Fincom

Martin Corot was living a well-compensated life in private equity after stints at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, but the pull of entrepreneurship was too strong. He identified a critical gap in the market: SaaS founders and CFOs didn't have good tools to access their real-time financial data and key performance indicators. Armed with this insight and savings from his previous career, he decided to build Fincom—a platform that would give founders and finance teams a "360 vision of the performance of your SaaS in real time."

In 2021, Martin assembled the team. Early 2022, they began coding. Rather than over-engineer from the start, they kept the MVP development lean, spending under €50,000 total. They partnered with Boo Square, a French web development agency, to handle the front-end work, while Lucas, their third co-founder and CTO, tackled the backend and algorithm development—the real engine of the platform. By June 2022, just four months after writing the first line of code, they launched their MVP.

In July 2022, Fincom closed a €1 million pre-seed round. But here's where Martin's PE background showed: instead of giving up the typical 15-20% equity in a pre-seed, he structured the round as 75% pure equity and 25% non-dilutive capital. The non-dilutive portion came from France's EPI program—a government-backed loan specifically designed for early-stage companies at just 2% interest. This gave them €750,000 in equity and €250,000 in subsidized debt, stretching their runway while minimizing dilution.

Their first customer was already in their ecosystem: a SaaS company they'd been talking to for about 18 months, actually introduced to them by Boo Square. Interestingly, Martin didn't do the stereotypical "build-to-order" approach. Instead, they built the MVP with their pain points in mind, proving that French founders prefer to "see the product first, then get the checkbook out"—a key lesson about cultural differences in SaaS sales.

Martin emphasized a "trial-by-error" approach, testing everything to see what stuck. Cold calling emerged as their strongest channel, providing immediate revenue while they built brand awareness through content. They're also running co-branded webinars with larger companies and are lining up strategic partnerships—one with Penny Lane (France's QuickBooks) to provide analytics capabilities they're missing, and another with a revenue-based financing provider in a neighboring country.

On pricing, they started at €100/month but are pushing toward €150-200 as they roll out more features. With under 100 paying customers, most paying €130-150/month, they're running at roughly €2,600-3,000 MRR. They're burning conservatively (under €50,000/month net burn), leaving them with over 12 months of runway even before additional fundraising.

Martin is playing the long game. They've set a clear milestone: 100 paying customers, which they aim to hit within six months. While they're not disclosing exact customer numbers yet, they're transparent about their strategy: extend runway with additional non-dilutive capital (the EPI program cost has tripled to 6% since they raised, but it's still cheap debt), scale efficiently through cold sales and partnerships, and build the inbound flywheel through content and brand. For a founder who left seven figures in PE, he's focused on the metrics that matter most—runway, burn rate, and sustainable growth.