Established in Paris in 2020, PE Cube opened an office in Luxembourg 3 months ago. We caught up with founder and CEO Antoine Sage to learn more about their new end-to-end private equity software.
When did you launch PE Cube and why?
PE Cube is a private equity (PE) SaaS for managers that was launched in March 2020. Having worked in the field for 20 years, we observed that there was a significant lack of digital solutions which tackled the increasing regulations and helped improve investor relationships. That’s why we developed a digital solution which improves PE managers’ data management capabilities and thereby helps them stay on top of regulations and improve their communications with their investors.
Why has the PE sector been so slow to adopt digital solutions?
I can think of two explanations. The first one is that, as long as the old way of doing things works, people won’t adopt new solutions. Secondly, digitalisation has been poorly managed in the past in the industry. Existing tools took a lot more money and time to develop than initially planned which made people reluctant to try new solutions. But our solution can fully onboard clients with every point of historical data in less than three weeks and everyone in the team will be able to use the solution right away.
“We are currently at the seed stage and are looking to raise between €1.5-2 million.”
Antoine Sage, CEO of PE Cube
You said that PE Cube is more of a business solution than a technology solution. Why?
We spent six months prototyping and testing the solution. This means that we tried every single technical possibility applicable to the PE field. And guess what? We got rid of 90% of those features and focused only on the 10% of them that would bring real benefits to our clients. We are business-minded because we come from the PE field. We know what the pain points of the industry are and where added value can be created, that’s why we are foremost a business solution.
Can you give me an example of a use case of your solution?
As a fund manager, you have clients and investors to whom you need to call and give money every now and then. In our solution we have streamlined this process into five simple steps, making it impossible to miss anything. At the end of this process, the capital call or distribution will be fully secured and encrypted and sent to the client in less than seven minutes. This process would usually take up to three days in any regular investment fund.
Our solution also has an investor portal which shows the performance of the fund our clients are investing in. It shows them a real-time valuation of how their investments are performing, both in terms of financial and non-financial (ESG) metrics. In our platform, they can find every single piece of analytics necessary which they can even export to create their own analyses. The PE sector is usually quite closed off but our solution aims to bring clarity and transparency to each member of the value chain about the value of their investments.
You already have offices in France and Luxembourg. What’s next for PE Cube?
That’s right, we already have a fully functional product in both countries. Since we have European ambitions and Luxembourg has the strongest PE industry in Europe, it is the right place for us to continue our growth.
We are currently at the seed stage and are looking to raise between €1.5-2 million. The real question for us today is how we can properly incorporate in Luxembourg and how to make our offices in Paris and Luxembourg work as well together as possible.
