April 27, 2023
Pierre Hebrard, the co-founder of Pricemoov, is on a mission to make better pricing decisions more accessible for businesses worldwide. Through the development of their user-friendly SaaS platform for intelligent pricing, he has led Pricemoov's growth, global expansion, and team evolution as CEO.
Before Pricemoov, Pierre served as Managing Director at Jumia Kenya and COO at Jumia Nigeria, scaling operations and building strong teams. His background also includes international finance experience at Morgan Stanley and Société Générale.
In addition, Pierre is a University Lecturer on price management at HEC Paris, sharing his knowledge with aspiring professionals. He is committed to helping businesses embrace innovative pricing solutions for unparalleled success.
Julian: Hi everyone. Thank youso much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have PierreHebrard, CEO of Pricemoov. Pricemoov is on a mission to make better pricingdecisions more accessible for businesses worldwide. Pierre, I'm so excited to chatwith you and really get to the root of not only your background and yourexperience, and I know you've been through countless numbers of places, so wedefinitely wanna dive into kind of what you've learned along that journey, butalso price moving, what you've been working on in terms of really highvisibility into a lot of.
You know, I think the curiosity arounddifferent platforms and, you know, products is not necessarily about, you know,the optimization, but really starts at how much is this gonna cost me? And thenI can kind of evaluate the value from there, which has not been, has beenpretty opaque up to this point. And I think it's, it's moving in a direction ofhigh transparency.
I'm interested in seeing, you know, whatyou've seen in the market, what's exciting before we get into price, moving allthat, what were you doing before you started the company?
Pierre: Hey. Hi Julian. Thankyou very much for having me, and thank you for all these questions. Excited tobe there. By the way, I'm very happy to be able to talk together today and onthis day.
I think it's very con confidential, butyou know, today Pricemoov announced that 10 million Series A raised, so you,it's. Yeah. Days of news. Anyway, back, back to your question I've been buildingPricemoov for the past seven years with, you know, a bunch of people across theworld where 75 people now within the US and in Europe.
But before that I had a completelydifferent career. I've, you know, worked in private equity in London for awhile. I worked in trading in Hong Kong for a few years. I think the mostformative really. Was when I was working in a company called Jum. JU is atraded company in the nasdaq. It's the Amazon of Africa, and I was the managingdirector for Kenya and I was the COO for Nigeria for two years.
So, you know, I got to live across theworld and now I'm based out of New York City.
Julian: It's amazing to thinkabout, you know, what, what you've probably learned in terms of the differencesin, in marketplaces, even in selling in a lot of the different countries and,and, and really because of I think and I'm curious to hear your opinion is howthey've adopted technology and kind of the evolution of that.
Either being mobile first or web firstand what that really means and kind of how that structures kinda the foundationof a lot of ways people interact with technology now. How did you seedifferences from the different countries that you've been, you know, able to doyour business in and also. Live an experience like the culture.
What are the difference in, in the waysthat they interact with technology versus, say, the US and, and how we interactwith technology? Anything kind of stand out to you and does it change how youbuild a business?
Pierre: There, there there'sreal difference and not at all. The ones that we think at, at first, you know,one could think, you know, the US could be at the top for technology and thenpeople catching up and it's, you know, of course there's some truth to that,but you have some crazy effect as well.
For instance, I think two anecdotes, twoanecdote that I love. I was recently in Shenzhen in China where I was 10 yearsago, two years ago. I've been multiple times. Over there. For instance,electrical cars are must, you have 17,000 taxis. They're all electrical. So youcould say they really leapfrogged this technology.
They went from having the really, reallydiesel petrol cars to know something full electric. Same happened with drivingand, and, you know, building e-commerce in Africa. You go from a place whereyou know, you have of course no e-commerce to something. Yeah. Kind of veryadvanced where e-commerce scheduling, or already six years ago was doing 15minutes in advance via SMS with someone same day.
And you know, I think. In many countriesthat could be catching up. There's been a lot of leapfrogging effect that hasthem adapt technology way faster. Now, of course, you know, the us has been aleader in innovating with a theft. So usually you find them in your everydaybest. So I think that's what I see.
That would be a particular angle in theway I've built a product. However at Pricemoov, I think, you know, we very muchtried. From the beginning as we were building a global company to makesomething very accessible that has to do to do a lot to this product. So wewere fortunate enough to work with a lot of American natives around our productmanagement and, you know, learn from this.
