You are Camille Roy, founder and chief executive of Racine, a Nantes software company that helps food and agriculture firms measure and cut waste in their supply chains. Your revenue has been flat for three quarters, and this morning your closest rival announced €12 million of new capital. The board wants a growth plan by the end of the quarter; before you choose whose money to take, you have to say why growth stopped.
The situation
Racine was founded in 2022 on €900,000 of seed capital and has lived on its sales ever since. It has 38 customers, 21 people and annual recurring revenue (ARR) of €1.4 million, flat for three quarters. The bank holds €855,000 and the company consumes €95,000 a month net of revenue: nine months. Terravise, the rival you have beaten on four contracts in two years, has just closed a €12 million round and announced eighteen hires.
The explanations on your desk do not agree. Qualified enterprise deals have sat in the pipeline for three quarters, and Racine has never employed an enterprise salesperson; your head of growth wants one, costed at €180,000 a year. A board member wrote last month that the product may have reached the ceiling of its market. And twice you have turned away paying customers whose practices clashed with what Racine measures, decisions your engineers, many on below-market salaries, thanked you for.
Three sources of capital are live: €6 million from a venture fund that expects ARR to triple and wants Racine to pursue any paying customer; €1.5 million from a lender repaid as a share of revenue; and €2 million from an agricultural group that wants exclusivity over a channel worth about 30% of the pipeline. Each buys something different, and which one fits depends on what is actually broken.