workflows? I mean, you've only just started, but still a lot has changed already in terms of models and the way that we've evolved and the speed at which they're evolving. So does that have any impact in the way you're thinking around how do we build It this company in the long
Severine:has a massive impact. I think we don't spend one lunch with the team not talking about this. But I also think it's the biggest opportunity, like it's the greatest moment to build something because you can add on to be a startup because we can just super quickly move and change ways engineer work with AI. Think over the last months we've implemented so much new things that are super cool and that makes us way faster and that's I think the biggest advantage of startups is just speed. You need to have that goal and then just if you can be quicker than all the other ones in in what you use, use it first and use it in the right way, then you you're going way faster.
Severine:So in in in the engineering team, it's it's impressive to see how much we evolved there. We can just be first adopters in everything. It's not even a question. We should actually be first adopters in everything. But it's also super impressive to see how I'm using AI for lot of I really managed to automate a lot of the commercial side as well, but also a lot of admin stuff, so also super impressive to see the potential there.
Severine:And I think everyone that will join the team is aware that they need to be up and running with the latest and greatest.
Robin:Great. Well, guys have a great story to tell, working on great technology for great clients, so obviously you raised investment from Syndicate One, but you also brought on board a number of other great investors, PitchDrive, one hundred and entrepreneurs first. From a distance it would seem that you're kind of surrounding yourself with a network of mentors and people who've done it before to help you scale, how are you leveraging that today and how do you plan to leverage it in the future?
Severine:Yeah, well I think it's for now the short answer is very opportunistic. We just talk with our investors, know who is good at what and just leverage them for that. Few examples, like Hunter Tin, the founders from Henchman love exactly what I was saying before on branding, it look professional and fun at the same time. I think they really succeeded in that. So getting their help on that is super helpful.
Severine:I think the great advantage of Syndicate One is having so many different profiles within Syndicate One. So I think Reggie helped us on on the fundraising. He's working in VC, so we really knowledgeable there. You you helped us with the the fundraising announcements, so PR. We also didn't have any experience in in PR before, so I think that's that's super helpful.
Severine:The same for PigDrive, thing Reidoo is really a great example of a Belgian company that went quickly to the tier ones, it's fun because they sold to McKinsey globally, so every consultant at McKinsey is using Reidoo to make their expenses and being a consultant you do have a lot of them, but so they managed to quickly sell to a tier one enterprise company, so they're also sharing a lot of how they did it the back scenes, so also super helpful. We just try to know who's helpful on what, and whenever we need it, WhatsApp, Slack, whatever, and for now it works well.
Robin:That's the way to go, would say. Great. Are you a Belgian company, an American company, or to what proportion are you either?
Severine:Yeah, we're both, right? And again, being a bit opportunistic there as well, we do have a US holding company Delaware, C Corp, that holds 100% of our subsidiary, a Belgian subsidiary. The tech is in Belgium, the plan is to grow sales in New York, so I'm now spending my time a bit in between London, New York and Brussels. We believe Brussels is a good place to scale the tech team, at least for the first years, and we'll see what happens, what's best to do in the future.
Robin:I'm interested, why do you consider Brussels to be a great place to set up a tech team?
Severine:Yeah, so from a personal point of view, we have a network here, So we went living four months in SF, I think if you don't have a technical network there, it's super hard to hire. We have that in Brussels so I think in the beginning you should go where you have good talent and speed to hire because otherwise it doesn't help. So that's a bit like the personal argument but then we also both really believe Brussels and Belgium is really well placed to shine on the tech scene. Brussels is cool because you can attract the best talents from Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia into one city. So from a pure location point of view, it's great.
Severine:And then from a network, like, I would say more of ecosystem point of view, a lot is going on right now. What has just been created by Thibault L'Ierre, They kind of are creating Stations F but in Brussels. I think Brussels was really lacking one central initiative like that. We're part of it. The other company is part of what are really super ambitious as well.
Severine:So I think it's exactly the right moment to scale our team here.
Robin:You're still young yourself, but also as a company, which means you don't have sort of the benefit of being able to look back twenty years on the Belgian tech ecosystem, I'd love to get your insights, if you look at the Belgian ecosystem today, not necessarily Brussels only, but what are your observations? What are you seeing?
Severine:Yeah, well, I obviously see that for me Belgium are really getting a lot of things done. That's really the Belgium mentality, and you can see it in tech. Right? There have been a lot of successes, and then I really like how that created a few ecosystems like EngenT, right, with with with Netloc, Showpad, and that they then push it forward to the next generation. I think that's just the the best way to do it.