Julian: Yeah, yeah. And sofascinating thinking about the perspective coming from countries where, youknow, you, they're mostly mobile first and they have a lot of access to, youknow, the internet through their mobile device. And how has that changed, youknow, your. Or how, how has that influence and impacted your building experiencetowards like a really simple user interface?
Is it simplified kind of what you'reable to add value in and and or do you kind of lean more into say, mobiledevelopment or stay kind of web-based? How has that kind of changed your, Iguess, I guess, strategy or tactics towards building for your customers and,and what do you think is the benefit from your experience versus others?
Pierre: Yeah, very clear.Well, I mean, for my performance, my, my company right now, Pricemoov, we'reenterprise software. So really, you know, the whole mobile experience hasn'tchanged that much except that, you know, consumer, what I've seen around theworld is really consumer. Now, when they go with retail, they wanna have acomplete multichannel experience.
You start on Instagram, then you look onyour phone, and finally you're buying on the computer. So I would say that theimpact I see on myself is that my customers retailers have now leaped into thisomnichannel future with the complexity of doing mobile as well as doing let'ssay desktop internet, and then to, to manage that and we're helping them forthis.
I sure. Also, you know, when I was ajunior working in Africa, I could see the influence mobile had on the waypeople were seeing retail. Most of those people didn't have a computer, so alleverything was going, you know, through the phone. So I think in a nutshell I'mlucky enough to 10 years ago have been exposed firsthand to, you know, mobileselling in those countries and seeing how the explosions of channel was goingto change the way people were going to consume.
And of course, you know back to back tous, pricing is a big, big element in, in doing this. And this is where I, Ibuild Pricemoov.
Julian: Yeah. And, and what inparticular did you see, you know, was, was the challenge? And, and obviouslylike as, as a founder myself, you know, being, you know, you know, kind ofthinking about vendors and thinking about procuring other things that will kindof add in terms of the tools, you know, whether it's productivity, whetherit's, you know, a, a database of some sorts.
You know, we, we go through thisprocurement process and, and pricing is a huge headache, knowing the value.What was your experience kind of leading into Pricemoov and what made you so,you know, I guess compelled to start tackling this problem of, of reallytransparency from, from my perspective, of seeing these different possibilitiesthat you can select from.
What was the kind of inspiration behind,you know, going in this direction? Being that, you know, the other experienceare a little bit, you know, not necessarily linearly related to this, but I'msure have impacted and influenced you. What was the inspiration behindPricemoov?
Pierre: Yeah, of course. Ithink, you know the first time I was really exposed to Pricemoov was that whenI realized, so I was managing Junior in, in Kenya, and I realized at, at thatpoint that we had, you know, dozens of category managers managing hundreds ofthousands of products, and every day they had to take, you know, the simpledecision in app appears, which is, you know, how much am I selling this?
And yeah, you know, When you dig intoit, you realize you have multiple problem. Of course, you know, one mightthink, oh, it's all about being dynamic, reactive to the market. And, andthat's in part true. But the main thing is that you have way more simpleproblem, as in how am I loading every day, hundreds of thousands of productprices without error in a system?
How do I value differently to productdepending on sizes? And how do I make sure there is a coherence? Because froma. Customer perspective, you always want a coherence. Of course. Then there isalso the problem of how do you work with dynamic pricing when you havecompetitors moving their prices all around.
So I was seeing firsthand these problemsas in, you know, my teams were not equipped properly, looked at the market withevery solution they was out there. They were all either too expensive, toocomplicated, way out, you know, outdated in a way. And I think that's themoment where I thought, okay, there's something in, there is something inbuilding there.
Of course, you know I didn't quit my jobthe the same day, but you know, as I keep, you know, knowing on the idea andtalking with different people, I realize one thing, which is pricing is auniversal challenge. It's been there for centuries. It will always be there aslong as you're selling something.
And now commerce and distribution hasbecome more complex. You're sending on dozens of channels. You have. Hundredsof competitors across lots of geographies. So there needs to be a tool which isbetter than Excel to help people manage it. And Yeah. You know, I guess until,unless there wasn't.
Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And I'mthinking about, you know, how, I dunno if you have a percentage or any numbers,but how often do you think you know, clients miss out? I don't, you know,clients miss out, you know, in regards to, you know, having an attracted buyerwho potentially wants to purchase their product. But there's maybe a lack oftransparency or, or maybe a lack in.
