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What we cover in this edition:

• How did Fabrice Manage Two Pivots

• Fabrice's Hiring Principles

• Breaking down Fluid Topics Business Model

• Fabrice's Advice to Other Founders

• What comes next for Fluid Topics

• How Intercom can support you

This edition of SCALE is supported by Intercom:

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🏃 How Did They Get Started?

🧑‍💻 Founding Antidot: A Tech Journey Begins in 1999

What they did: Fabrice Lacroix founded Antidot 25 years ago, focusing on search technology for indexing the web. As a result, Antidot found itself competing with a “difficult adversary” in Google. 

What went wrong? The 2001 tech crash forced a major pivot for Antidot due to:

• Deteriorating market conditions as indexing the web is expensive and Antidot required capital to scale which VCs were not willing to cough up in 2001

• Intense competition with Google who were growing rapidly while Antidot stalled 

• Customers vanished overnight as the dot-com bubble gave out 

🔍️ Pivot 1: From Web Indexing to Site Search in 2001

Initial idea: Antidot found a whitespace in providing search technology for websites, focusing on media/publishers (e.g., France Television, TF1, Lexis Nexis) and e-commerce platforms (e.g. Galeries Lafayette, Decathlon). 

What went wrong? Despite their success, Fabrice realised that this business was not scalable across: 

1. E-commerce platforms were low margin and therefore didn’t have massive spending potential, especially in tough economic conditions.

2. Media publishers were high margin but were expensive to build for because they demanded product customization. 

This led to the realisation that Fluid Topics would measure success based on two factors: high value customers and repeatable business.

📃 Pivot 2: Embracing Technical Documentation in 2014

The final pivot led to the development of Fluid Topics (from Antidot): a novel way to search, read, and interact with technical documentation. Fabrice identified a clear need for streamlined search for technical documentation as customers spend days sifting through material across several formats (e.g., PDF, WORD, excel, CSV) and locations without a clear integrated way to search through everything. 

Today, Fluid Topics provides an AI-powered content delivery platform designed to streamline technical content integration and unify knowledge into a centralized hub. Features include personalized search, real-time publishing, content analytics, and tools for deploying AI projects. 

🤼 How Did They Build Their Team?

Hiring principals that Fabrice swears by:

Finding engineering talent: look for engineers who are as "generalist" as possible as top talent prefers to work on various features across the stack.

Longer Hiring Cycles: Take time to find the right talent who are committed for the long term. Instead of hiring fast and trimming fast, Fabrice designed an interview process that ensures they select individuals who are the right fit.

Delegating Hiring to Team Leads: Management should step back from most of the hiring process, leaving it to the team leads who are responsible. During the hiring process, anyone in their organization can raise their hand and veto a hire, ensuring that all team members have a say..

💰️ How Do They Make Money?

Business model

Fluid Topics operates through a typical SaaS model. However, sales cycles are far slower than average as customers need to be educated on the value of the product. 

Pricing structure:

Fabricie uses a unique 2 dimensional pricing model:

1. Volume of content 

2. Number of user sessions

Wondering why? A one-dimensional pricing structure results in ineffective pricing e.g., small companies with vast amounts of data will be underpriced in a user-based pricing structure. 

Retaining customers: Fluid Topics boasts a high retention rate due to: 

1. A longer sales cycle. When customers decide to buy their product, they are truly committed. 

2. White glove customer success. This includes  hands-on customer support and education, and product tailoring during roll-outs which is key for large B2B customers

First Customer

Fabrice proactively approached potential customers in the US, presenting the prototype of Fluid Topics. The positive feedback helped validate the product and secure early adopters. Significant clients like Workday, Kone, and Siemens were among the first to see the value of Fluid Topics.

Why Avoiding Localization in France was key: 

Taking the hard route, and not centering the business around local customers who would not be the majority of the user base in the long run was key for Fluid Topics. 

Avoiding localization to French and focusing on international markets pushed the team to think globally and sell their product in English. This strategy was crucial for gaining traction with major international clients and investors, positioning Fluid Topics for long-term global success—a pitfall many European B2B SaaS businesses fail to avoid. With a team of 25-35 people at that time, Fabrice found that American companies, even large ones, were willing to take risks and give Fluid Topics a chance, unlike European companies that often questioned the business's size and financial stability.

SCALE ADVICE COLUMN

📖 Fluid Topics Fact Sheet

Seed stage: €1.6mn in 2012

Team size: 42
Focus: Scale SaaS search technology for Web sites (content publishers, eCommerce) 
Challenges: Grow existing business rapidly or find new markets to thrive in as eCom / media businesses were difficult to scale

Series A: €5.5 m in 2018 

Team size: 46
Focus: Leverage series A financing to pivot to Fluid Topics, a Content Delivery Platform dedicated to technical documentation and product knowledge.
Challenges: Find PMF and scale revenues with first customers 

📈 What's Next for Fluid Topics?

Goals for the next 12 Months after a €15Mn EUR series B in April 2024

• Increase revenue by 2x. Fabrice believes that startups can prioritize short-term growth if their annualized burn is less than the ARR growth. i.e., a. losses can be covered within 1 year. 

• Grow sales team to prioritise outbound sales as inbound sales has been the primary growth channel

• Continue innovating on product and remain the leading platform for technical documentation management.

If you are an investor or would like to work with Fluid Topics, get in touch at [email protected].

How can Intercom support your startup:

Intercom for Startups

Join Intercom’s Early Stage Program to receive a 90% discount.

Get a direct line to your customers. Try the only complete AI-first customer service solution.

Apply now