Skip ahead
I always say that for HR professionals to be truly effective, they need to understand how the business runs and how it makes money. It’s about shifting our mindset from solving HR-centric problems to solving business-centric problems. One of the best ways to ground ourselves in this reality is to engage with founders, hear how they operate, and understand the incredible challenges they face.
That’s why I was so thrilled to sit down with Fabien Pinel and JY Delmotte, the co-founders of BuddiesHR, the number one employee engagement software for Slack. In our conversation, we explored their fascinating entrepreneurial journey, the hard-won lessons from both venture-backed and bootstrapped companies, and their unique approach to building a business. Their story is a masterclass in the kind of business-focused thinking that every HR professional should cultivate.
The Entrepreneurial Rollercoaster
Fabien and J.Y’s partnership began with successful projects during their computer science engineering degree, which laid the groundwork for their future business ventures. After a few years in the corporate world, they co-founded their first company in 2017, a side project called Jeffrey, which was an automation bot for Instagram. The project saw immediate success, prompting them to quit their full-time jobs. However, their triumph was short-lived as Instagram banned them from the platform overnight, wiping out their business in minutes.
Undeterred, they iterated and launched other projects, including a TikTok influencer search tool. While it achieved some success, they found the influencer marketing space wasn’t their passion. This led them to their next big idea, Palette, a B2B software company. With Palette, they went through the prestigious Y Combinator program and raised a $6 million seed round, embracing the “go big” mentality of the startup world. After that experience, they launched their latest and greatest venture, BuddiesHR, but this time with a completely different philosophy: bootstrapping.
Key Takeaway: The founders’ journey highlights the importance of resilience and adaptability. Their experiences, from the swift rise and fall of Jeffrey to the venture-backed world of Palette, provided them with a deep understanding of different business models and ultimately clarified their own vision for building a sustainable, long-term company.
To VC or Not to VC?
One of the most compelling parts of our conversation was the debate on venture capital versus bootstrapping. Having experienced both paths, J.Y and Fabien offered a nuanced perspective. They advise founders to view VC money as a tool for acceleration, not as a goal in itself. It is most effective in capital-intensive industries or when a company has already found a clear, scalable growth lever.
They warned that raising capital before achieving product-market fit can be a fatal mistake. The pressure to spend money on hiring and marketing without a clear direction can lead to high burn rates and, ultimately, failure. Fabien added that the VC model can also kill otherwise healthy businesses that are performing well but fail to meet the “crazy nice KPIs” required to secure the next funding round, forcing them to shut down despite being viable.
Key Takeaway: Founders should be cautious about the allure of venture capital. It is a powerful tool but not the right one for every company. Building a lean, profitable, and sustainable business through bootstrapping provides more control and often leads to a more resilient company in the long run.
Finding a Niche in a Crowded Market
The HR technology space is notoriously crowded, yet Fabien and J.Y were not intimidated. Their strategy was built on a simple observation: in any market, established companies tend to move upmarket. As they add features and increase prices to serve larger enterprise clients, they inevitably leave a gap at the lower end of the market. This creates an opportunity for new, lean companies to enter and serve the small to mid-sized businesses that have been left behind.
Their decision was also deeply personal. While scaling their previous company, they discovered a genuine passion for people-related topics—onboarding, performance, and employee well-being. They realized they wanted to build tools to help other founders and smaller companies create a strong company culture from the very beginning.
Key Takeaway: No market is ever truly too crowded if you can identify an underserved niche. By focusing on the needs of smaller companies with simple, affordable, and easy-to-use products, new ventures can successfully compete with larger, more complex incumbents.
The Vision for BuddiesHR
BuddiesHR is an employee engagement suite designed for Slack-based companies. It offers a collection of apps for celebrating birthdays, giving kudos, scheduling virtual coffee chats, running polls and surveys, and more. The product is intentionally simple, built on the Pareto principle: delivering 80% of the value with 20% of the complexity.
The target audience is companies with fewer than 200 employees, which often lack a dedicated HR function and need simple tools to build their culture. The founders’ goal is to provide “no-brainer” solutions that are easy to install, affordable, and require minimal administrative overhead. Their latest product, a performance review tool (SimplePerf), continues this philosophy, aiming to simplify a process that has become overly complex in many competing software solutions.
Key Takeaway: Simplicity is a powerful feature. By focusing on the core needs of their target audience and avoiding feature bloat, BuddiesHR provides immense value. Their approach proves that you don’t need a complex, expensive tool to foster a positive and engaging work environment.
My Final Thoughts
Listening to founders like Fabien and J.Y isn’t just an interesting exercise; it’s a critical lesson in strategic business partnership for every HR leader. True HR leaders are business leaders first, and this conversation highlights why our voice is essential in shaping the future of the company.
On Funding & Scaling
The “To VC or Not to VC” debate is not just a founder’s dilemma; it’s a core HR issue. The decision to raise capital has massive implications for hiring velocity, compensation philosophy, pressure to scale, and ultimately, culture. As a business leader, the head of HR must be a key player in these conversations, helping to weigh the organizational impact of chasing hyper-growth versus building a sustainable, bootstrapped organization. We are the ones who must execute the people strategy that follows, so we must be there to influence the financial strategy from the start.
On Business Realities
Fabien and J.Y’s journey from a banned Instagram bot to a thriving SaaS business is a stark reminder of market volatility. For HR, this underscores the need to build agile and resilient organizations. Our talent strategies, performance management systems, and cultural initiatives must be robust enough to withstand the pivots and pressures that are inherent to running a business.
On Strategic Partnership
Understanding why the company targets a specific market niche allows HR to be a more effective strategic partner. It informs our employer branding, our talent acquisition strategy, and how we develop career paths. By understanding the business strategy, we can build a people strategy that directly enables it.
In short, the more we think like founders, the better we can serve as the strategic business leaders our companies need us to be.
Nahed Khairallah