From flying blind to instrument flight – Interview with Baptiste Jamin

With over 600,000 business customers worldwide, Crisp stands out in customer messaging. Entirely bootstrapped and data-driven, the Nantes-based SaaS is scaling toward an ambitious goal: €100M in ARR, without external funding. But autonomy comes with challenges, especially when turning raw data into smart decisions.

We spoke with Baptiste Jamin, Crisp's co-founder and CEO, to understand how the company structures its growth, anticipates the challenges of a fast-changing market, and smartly manages its revenue with Fincome.

Crisp, the choice of efficiency

While many SaaS companies compete in complexity to attract large accounts, Crisp made the opposite bet: it placed efficiency, clarity, and autonomy at the core of its product and business strategy—a decision that has shaped the entire company culture.

A 100% PLG Model

Crisp is a multichannel customer relationship platform. Live chatbots, emails, WhatsApp, Instagram… everything is centralized in a single collaborative inbox that allows businesses to unify all their communications and customer relationship management efficiently.

Since its launch ten years ago, the tool has become a benchmark in the sector, attracting startups and large corporations from the CAC 40.

Crisp is built on a Product-Led Growth (PLG) model: no salespeople, no scheduled demos, just a smooth product experience, from freemium to subscription. Pricing is simple and fixed, like a mobile plan. There are three tiers: free, €95/month, and €295/month. This approach supports volume and simplifies adoption.

The result: 10,000 paying customers, a lean team of 20, and standout operational efficiency.

An international DNA

Crisp has always considered the global market. English was the default language from day one, long before French. All documentation, product content, and support were designed to serve a global market from day one.

“The world is big, France is small. From the start, everything was in English.” — Baptiste Jamin, CEO of Crisp 

Today, less than 20% of revenue comes from France. The rest? Primarily the United States, Latin America, and Asia.

But this international mindset isn’t limited to marketing: customer support is structured accordingly, with native agents distributed by time zone and language to ensure 24/7 localized service.

Navigate non-linear growth without losing control

In SaaS, product simplicity doesn’t guarantee business simplicity. As Crisp continued to grow, it quickly encountered a structural problem: how to navigate an increasingly complex business with tools that were too rigid for their model?

A DIY internal stack, hard to leverage

With sustained growth, Crisp soon faced challenges in data analysis and lacked detailed visibility on its revenue.

“We had internal solutions to analyze MRR, but we couldn’t pinpoint the causes of churn, revenue per plan, etc.,” explains Baptiste.

From the start, Crisp chose to manage its subscription systems through its database and revenue tracking, using Stripe for payments. However, as the company grew, this approach showed its limits.

Before Fincome, teams juggled between data exports, internal SQL scripts, and failed attempts at implementing solutions. According to the founder, early tools didn’t truly improve data handling - too restrictive, hard to use, and above all: not suited to their infrastructure.

The need: Simplicity, Flexibility, Speed

“With Fincome, we just uploaded a CSV file, and an hour later, we had a clear view. No need for an API, no need to rebuild everything.”

No need to connect Stripe or adapt the whole infrastructure.

This gap between perceived complexity elsewhere and Fincome’s ease of use is a key part of the Crisp case. The tool adapts to their model, even with multiple currencies or custom billing. That’s what won over the founder, who wanted to analyze revenue effectively, especially churn causes.

From data to action: smart management without raising funds

Understand, segment, correct: for a product-led company, data governance isn’t just about displaying MRR. It’s a strategic lever to optimize the product, reduce churn, and scale efficiently.

Analyzing to optimize: the renewals example

In a SaaS, particularly a PLG model, tracking metrics—MRR, churn, CLV, CAC—is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. These indicators help identify friction points, optimize activation, and detect pricing mismatches or under-leveraged customer segments. But you need reliable and well-segmented data to do that.

That’s precisely what Crisp gained from their early analyses with Fincome. One of the most striking insights? A significant portion of churn wasn’t due to customer disengagement… but to technical renewal failures.

“We had companies churning and then coming back. We realized it was due to payment method and renewal issues.”

Crisp identified this invisible churn by cross-referencing data, implementing Stripe Checkout (with Stripe Link), and automating follow-ups. The result: MRR was saved without any commercial effort—just through better data interpretation.

Product management without a CFO

Crisp doesn’t have a CFO, yet the company tracks its SaaS KPIs with surgical precision: MRR, churn, expansion, geographic, and pricing plan breakdowns. Baptiste Jamin estimates that the team only uses 15% of Fincome’s potential.

“We’re using Fincome at 10–15%. But what we’re already seeing saves us a lot of time.”

The real challenge now is data enrichment: better understanding performance by country, sector, or usage. Which features should be prioritized? Where is churn hiding? Which segments have the most long-term value?

This analytical work has translated into real product actions. For instance, after identifying friction in the user experience, the team updated the homepage and simplified onboarding. The result:

“+20% signups thanks to a homepage update, and +20% activation from a revised onboarding.”

A major operational gain achieved without any extra sales effort—just from better use of available insights.

Fincome: a strategic lever to scale without friction

This wasn’t about “adding another tool” to the stack for Crisp. The issue was far more critical: finding a simple, robust solution to analyze, understand, and manage an atypical SaaS model, with its own subscription rules, multiple currencies, custom billing, and sustained international growth.

The goal? Gain clarity without burdening the structure. And above all, avoid wasting weeks on manual data processing or internal dev work.

1. Quick setup

• Data was imported in under an hour via a simple CSV file.
• No need to connect an API or alter existing architecture.
• Smooth, immediate adoption, even for non-technical users.

2. Clear view of a complex model

• Data consolidated automatically: by country, currency, or pricing plan.
• Historical exchange rates are integrated automatically.
• No more manual processing or makeshift analyses.

3. Clear, Actionable KPIs

• Real-time tracking of MRR, churn, expansion, and cohorts.
• Simple segmentation by country, plan, or churn reason.
• Accelerated decision-making, even without a CFO.

Today, Crisp has a clear ambition: to reach €100M in ARR without raising funds. Fincome gives them a simple framework to track their KPIs, without needing a dedicated finance team. A reliable support system that lets Crisp scale through instrument flight, not by flying blind.

Conclusion

Crisp proves it’s possible to build a lean, profitable, global SaaS company without chasing funding rounds or drowning in complexity. This apparent simplicity is built on clear decisions and the right tools.

With Fincome, the team gains visibility, responsiveness, and precision in their operations. KPIs are there, accessible, and used to improve the product, refine customer understanding, and adjust priorities.

As Baptiste puts it: “We don’t want to fly blind—we want to fly on instruments,” and that’s exactly what Fincome enables.