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Pivot, a new procurement software company, secures $21.6 million in funding shortly after its inception.

Pivot Founders Romain Libeau Marc Antoine Lacroix Estelle Giuly Series A
French startup Pivot is an interesting startup story as it is scaling at a rapid pace even though startup investments are down in Europe. After raising a $5.3 million pre-seed round in April (€5 million), the company worked on the first iteration of its procurement tool over the summer. And feedback has been so great that Pivot is raising another $21.6 million (€20 million) in a new Series A round from its existing investors — and in particular Visionaries, Emblem, Anamcara and Oliver Samwer. I already wrote a lengthy description of Pivot, so I also encourage you to read my previous article on the startup. But in short, Pivot is a modern spend management solution that supposedly works better than Oracle NetSuite’s procurement component or Coupa.

Hexa startup studio seeks to forge partnerships with startups experiencing inadequate growth

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Just a couple of weeks after announcing $22 million in fundraising, Paris-based startup studio Hexa is expanding beyond its studio model to partner with later stage companies that have already found product-market fit. In 2012, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham wrote an essay called ’Startup = Growth’. According to him, instead of growing revenue by a certain amount, startup founders should focus on a target growth rate and reach that target. Another reason why focusing on a growth rate can be helpful is that a company grows exponentially if it can maintain the same growth rate over time. While Hexa is better known as the startup studio that spawned some successful B2B SaaS startups like Front, Aircall and Spendesk, this isn’t the first time Hexa is looking at later stage companies.