You know, understanding the value thatyou get from, you know, a certain package of a product. How much are, arecompanies kind of leaving on the table in terms of potential customers that don'tconvert because of issues around pricing?
Pierre: Oh, I mean, very, veryimportant topic. I think, you know, companies are missing out on revenue.
Sure. And we can see that, you know,when we use Pricemoov with, when our customers use Pricemoov, there's anincrease in revenue. And I'm talking almost double digits. I think the mostimportant one in profit and why is profit so important is because if you have,I don't know, a hundred thousand products that you're selling across 10channels, You don't have the time or the energy or the knowledge todifferentiate pricing across channels depending on your customers there,depending on your margin requirement.
So every time you make a sale, you'remaybe losing, you know, one point in profit, but at the end of the year, you'regonna have a lot of profit left on the table. We see customers, you know,become getting more, almost 10% profit more after the first year. So this hasbeen a, a tremendous aspect.
And finally, you know, in usingsolutions as us, and, and in talking about pricing, what you realize is youhave a great, great gain in productivity. We're seeing people that used to loadprices, you know, once a week that used to do this very manually whilegathering files that can now do it, you know, once a day.
So more time for value added, I wouldsay.
Julian: Yeah. And what do youthink, you know, is the gap in pricing to like, you know, what the value is? Isthat in how they're basing the price? Like what are companies basing theirpricing on and is it the right formula for delivering value to their clients onaverage?
Pierre: I think, you know,the, the, the way I, I, I like to say it is that, you know, pricing is kind oflike a Jenga tower in the middle of the company. You have a thing that works.If not, you wouldn't be, you know, our customers are making hundreds ofmillions of dollars in revenue every year. So you have something that works andeveryone knows it could be better, but no one wants to be the one to pull thepiece of wood and have the thing company collapsed.
So, you know, when I talk with people,you know, business managers, category managers, business leaders about pricing,the thing I'm hearing the most is fear. Like they know they have to dosomething. They know it's a great level for profit, but they don't want tobreak anything. So I would say, you know, I don't know if that's the answer tothe question, but really when it comes to pricing, this fear needs to beovercome.
And that's what we're trying to do.That's why we're saying we are trying to make, you know, decisionsaccessible.
Julian: Yeah. And, and sodescribe the technology a little bit more. So if I'm a client, describe my userexperience and how I'm really able to, you know, identify what the right pricingis for the different, you know, kind of customers that I'll say the differentstakeholders that are purchasing our product.
Describe the product a little bit more.Just give some, some context.
Pierre: Of course, you know,I, I think our product is very much well done for category managers or buyingmanagers. And, you know, there are really three main things that you, you do inthese companies. First, you need to make sure that you build your prices withcoherence, that your customers understand that, I don't know, like the, the canof Coke is less expensive than the bottle of Coke.
So with Pricemoovs, you can set upguards and constraints and, and really create a price environment where youhave coherence everywhere. Then, you know, once that is done, you're using ourproduct through promotional pricing, ma making dynamic price, changing flashsales, campaign promotion, everything really to act and instigate more volume.
And finally, you can use our product todo what I call negotiated pricing. That's loyalty programs that B2B pricing orB2B ecommerces. Now these three things are the, the centerpiece of whatcategory managers and sales manager with the negotiated aspect are doing. Sowe're helping customers do these things with simple workflows where you can,you know, just to illustrate one, see the cost changes from your suppliers,stimulate the impact those would have, impact prices across different channelsand put in place the right promotions to be able to drive revenue.
Julian: Yeah. And, andthinking about, you know, you talk about coherence and describe what that meansin, in relationship to pricing, is that, you know, the value that I'm seeing isthat the features that the product has is, is it walking me through almost astory or a journey on, on how this could affect my business?
What makes a price coherent to, to acustomer, to a buyer?
Pierre: Yeah, of course. I, Ithink I, I give two, two aspects. One from the customer perspective and, and,and one, I think from the business perspective, from the customer perspective,you have, you know, you need to see a certain coherence be, be within acategory and between channels.
Let me give you an example. Let's sayyou're buying, you know, glue. You have a, a small glue pack. You have a biggerglue pack, you have a 12 pack, a 24 pack. Yeah. Prices across those need tomake sense. And you know, I think everyone has seen things where you like, Whyis the 24 more than double times the price of the 12 pack?
