Séverine Nolf and Maxime Lahy, former McKinsey consultants, have raised $2.1M to automate the manual tasks consuming finance and strategy teams. Image: PleaseFix AI
What is PleaseFix AI?
PleaseFix AI is an artificial intelligence productivity tool that automates repetitive tasks within Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint. Founded in 2025 by former McKinsey consultants Séverine Nolf and Maxime Lahy, the platform allows finance and strategy professionals to execute complex spreadsheet updates, presentation edits, and data management tasks using plain English instructions. Unlike standalone AI applications, PleaseFix AI operates natively within existing Microsoft Office files, delivering results up to ten times faster than manual work while maintaining full audit trails for compliance.
The Brussels and San Francisco-based startup has secured $2.1 million in pre-seed funding led by Belgian venture firm Pitchdrive, with participation from Syndicate One, Entrepreneurs First (EF), Transpose, 100IN, and undisclosed finance industry insiders.
The Problem: Why Finance Teams Still Work Until Midnight
Despite the generative AI revolution, finance and strategy teams continue spending hours on tasks that require minimal cognitive effort but demand absolute precision. Investment banking analysts still manually reformat pitch decks. Corporate development associates copy-paste data between spreadsheets. Strategy consultants adjust chart axes and font sizes at 2 AM.
McKinsey research indicates that 44% of CFOs now use generative AI across more than five use cases, yet the majority of these applications focus on analysis rather than execution. The gap between insight and implementation remains manual, tedious, and error-prone.
Alexine Capiau, Partner at Pitchdrive and former investment banker, articulates the pain point from personal experience: “I often worked until the early hours formatting decks. What was even more absurd was that we had an entire dedicated back-office team working through the night whose sole job was to polish slides. PleaseFix AI is exactly the product I would have wanted back then to eliminate that grind entirely.”
This operational drag represents a significant market opportunity. The global productivity software market exceeds $50 billion, with financial services representing one of the highest-value segments due to compliance requirements and time sensitivity.
The Solution: Native Integration Over Chatbot Wrappers
PleaseFix AI’s technical approach distinguishes it from both generalist AI tools and enterprise document platforms. Rather than requiring users to switch between applications or copy-paste between chatbots and documents, the platform embeds directly into open Excel and PowerPoint files.
Users type instructions in natural language, such as “update Q3 revenue figures from the attached ERP export” or “standardise font formatting across all slides and add page numbers,” and the AI executes within the native file environment. This eliminates context-switching friction and maintains version control.
The architecture prioritises financial services requirements: audit trails track every AI action for compliance review, accuracy checks prevent hallucinated data entries, and the system operates within existing IT security boundaries rather than requiring cloud uploads to external servers.
Competitive Positioning: Between Copilot and Manual Labour
The AI productivity landscape for finance teams includes several approaches, each with limitations that PleaseFix AI attempts to address:
Microsoft Copilot Pro offers PowerPoint and Excel integration but targets generalist use cases. Its broad applicability reduces precision for finance-specific workflows, and it requires full Microsoft 365 ecosystem commitment.
Templafy provides enterprise document governance with AI assistance, focusing on brand compliance and template management. Implementation requires significant IT integration, making it suitable for large enterprises but potentially cumbersome for mid-market teams.
ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity offer powerful language models but force users into copy-paste workflows that break document formatting and create version control nightmares. These tools excel at analysis but fail at execution within existing files.
Runway and similar creative AI tools focus on image and video generation rather than structured financial documents, requiring complex setups irrelevant to spreadsheet automation.
PleaseFix AI occupies a middle ground: more specialised than Copilot, lighter than Templafy, more integrated than chatbots, and more finance-focused than creative tools. Whether this positioning proves defensible depends on Microsoft’s product roadmap and the speed at which PleaseFix AI can establish enterprise relationships before incumbents respond.
Founder Profile: McKinsey Veterans Turned Operators
Séverine Nolf (CEO) and Maxime Lahy (CTO) met while working at McKinsey & Company, where they experienced the operational inefficiencies their product now targets. Both Belgian nationals, they bring complementary skill sets: Nolf’s strategic consulting background informs product positioning and go-to-market strategy, while Lahy’s technical expertise drives the AI implementation.