Severine:That's exactly how SF was built as well as well. Right? So I think now is the moment to make this even bigger. You can really feel people are hungry for it, I think, both because there have been a few successes, there is, like, something to look up to and and and replicate. But also just from a, like, now it's it's so easy to build something in Belgium and sell it to the world.
Severine:Right? You don't it's it's you don't necessarily I I would say twenty years ago, that would have been harder. I think now it's really a good moment to do this. I think the double structure works really well. We needed The US because that's where most of our market sits.
Severine:So that's really clear on the commercial side, but on the tech scene, think I'm so excited for what's coming. I do feel like it's going to get big.
Robin:That's an interesting take because you often hear about this sort of risk averse culture and the mindset that we have here in Europe in general compared to The US, you have the benefit of being able to compare. If you look at sort of what the conversations you were having in SF and New York, are they much different from the ones you're having, either with investors or talent that you're trying to attract or partner with?
Severine:Yeah, it's a good question. I would say with the people that have the right ambition, it's not a big difference, and it's a nice way to filter out people that are not fit for us. Right? Not saying it in a pretentious way, just think some people like European or even the Belgian way of life. Right?
Severine:That's a bit more comfortable and and that's fine. But then it's also not a fit for us right now. And I do think there are a lot of ambitious people in Belgium that thought that they had to move to be able to have a successful career. And I don't think that's true anymore. People that are ambitious really get that you can build big things in Brussels with companies that have global ambitions.
Severine:Right? We we we moved to The US to to to build up that credibility and start our our GTM motion in The US. So and that's also why why we we we expect from people that that, like, that they are as ambitious as we are and that's also why they get shares of the company and they're partly owners of the company. That's whenever you are in those discussions, then it's the same, right? You're talking to owners like you would for someone joining a startup NSF or in New York.
Severine:But we are really clear on how hard we work and how ambitious we are, so I think it filters out people that are just not a fit for us right now.
Robin:Great answer. You've shared a lot of positive things about the Belgian and Brussels ecosystem. What are some of the downsides or the things that we can improve or that we need to work on?
Severine:Yeah, well there is one thing right about Belgium, it's how fragmented Belgium can get. So before going to San Francisco, we spent a few months in Paris, in Staciano F, a year ago when what didn't exist yet. And there, really struck me back then was that it was all central. Like, you could, like a simple example is, like, BP France would match your equity round nearly at, like, nearly a one on one match for all France. Right?
Severine:In Belgium, everything is fragmented. If you wanna get non dilutive help, it's not gonna be one central application, which makes it way more complex and which makes it also probably in just terms of money amounts you can get. It's smaller. So process is kind of painful and can get fragmented. So that's one thing I think we should all improve on and I think initiatives like what are helping on.
Severine:On the other hand, I really think having the different cultures in one country makes it also a very big strength. You can easily adapt to clients from different countries and different setups. But yeah, think that's something I think we should learn from The US as well, right? You're really well placed to talk about it, like the Delaware CCOP and now the EU Inc. Initiative in Europe will help with that as well, like trying to be more unified is kind of something I hope we'll all work towards in the future.
Robin:Great. Going back to Pleasefix, are you happy with where you are now? Are you satisfied with the growth rate and the way things are progressing? Or do you feel like you're so still a lot needs to happen to maybe get you ready for the next round of funding for example?
Severine:Well, just raised, so yeah, a lot needs to happen, but it's a good thing, it's never enough and we're always pushing for more, But I think we just hired a lot of great talent on the tech side of Pleasefix and I'm really seeing the progress on the product. So super cool to see that and really getting that speed in, so that's super cool. We also got a lot of inbound thanks to the fundraising announcement more locally in Belgium, Netherlands, so that's also really cool to see. But now we need to push it even further, right? Sign bigger clients, like larger rollouts.
Severine:So that's where I spent most of my time as well as getting the feedback from our existing clients. And there, obviously, I wish that every feedback would instantly incorporated in the next push, but speed is really taking off on the product. I would say let's just keep pushing and we'll get there.
Robin:That's an interesting observation actually because imagine that you get a lot of feedback from different types on of which features to build, the fact that it's now easier and faster than ever to build something. Do you also risk sometimes over complicating what you're offering? Do you always have to have that north star of this is what we're actually trying to build?
Severine:I think the way we build projects has changed a lot, not in our lifetime. Right? We're probably too young to make that observation, but compared to before. Right? In our space, a lot of web apps were built where it was kind of fixed.
