Eléonore Crespo spent years watching how big companies plan, and how badly they do it. At Google, she sat close to the EMEA CFO. At Index Ventures, she backed founders navigating the same mess. By the time she started Pigment, she wasn’t guessing at the problem. She’d lived inside it twice.
Before the Company:
At Google, Crespo worked as a financial analyst advising the EMEA President and CFO on strategy and planning. After that, she joined Index Ventures in 2017, becoming an investor and joining the boards of companies like Slite, Spendesk, and Alan.
That seat gave her something most founders don’t have early on: a pattern-level view of where operators consistently hit walls.
The Moment it Shifted:
Crespo had a back injury that required surgery at the end of 2018 and spent three months confined to bed while still at Index. Pre-COVID, that meant no deal flow, no motion. Just time to think.
That pause became the push. She reached out to Romain Niccoli, co-founder and former CTO of Criteo, and proposed building together.
What They Built:
Pigment is a business planning platform that gives organizations the tools to build and adapt strategic plans. Crespo runs the business side. Niccoli owns product. Its users include Unilever, Merck, Snowflake, Coca-Cola, and DirecTV.
In April 2024, Pigment closed a $145M Series D led by ICONIQ Capital, hitting a $1 billion valuation, five years after the company was founded.
Still Building:
Crespo has been direct in public about what she thinks actually matters: hiring with depth, staying close to customers, and not assuming you already know what users need. She’s said that even when technology moves fast, adoption is a human process.
She’s speaking at VivaTech 2026 in June, back in a room she once observed from the investor side, this time on stage.
More profiles like hers are in the TECHnicalBeep Women in Tech section.
