Jules Pigassou, Founder of SustainSoft, Techstars Paris Class of April 2022

01. What is your background? Take us through the steps of becoming a founder

I followed a very typical path to entrepreneurship: after graduating from a business school, I started my career in Corporate Finance, which, by that time, was the path to follow for ambitious people. I then switched to Strategy Consulting, another socially recognized job, to get a deeper understanding of companies’ business challenges. It is important to say that the consulting firm I worked for was specialized in Tech. Although a non-technical guy, I have always been interested in technology and curious on the multiple ways it could be used.

In my early 30s, the well-known “quest for purpose” hit and I decided to start my entrepreneurship journey. I had wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was a kid, and the timing to launch was right.

At the beginning, I didn’t know which topic exactly I wanted to address but I knew that I wanted to use my skillset “for good” (this is a very subjective concept, I agree there is no general definition of it!). My market research phases helped me understand the pain points which corporates felt when it came to sustainability. This is how SustainSoft started.

02. How do you and your co-founder know each other?

I met Christelle during one of my last assignments as a consultant, when we were in charge of redefining VINCI Immobilier’s strategy. I used to bump into Christelle once in a while during that time, as she was Head of Environment at VINCI Immobilier. During my market research, I called her to understand her pain points as a potential client and we ended up as business partners!

As for Félix, I met him at the Other-Accelerator-Which-We-Shall-Not-Say-The-Name!

03. What did you enjoy most about the Paris Techstars Accelerator’s program and what are your biggest learnings?

What we enjoyed most during the program lies in 3 words: in-person, team, mentors. We’ve spent fantastic times in person with other founders, had an incredible TS team that organized our program perfectly and met incredible mentors we would never have met otherwise.

Exchanging on issues with other startups has been one of our biggest learning so far. It has revealed of great help for us and we intend to keep doing so in the future.

04. What were some of the obstacles your company faced throughout the three months of the acceleration program?

As an hybrid program, I’d say that the main challenges we faced were directly linked with the distance between us during the 11 weeks of the virtual program. Maintaining bond during remote phases was especially hard. Another obstacle we faced was the setup of Lead Mentor Boards as we had to align 7 agendas of highly busy people. 

05. How do you plan to measure the impact of your company in the next 5 years?

We are an impact-enabling tool: by using our platform, companies consistently improve their impact. As such, the impact we are generating is directly linked to the usage of our tool. In the future, we intend to compute the progress made by our customers on each sustainable action to track their improvements.

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