Severine:What you could do, you had to toggle elements, upload the file, and all fields were kind of fixed. And that's what I meant before with context switching. Okay. It does one super small thing great, but it's it's super small, it's derailing you from your work because you need to switch to somewhere else to do a super simple thing. Well now there is really an opportunity to make a product super flexible.
Severine:It's super hard because you want something flexible but that's still going to be reliable every time you do the same kind of job again. That's what we try to build, for everything that's repetitive, like a PE firm needs to do reporting quarterly reporting to their LPs. That's something they always need to do. Aggregating, mapping the data, etcetera, is kind of repetitive. It is something you need to do consistently well over the quarters, so you need to have a skill that can do that exactly like last time.
Severine:The like last time is super important in my sentence, but you also need to be flexible and be able to do something new, get further into, dig deeper in the reporting example into data that sounds weird, try to find causes and try to find different levers you can act upon to help your portfolio companies. And that's then not going to happen exactly in the same way next quarter. So this is a bit of a long answer, but to get back to your question, you need to keep it flexible, that's our main direction and make it possible that everything happens within Pleasefix.
Robin:Good answer. I'm always kind of hesitant to touch on this, but the fact that you are a female founder in the startup makes you a rare breed. At Syndicate One we care about that quite a lot. I mean, we try to have a diverse team ourselves, but we're also launching initiatives to maybe stimulate. Is that something that you care about?
Robin:That you maybe at some point want to serve as a role model? Do you talk to other female founders as a mentor already? What's going on on that side of things?
Severine:I was asked the question a few times before as well. I don't know, that I don't care, it's probably just that's who I am and I'm just doing it while being a female. But what I do believe is there needs to be more role models so I'm also, I think, if I can later on be part of that, really happy but I'm just gonna, in the meantime, just do what I push further and see. What I do believe is, I got a bit of a different question, like is it higher level in an only male kind of environment? And I think it's probably triple true for me because I'm in tech, I'm in finance, and and then, like, consulting is also like, the leaders are also very much males for now.
Severine:And, like, all VCs, like, also in fundraising. Right? It's it's a lot of of of males. So I don't know because I've done it while being a female if it would have been different, but what I do think is you just need to be, again, opportunistic. Take what you can from it.
Severine:It's maybe some people, like, thought I wouldn't be capable of it or had, a first bias towards me because how can a female not build something, like, a woman build something in tech or in finance. And then when they okay, so maybe I got some passes even before meeting me, fine, I don't really care and but the people that met me probably then it reversed, right, then they saw like, okay, but if she can do this while being a woman, it must have been then their bias will become a strength for me because they will think like, okay, had that bias and now she actually delivers on it, so it it must have been harder, so she must be stronger than the other ones. So I think helps and if that's the case in some people's head, let's just take the benefit from it. So, yeah, I don't have a big opinion on it. I'm doing it while being a woman.
Robin:Find first female second, right?
Severine:Yeah, mean, also it's a bit easy to see for me, right, because I don't have kids, I think that's a bit the moment where it gets really harder because especially the early, like when you're pregnant and the early days of being a parent, it's probably harder as a woman to be a founder then, but it's not my case, so I'm probably not the best person to speak to that.
Robin:But even there we have great role models, like Aline from Go Vocal, triplets, three kids at one. Triplets,
Severine:didn't know, congrats to her.
Robin:So, yeah, that's a great answer. Anything else, I mean, not that you have like a world of experience in startups, 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 to them?
Severine:Well I would go for it 10 times again, like every time again, Just because it's something personally I always wanted to do and I always tried a bit when I was at uni and other projects that never really did great. So personally you need to really want it but then on a timing perspective, it's just the best moment to do it. You learn so much that it's not even a risk. Some people tell me, yeah, I have that job, it's paying. Max and I are good examples of that.
Severine:Right? I think it's McKinsey's salary compared to to the average Belgian salary was even really really good. Right? Not not just quite good. But And then they say it's a risk, etcetera, etcetera.
Severine:I really don't believe it's a risk. I think every day I'm spending building my own company. It's so many learnings that are so valuable for me and for the rest of my life that it's not even a risk. I would say first think of is it something you wanna do because it's gonna be really hard, like you're gonna work a lot, it's gonna be super challenging, you're gonna probably your your work life balance definition is gonna change quite a bit even if you worked at a firm like McKinsey before. But it has never been the best moment to do it, and you learn so much every day that I would just just go for it.
Severine:I don't see I don't I really don't see it as a risk, so just do it.