So this coherence helps customer, youknow, feel secure in the category that they're, they're working on. Now, ofcourse from a business perspective, you're going to want to have differentiatedprices across channels because you're not paying the. You know, the same coststructure on channels. You're paying a commission on Amazon, for instance, soyou need to make sure that your prices still derive profit and have differentprice changes between the channels and the customer feels secure that heunderstand that this product is a bit more exem bit more expensive if you haveit through.
Quick covers, bit less expensive. You goin the, in the, in the, in the store, and maybe in between if you raise Amazonand all those necessary price differences. Within the category, but withdifferent sizes or between channels, depending on the, the, the way you'regetting the product, they are necessary and they need to make sense because asa customer, and I'll end up with this as a customer, I don't want to askmyself, why is this more expensive there?
Why is this double the price where itshouldn't be less? You know, I think today a lot of companies are strugglingwith this coherence in a very, very competitive, changing world where they needto change the prices all the time, and they lose on customer confidence in sucha way.
Julian: Yeah. What do youthink or what have you seen more so in regards to say, pricing models thatyou've seen this highly effective?
I'm always curious because, you know, alot of companies will set up, say, freemium models, you know, you get a certainaccess and you kind of fe feature throttle and then you purchase for more oryou purchase right out of the gate. Or kind of everything in between you, maybeit's more transaction. What pricing models have you seen, you know, successfuland it doesn't depend on the type of business. Does respond to that?
Pierre: Mm. Of course it, itcompletely depends on the type of business. Right? I was talking and I've beentalking with the, you know, the, the, the bulk of our, of our customers, whichare retailers and distributors where, you know, you have no premium or anythinglike this. What you have, however, is, you know, simple way of having a normalprice that brings revenue, some sale price, that you understand that that's noton all the time where you're trying to understand, okay, well, When there's asale, there's an incentive for me to buy.
You have loyalty programs usually tocounter, counter effect all these dynamic pricing or negotiated pricing. That'sin a very, very quick nutshell how retail goes. Now you are talking withfreemium I guess more around the the software pricing and software pricing.Yeah. And even there you have.
Different ways of, of pricing yourself.You know, for us, we asked ourselves, we asked a lot of experts we're workingwith. In the end, it needs to make sense with two things in my opinion. Numberone is, uh uh, who are you selling to now if you're selling to enterprisecustomers where you have a lot of functionality, of course you cannot really goat first with the freedom.
Yeah I would say that only the end usersis happy to have a premium because he can try before bringing it to his bus.Now if you are driving a business where you'll have a lot of users usually wehave very per pay, per sits. You also have consumption models. So, yeah, youknow, I think in a minute I can so to all of those, but what I would say isthat, Different businesses have different pricing models.
Finding the right pricing model for youis key to profitability and growth. Mm-hmm. And, you know, as far as retaildistribution are, are doing, that's what we do for them.
Julian: Yeah, and thinkingabout just like the discovery process, when you know when a client comes in ora customer comes in, however you define them, where, what stage are theytypically at?
Are they at a stage where their pricinghas been stagnant and they're looking to increase volume to overall justincrease overall sales? Or are they testing different kind of pricingstructures? So see if there's just a better way to optimize for their.Customers, what, you know, stage of the process. Do they come in to really, youknow, utilize the value of Pricemoov?
Is it, you know, kind of at a crucialtime or is it in a more experimental time or something in between?
Pierre: Yeah, a very goodquestion. So you know, we're we love customers that are already pretty maturein their revenue. So, you know, customers going from, let's say, a hundredmillion to a few billion in revenue.
So yeah, we have companies that are, youknow, Pretty solid in what they have already. Now, two main challenges we'reseeing company go through. Number one challenge, which we have more and more,is these companies have to, you know open more open more channels, selldigital, start selling on channels they're not really used to, and they need tokeep global and overall coherence when they do this.
Even though you have on each and everyone of those channel a fierce competition. Now that's where we are helping themby providing a tool their category managers can use. We also have customersthat are coming to us and they're telling us exactly what you said. We'relagging behind in terms of either revenue or margin.
They know they should be more reactivein their promotion, in their promotional pricing, but they're afraid of doingso because they wanna protect the margin. What they need really is a tool likeus where they can safely take decisions knowing for sure that the margin isproducted and they're just trying to things to, to further the revenue.
And yeah, I would say, you know, we seethese problems with, we have customers that are few billion dollars in, in, inrevenue, and they're still facing those problems. And we like to work withcompanies that really are ready to embrace some change in the way the categorymanagers work.
