Payroll.
It's not exactly the kind of word that gets pulses racing in startup land. And when I first heard the pitch for Rivage, a Paris-based startup that just raised €2.6 million to build payroll software, I'll confess my initial reaction was something like: really? Haven't we solved this already?
After a decade of SaaS innovation, billions of euros poured into fintech, and the rise of unicorns like PayFit, you'd be forgiven for thinking that cutting paychecks in France is a problem that's been thoroughly cracked. But spend a few minutes talking to Tancrède d'Hauteville, the 20-something CEO of Rivage, and you start to realize the picture is far messier than it looks from the outside.
"Payroll managers spend six to seven hours a day on the software," d'Hauteville told me during a recent interview. "So if you can make a 10% difference on the software, in terms of productivity, you're going to change an entire profession, an entire sector."
Founded in July 2025, Rivage is the brainchild of four co-founders who met at some of France's most prestigious schools. D'Hauteville and co-founder Hector Vergeron are HEC graduates, while Ayoub Saidane and Paul Lemoine came from École Polytechnique and CentraleSupélec, respectively.
While the young team faced skepticism, D'Hauteville also makes a case for why youth, in this particular instance, might actually be an advantage. "We have no personal obligation. Can sleep on the floor of the office and just completely give away our life for this problem."
So, what exactly is the problem?
PayFit built an HR and human capital management tool aimed at SMEs directly. Rivage is targeting a completely different slice of the market. More than half of French employees depend on an accounting firm or outsourcing provider for their payroll and social security declarations. That's roughly 15 million pay slips processed every month by these firms.
