MEET THE FOUNDER OF 'LIBEO'

Pierre Dutaret, EDHEC Master 2008

From graduation, Pierre made the respectable leap into Mergers & Acquisitions at Merrill Lynch then BNP Paribas. But the entrepreneur in him was hungry for more. Pierre explains, “I left finance to set up Farago, the first restaurant in what is now a chain of around fifteen.” Turns out it was just the entrée. “Those years gave me a taste of the difficulties business managers face every day.” One of the biggest pains was the lack of a financial management tool to streamline processing and payment of supplier bills. Epiphany! The answer would come in the form of Libeo, a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform designed to simplify bill management. Since day one, Libeo has enjoyed a steep success curve. Pierre is thankful for the EDHEC Entrepreneurs incubator support his new enterprise has had from EDHEC. “Nobody starting a new venture can know everything, and our EDHEC contacts trained us up in vital new skills like SEO, finance and HR.” Being able to lean on the experience of alumni to finetune their management has also been priceless. They’ve already won Fintech of the Year. New features and more staff are coming. Dessert will be sweet.

• Jan 2019: Libeo founded
• Apr 2019: Accepted by EDHEC Entrepreneurs incubator
• Jun 2019: Minimum Viable Product launched
• Nov 2019: € 2M capital raised
• Dec 2019: Commercial launch
• Jan 2020: 2019 Fintech of the Year award