Julian: Yeah. Describe alittle bit how pricing, or I guess even, I guess more so purchasing habits havechanged from the other perspectives to kind of push this demand to have moreintelligent pricing or, you know, consumers getting smarter as, as theirbehavior kind of in terms of, you know, they're comparing a lot more products,you know, broadly speaking across different databases.
How have you know the, the changes inpurchasing behavior really impacted pricing for companies that say, Kind of settheir own price because they, they kind of self, you know, value them theirproduct at a certain price point. But now obviously, you know, things arechanging. You know, budgets are more tight, people are more frugal.
Maybe they're wanting to make surethey're optimizing decisions. What have you seen in terms of the pr, theconsumer behaviors from the clients that you're servicing?
Pierre: I think that there aretwo main changes or two main challenges today in consumer behavior. Number one,as I mentioned before you know right now commerce is omnichannel.
You're going to see an ad on Instagram,start a buying process there. Then you're gonna, you know, continue here,continue it at home on your computer. And finally you're gonna buy throughAmazon with your mobile. So the experience is fully omnichannel and, you know,especially the younger generation are very much about jumping between thosechannels.
Now, what that means for companies,which is already is each and every one of those channels has differentenvironments. Now imagine this remote I'm showing right now. Well, if I'mbuying it on Amazon, I might be, you know, selling against, you know, Chineseknockoffs of such a remote. If I'm selling now on, on my own website, maybethe, the, the most well known competitors come to mind and I'm fighting againstthem.
So as a business, I need to make surethat I'm present across all those channels. Mm-hmm. I need to be I need all thetime to have a distinct ticket element with my competitors. And my price needto make sense everywhere. And sometimes I cannot put the same price everywherebecause again, I'm giving 20% commission to Amazon.
Yeah. While I'm not doing so in mystores. So I think this omnichannel a change of behavior has really broughtprice price management to the forefront. And now you're adding, of course,something which is, you know, has arrived in the past few years and isapparently here to stay. It's inflation as a consumer.
You're looking at a product and you'rethinking, do I really need this $80 t-shirt or $120 shirt? So pricing is a bigpart of the decision. People make when they buy something and usually it'sreally a yes or no. So companies need to be. Even more aware of this and makesure that whenever they propose a price, they do a promotion, they change thepricing.
Those make sense with regards tocustomer demand and inflation. And, you know, again, that, that that's whywe're doing the company, that's why we're working with, you know, greatretailers in order to help them overcome this success, this overcome thischallenge.
Julian: Yeah, no, and it seemslike, you know, the speed of understanding is even more so crucial as theenvironment continues to change, as, you know, external, you know, bothpolitical, economic even consumer behaviors, popularity within other products.
You know, you gotta be, you have to beso fast as a company to make those adjustments to really be attractive, youknow, in, in, in, in comparison. To your, to your competitors. You know,thinking about the negotiation part, which is always fascinating because, youknow, it, it, it really, a lot of companies live and die in terms of thatprocess and whether it's, you know, typically I think it was a sales team'sproblem and you did a lot of human input and error.
But how are you, you know, ma making amore efficient negotiation process? You know, does that kind of all start atpricing and the value point to be able to be communicated? Where are youimpacting, you know, in that sense for companies who maybe traditionally, youknow, have a sales team, they have more of a point to point contact.
But honestly, as things get morecomplicated in scale, you know, those sales cycles become longer and longer andeven more tenuous to actually, you know, get a transaction to go across. Whathave you been doing in that space to really kind of, you know, I guess shortenthe time, but also bridge the gap between consumers who wanna buy and, andcompanies who are selling products and making sure that that's a, you know, a,a, a good compromise in terms of the purchasing.
Pierre: So I think, you know,with negotiation is a big part of what we do, as I mentioned with, you know,the, the, the, the new channels companies are selling to. You see way moremanufacturers or retailers directly selling b2b to the end customers. Now, Ithink, you know, what we see and, and, and we have cons for instance, that wehave customers that have hundreds of thousands if not millions of SKUs, andthey sell those, they sell those through their own BV website and they alsoalso sell those through their.
You know, hundreds of salesrepresentative on the, on the ground. Now, when those guys are selling tothousands of customers, of course everything is about the negotiated pricing.You know, what kind of discount can I get? Can I these days with inflation? CanI, can you guarantee my price for a year or two years?
