Lessons From The Revaia Community
Revaia recently held its annual Portfolio Days retreat in the heart of Champagne country. While we are a European investment fund, we chose this setting because it is emblematic of so many admirable qualities that we thought would inspire our entrepreneurs, LPs, and teammates.
From this rural region in France, brands have built global champions that have been pioneers of luxury markets. It continues to balance traditions with the need to reinvent itself in the era of climate change. And there has been a strong thread of innovation in terms of product and marketing that runs through a history that stretches back for centuries.
We gathered founders of the 15 amazing companies in our international portfolio along with Revaia team members and a select group of our LPs to network, bond, and share knowledge with each other.
The timing was fortuitous because it’s no secret that the macroeconomic circumstances are quite challenging. As such, it’s more important than ever that the Revaia community can be a source of support to help our founders manage through these cycles.
Over those two days, we heard powerful presentations about pricing strategies, generative AI, financial communications, and how the world looks to an influential LP. The event was private and off the record, but we wanted to share some of the high-level takeaways in the hopes that others will benefit from them.
Revaia remains steadfastly bullish about the future for innovative companies, particularly the critical role startups have to play in addressing social and environmental problems.
At such turbulent moments, all we can do is control what we can control. Our presenters shared with us how to do that.
“GenAI Gone Wild: Can ChatGPT Replace Sales and Marketing Humans?” with Vincent Luciani (Co-Founder & CEO of Artefact)
Artefact has established itself as an influential advisor for companies trying to embrace the benefits of AI. While the rise of Generative AI over the past year has prompted both hype and backlash, Luciani is remarkably bullish on its potential.
Vincent Luciani said in the 10 years since establishing his firm, he’s seen three phases of AI. The first was about analyzing big data to understand the past and the second was about using insights to make predictions about the future. The rise of Generative AI is a third wave that enables creation.
He understands there is a lot of fear about Generative AI from business leaders, employees, and policymakers, particularly as it relates to possible job loss. But he sees it as a tool that will augment human work and increase productivity by taking over low-level repetitive tasks.
“In the end, everyone will use it,” he said. “If you don’t use it, you will have less content, less personalization, and less creativity. The people who get fired will be the ones not using it.”
“The Price Is Not Right: How Welcome to the Jungle and Simon Kucher rebooted pricing strategy” with Jérémy Clédat (Founder & CEO of Welcome to the Jungle), Laura du Repaire and Alix Nepveux (Partners at Simon Kucher)
Welcome to the Jungle has become a critical player in the job recruiting market, particularly for the tech industry. While the company has seen strong growth over the years, it had concerns that it wasn’t properly communicating its value to existing customers. In addition, it saw an opportunity to move up the chain from serving small and mid-sized businesses to larger enterprises.
As such, it needed to rethink how it packaged and priced its services. To do that, the company retained Simon Kucher, a strategy consultancy that has strong expertise in pricing and offer strategies.
What became clear in the process is that thinking about price is only one part of a larger conversation about the entire positioning of the company. The pricing study explored a number of profound questions that any entrepreneur ought to be asking:
Do you understand your customers’ needs? Is your product structured in a meaningful way to address different customer segments? How do you extract the value? Is your sales strategy aligned with your goals? Does the sales team have the right tools? How do you leverage partnerships to optimize your go-to-market strategy?
Jérémy Clédat said it can be hard for founders to step outside their current thinking and see these questions with a fresh set of eyes. But in the case of Welcome to the Jungle, the results of the study provided valuable insight across all aspects of the business.
“If I asked most founders in the room if their business model is right for their company, 99% would say yes without a doubt,” he said. “But, in fact, we started to question it.”
The Simon Kucher team explained that any company must be able to communicate its value proposition. That goes beyond just listing features to articulating what problems it is solving for customers. By clarifying that dynamic, the company can optimize its value proposition in a way that will convince customers to pay more, while protecting acquisitions dynamics with a well-fenced entry-level offer. Operations should then always keep a watchful eye on retention when migrating the customer base to the new offer.
This oversight on monetization, acquisition and retention together is key to enable revenue growth even at moments like now when economic concerns are squeezing budgets.
“Most of you, especially at the moment, have some pricing power somewhere,” Laura du Repaire said.
Scale up your communication to scale up your leadership! with Chris O’Brien, journalist, and Stéphanie Elbaz, Expert in Strategic communications & PR advisory
Chris O'Brien and Stéphanie Elbaz bring decades of experience in the relationship between the media and journalists. Both saw storytelling as crucial to communicating about the value of a company.
"Storytelling is the difference between facts and a message," Stéphanie Elbaz said. "A narrative conveys emotion, which is important to capture attention and conviction to trigger interest. The way you convey your message is as important as the message itself because it creates empathy. It's an effective way to get more impact and attract your audience’s attention."
Chris O'Brien noted that storytelling is not just about the media, but also about how a company presents itself to employees, partners, investors, and customers. Even if an early-stage company isn't seeking media attention, developing its storytelling skills can help shape the way the company grows and clarify its mission and value proposition.
With the change in funding trends, the relationship between journalists and startups can feel more tense and even combative at times. Stéphanie Elbaz and Chris O'Brien stressed that founders should recognize that journalists are just doing their job. Instead, a company needs to build a strategy about how to share and explain its financial results, embracing the mindset that this information could become public one way or another.
"Journalists are much more mature in the French tech ecosystem, and that's why there is more skepticism," Stéphanie Elbaz said. "And that's also the price to pay for success. You have increased your visibility. So, journalists will challenge you more."
Stéphanie Elbaz offered several tips for any company facing a tough situation:
- Don't disappear in challenging times because maintaining a long-lasting media relationship is important.
- Learn to give background and off-the-record information to provide context in situations where direct comments are not possible.
- If you have bad news, don't wait too long to disclose it. It's better to be proactive with the media and keep ahead of any leaks.
- Don't lie. Eventually, the truth will come out.
"Don't be afraid of journalists," she said. "Keep the relationships. They will serve you in good and bad times."
What’s the deal: How M&A turbocharged GoHenry’s mission with Louise Hill (Co-Founder of GoHenry)
Founded in 2012, GoHenry pioneered a new category of fintech by creating a financial education service for 6-18-year-olds that sought to teach them how to manage their money in the digital world. The company has been through several stages of growth, first driven by crowdfunding and then from taking outside capital from investors such as Revaia.
Along the way, GoHenry co-founder Louise Hill remained focused on her goal of leveraging the company’s U.K. success into having a global impact. GoHenry took a big step toward that ambition by acquiring France’s Pixpay and then raising money from a strategic partner in Italy.
Earlier this year, GoHenry began a new chapter when it was acquired by US fintech Acorns. Hill walked us through this journey, and said the key to the Acorns deal was realizing that the two companies shared a similar vision.
“When we met them really it was a case of meeting like-minded people,” Louise said. “Their mission was very, very similar. And when we talked to them, they talked like us, they thought like us. So it made a lot of sense to see if we could work together.” (Read our deep dive on GoHenry here.)