And, you know, the, the complicatedstuff really is, is twofold, in my opinion. On the one hand, you need to equip.Salespeople with the right tool to be able to make those discounts, to be able togive those those negotiated price because that's how business go. And herewhere we helping company and usually what I think, what I think is the key isthat you stop the margin leakage.
Through the right processes of approvaland simulation. So you let the salespeople do the things, you give themguidelines and they can in a click have their quote and their pricing approvedand simulate the impact. And, and, and, and, and I think, you know, that that'svery much a part of our company's work.
Now the second thing is, and I'm comingback to the same thing as before I think I read somewhere that more than halfof buying managers and buyers and companies are millennials. So you're talkingabout guys that are buying for themselves, things on Amazon that have thatomnichannel thinking and they want the same experience in their b2b, B2Bexperience as well.
So they're, they want to go on your B2BeCommerce website. They're going to see as well how much you're selling thesame thing on Amazon and they're going to talk to your salesperson. And overthere, it's not really their money, it's the company money, but they're reallygoing to. Key convenience as well.
They're going to ask the, the, thesalespeople, well, you're sending me this with a 40% discount. However, if I goon Amazon, I get 20% discount. And you know what? Amazon is too. Click. I'mgonna go on Amazon. And then you lost business on your B2B side. So again, thisomnichannel challenge, making sure that you understand that your customers aregoing through all the challenges and you give them something that is coherentin terms of pricing.
Yeah. So the customer feels. I have adiscount that makes sense with what I'm doing and not, I don't understand howthe pricing is made.
Julian: Yeah, yeah. I wouldtotally see how from a sales side, you know, you almost have to have thatinformation on the different channels to understand where pricing is, cuz youdon't want to get.
You know caught off guard in one ofthose conversations where pricing seems different and it seems a littlefragmented. You have to go through explanation. You know, the less informationthat you know, a customer needs to ask to, to get out of, you know, to createthis story, the better. Especially kind of companies live and die on that wholejourney and story and understanding where their business is.
And tell us, you know, just shiftingback to Pricemoov, tell us a little bit about the traction. Obviously congratson the series A. That's so exciting to kind of. You know, I'm sure you have somany plans in terms of scaling the company in so many directions, but what'sbeen exciting in terms of the traction you've seen up till now, and obviouslynow with, with, you know, possibilities kind of at the helm, what are youexcited about in terms of the next stage of Pricemoov?
Pierre: Yeah, I think, youknow, we are very exciting times because you know all the challenges I talkedto you before and the fact that you now we propose a solution to this. Too manydistributors over the past few quarters we've seen, you know, still greatgrowth in Europe. Uh uh. But you know, I think the most important for us, andthat's, you know, me being in New York City has been the tremendous growthwe've seen in the us.
Companies in the US are very muchadopting our products, whether they're working in auto parts, online groceries,we have success stories with customers all over the place. So where we see arecustomers that are. Understanding seeing that we understand the problem, tryingon our solutions and really driving it.
So, you know, I think over the past fewyears we've more than doubled our revenue every year. And, and now that, thatthis growth is very much led by the us that's why, you know, we have a growingteam here. And, and I'm based out of New York City.
Julian: It's amazing to thinkabout the, the possibilities after seeing all that traction, seeing what thebusinesses has grown into.
But just thinking about Al always as, asfounders, we think about what's right around the corner in terms of potentialrisks. So whether it's external or internal, what are, what do you think aresome of the biggest risks that your company faces today?
Pierre: I think, you know,right now it's a good question actually.
So, you know, the, the, the risk wemight face would be to, you know, have customers that are too early in theprocess of thinking about pricing. And maybe not mature enough to catch thekind of growth we've been seeing across verticals. But, you know, I'm disdisregarding that risk as well because, you know, it's always, it is alreadybeing proven.
And so I think I would be more vanillain saying that, you know, as with every high growing company high growthcompany in the tech sectors, you know, talent is key. And the only risk wecould have would be not hiring enough. But right now, really we're. We havepositions open all over. So of course, you know, if you are listening to us,need to apply and, you know, for us it's, it's all about you know, bringingthis forward.
Julian: Amazing. And ifeverything goes, what was the long-term vision for Pricemoov?
Pierre: Really we, we, that's,that's a good question as well. I think, you know, back to our vision, we knowthat distribution is changing. You know, we see retailers, manufacturers,wholesalers, they're competing for the same customers and, and, and, and thatmeans that they're completely omnichannel, as I mentioned it.
We now know that price management iskey. To driving this future goal of distribution, you know? Yeah. Havingcoherent prices and reactive prices across channels. And I think we arebecoming, and I want this to be the, the, the, the, the center of the vision,one of the tool any retailer or any distributor must have in their box.
You know how. Yeah, crm was nothingmaybe 25 years ago. And now you're just building your company. You're threepeople. You already have, you know, HubSpot and Salesforce in the center.That's really where we going with Pricemoov is becoming the one, two peopleused to manage the performance and, and, and drive safe and, and, you know,drive accessible pricing decisions.
Julian: Yeah, I love this nextsection. I call it my Founder faq. So I'm going to hit you with some rapid firequestions and we'll see where we're gonna go. So first question, I always liketo open it up is, What's particularly hard about your job day-to-day?
Pierre: I think, you know, itis interesting, you know, as the CEO of a company, you have, you already, youalways think two, three quarters ahead of people, and you have to be able tobring this knowledge and bring the insight you have to the, a real owner of thebusiness, the VPs making the work today while not being too too much on them orwith them.
So it's all about, yeah, calibrating howyou can bring those insights. To the people really making the business and, andpricing the growth. So it's always, I think, a good balance in making peoplesee what you're seeing and not telling them what they should do.
Julian: Yeah. How do you thinkpricing will impact overall quality that companies will deliver to theircustomers?
Do you think it'll benefit? Do you thinkit'll make it fairly, you know, segmented in terms of having tiers? What do youthink, you know, in terms of quality and from a consumer standpoint you'll seein terms of its relationship to pricing?
Pierre: I think pricing isbecoming more and more personalized, but in a good way.
That means that you are getting the bestprice you can possibly have depending on the channel, the time or theconditions you're buying a product at. And you know, I think the best examplewe've seen with more mature, maybe more mature industry such as airline, thereason you can do a. New York to Paris and back for $300 in the middle of theyear is because someone from McKinsey is paying $2,000 and having this pricingwhere the guy from McKinsey buys for the flexibility and the, the, the, theright speed.
And you really don't care. You justwanna book your cheap flight three months in event as everyone happier. And Ithink, you know, more and more pricing will, you know, be more personalized andwill, you know, provide everyone with more of what they want.
Julian: Yeah. Yeah. What,what's something, as a founder on a personal, what's something that takes, youknow, that you spend a lot of time doing that you'd prefer to spend less?
And what's something that you spend alittle time on doing but you would like to allocate more to?
Pierre: Mm-hmm. So, you know,something you always spend too much time on is all the legal and the admin and,you know, the, the small things that need to happen and all the signing thatgoes through. So even with a lot of delegating, you find yourself having toapprove sports pending.
I would wish I spend less time doing Ispend, you know less time doing. Yeah. And I think, you know, As a founder, asI think every founder would do, even though I allocate a great amount of time,of my time to this, is you always wanna talk more to customers. I think there'snothing better than sitting for an hour with a customer and saying, you justtalk to me.
Give me insights. And yeah, always comeback with good ideas understanding what we did wrong. And so, you know, if Icould spend even more time talking with customers who'd love it, would lovethat.
Julian: I love that. I lovethat. And thinking about just overall kind of building a team, obviously onceyou're in that mode where, where you, you'll find product market fit, you havea lot of, you know, you're scaling in terms of your growing revenue, yourprofits, and, and you're really kind of focusing on adding, you know, the rightpeople and the right talent on your team.
Where do you go to find that once you'rein that hyper-growth mode? There's, I think, you know, there's one challenge inhiring, like the first 10 to 15 to 20 employees, finding the right people whohave the right mentality. But once you kind of need to. Specialize and getpeople really honed in, in certain segments of the business.
I think it becomes challenging to makesure that, you know, you're say, buying the right components, right? Buying theright parts for the machine that are gonna fit. How do you find, or how do youdefine the right fit? Any questions or any strategies that you use to find, youknow, the right people for your teams, or is it delegating that to others?
You know, what do you do to build astrong team?
Pierre: I think there are two main,you know, after a few years of doing so, there are two things that make it awin. And that's, you know, if you don't do them right, you're gonna haveproblem first is you need to have a very strong culture and you need, whileyou're talking to people to talk about it.
Because if you know you have a culturegoing a certain way and you're hiring someone who's, you know, great by anysense, but not within the sculpture. You're hiring someone that will be out ofthe door in a few months. So I think as a founder, what you do and not as a creas a founder, I do it with my co-founders, is really make sure that thisculture really goes deep into the way questioning are being done so that weknow we are getting the people, of course, of the skills and for the culture.
And at the same time, you know, I thinkwhat everyone wants. It's not really like a visionary CEO or, or whatever,like, this is great, but the main thing is you want your manager, you want yourmanager's manager to be someone who's going to teach you all of things. So whatwe did at Pricemoovs, we went ahead and hired the best of the grid.
Our CO has spent more than 20 years inthe tech space, you know, Was managing Mongo has been working with for manyseries many, you know, IPO company. We have you know, our, our product our VPproduct has worked at Netflix. Google then goes with our engineering VPengineering who was engineering at Sage or big companies like this.
For me, it was important as a, as a CEOthough, to find those right people telling them, well, you know better than Ido, who to hire, and I give you, of course the, the, the, the, the, theplayground in which you can play, which is very much value centric. When youhave that, I feel things go smoother.
Julian: Yeah. Yeah, it definitely,it, it's in I think that's one thing founders talk about is like the delegatingchallenges, you know, become lesser and lesser in terms of, you know kind ofrelinquishing that ownership and trusting the team and overall, you know, itultimately leads to, to really good outcomes with, with that structure, like,you know, with that right environment.
So it's awesome to see that you'rebuilding that for your team. I always like to ask this question cuz I love howfounders, you know, extract not of knowledge out of anything that they ingest.Whether it was early in your career or now, what books or people haveinfluenced you the most?
Pierre: It's a, it's a goodquestion. I think, you know thinking out loud here as, you know, a professionalbook that for me as a founder was very important to, to read was reallycrossing the chasm. Mm-hmm. We're an enterprise sales company and you know, Ithink reading it, I understood, wow, everything I think we're so particular andso hard of it myself is actually written down a book by someone who knowsbetter.
And, and I couldn't recommend more this,this book because that's really what help us go from a, we think we have anidea that people like to, oh, we really built a business. And I think, you knowtalking about the rest, I couldn't go into other, other books. There are eitherway more or way less.
But I think all the. You know, I had thechance to have great managers all my life, especially when I was working at JUhaving people that even young told me, well, you know what, if you can growthis business to from five people to 300 people, then you can go there. Andhaving this kind of managers that empower you has been helping me a lot.
Julian: Yeah. You know, I Iknow we're coming to you to close the episode, so I always want to ask if, ifwe left anything on the table, is there any question that I didn't ask you thatI should have or anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to touch onbefore we close out here?
Pierre: No, I think we're allgood. I, I hope everyone of your listeners learned more about pricing and, youknow, went on Pricemoov. And as for everyone listening in, don't hesitate toping me or any one of my team if you are interested in a product.
Julian: Yeah. Please tell us.I always like to make link space at the end. What are your LinkedIns, what areyour Twitters?
Where can we not only support you as afounder, but also Pricemoov and what you're working on and what you're buildingtoday? Give us those give us those plugs.
Pierre: Yeah, well Pricemoov,P R I C E M, double o v, and you can find me at Pierre Hebrard on, on LinkedIn,Twitter. You'll find me a bit everywhere and I hope you can follow me and, andwe can work together in the near future.
Julian: Amazing pier. It'sbeen such a pleasure not only learning about your just wealthy experience andunderstanding kind of how markets work and how marketplaces kind of function indifferent areas and really, you know, moving into this direction of illuminatinga lot of the opaqueness around pricing. And not only just offering customers abetter experience, but from the companies who are looking to engage with moreor increase their volume, who want to pull different lever levers, but alsounderstand, kind of broadly speaking, where their pricing is to be able toattack their customer and their client base.
It is so exciting to see. What kind ofvalue you'll bring to those companies and kind of what successes they'll have.You know, using Pricemoov and other companies kind of adopting it and kind ofhow that changes the overall ecosystem around pricing. I'm curious, obviously,I'm sure you see changes now we talked about, but what that means in thefuture.
So, Pierre, it's been such a pleasurehaving you on the show. I hope you enjoyed yourself and thank you so much forbeing on Behind. Company Lines today.
Pierre: Thank you so muchJulian.
Julian: Of course.