Their trajectory follows a familiar pattern for European deep tech founders: acceleration through Start it @KBC (Belgium’s largest startup accelerator) and Entrepreneurs First at Station F in Paris, followed by relocation to San Francisco in July 2025 to access venture capital and enterprise customers. The engineering team remains in Brussels at WAT (Work Advancement and Technology), a hub for Belgian tech talent, while commercial operations expand toward New York City.
This transatlantic structure, European engineering combined with American commercial operations, reflects the reality of building B2B software in 2026. Technical talent remains more cost-effective and loyal in Brussels, while customer relationships and follow-on funding require San Francisco and New York presence.
The Investors: Belgian VCs Backing Local Talent
Pitchdrive, the Antwerp-based venture firm leading the round, has established itself as a significant player in early-stage B2B software across Europe. With 86 investments and 11 exits since 2018, the firm focuses on product-driven, scalable SaaS companies. Their portfolio includes AI-native legal tech (Henchman), sales automation (Luna.ai), and computer vision (OTIV).
The participation of Syndicate One, Entrepreneurs First, Transpose, and 100IN alongside finance industry angels suggests PleaseFix AI has already demonstrated traction with potential customers. The presence of insiders from the target market, finance professionals who understand the pain point intimately, provides validation beyond technical capability.
The $2.1 million pre-seed valuation, while undisclosed, likely reflects the founders’ premium backgrounds (McKinsey, EF) and the hot market for AI productivity tools. For context, Belgian AI startups raised $44.2 million across seven deals in 2025, making this one of the larger early-stage rounds in the national ecosystem.
Market Context: The Brussels-San Francisco Connection
PleaseFix AI represents a growing cohort of Belgian startups pursuing global markets from dual bases. The company’s structure, engineering in Brussels with commercial operations in San Francisco and soon New York, mirrors successful precedents like Collibra (data governance, $5.8 billion valuation) and Showpad (sales enablement, $159.5 million raised).
Belgium’s AI sector has matured significantly, with 53 native AI startups now operating according to Tracxn data. While Ghent and Leuven dominate computer vision and biotech AI, Brussels has emerged as the hub for enterprise software and fintech applications. PleaseFix AI’s location at WAT connects it to this ecosystem while maintaining San Francisco proximity for customer development.
The timing aligns with broader market trends. Finance AI tools attracted significant investment throughout 2025, with companies like Cube (FP&A automation), V7 Go (document workflow), and AlphaSense (market intelligence) raising substantial rounds. The sector has shifted from “AI for analysis” to “AI for execution,” precisely the transition PleaseFix AI targets.
Roadmap and Risks
The $2.1 million funding supports three immediate priorities: product development to expand Excel and PowerPoint capabilities, engineering team growth in Brussels, and user acquisition across European and US financial services firms. The company plans to establish sales operations in New York City, recognising that Wall Street and corporate headquarters concentration makes it the logical beachhead for US expansion.
Long-term, the founders envision PleaseFix AI as the “execution platform” for finance and strategy teams, a central hub where AI handles routine tasks while humans focus on strategic decision-making. This ambition requires expanding beyond Microsoft Office to encompass the full finance tech stack: ERP systems, CRM platforms, and business intelligence tools.
The risks are substantial and predictable. Microsoft could enhance Copilot’s finance-specific capabilities, rendering a standalone solution redundant. Data security concerns might slow enterprise adoption, particularly for cloud-based AI processing of sensitive financial information. The copy-paste convenience of chatbots, despite their inefficiency, represents ingrained user behaviour that requires active unlearning.
Conclusion: A Niche Worth Watching
PleaseFix AI enters a crowded productivity market with a specific value proposition: eliminate the formatting and data manipulation tasks that consume junior finance professionals’ time. The $2.1 million pre-seed round provides runway to prove that native Office integration and finance-specific accuracy justify a standalone product alongside Microsoft’s advancing AI capabilities.
For the Belgian tech ecosystem, the round reinforces Brussels’ emergence as a B2B software hub and demonstrates that local venture capital can support globally ambitious startups. For finance professionals, it offers a potential escape from the midnight formatting sessions that define early-career investment banking and consulting.
Whether PleaseFix AI can scale beyond a productivity tool into a platform remains uncertain. But the problem it addresses, operational drag in high-stakes financial work, is real, expensive, and currently underserved by existing solutions. That combination makes it a company worth tracking through its seed round and beyond.
FAQ: PleaseFix AI
What does PleaseFix AI do?
PleaseFix AI automates repetitive tasks in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint for finance and strategy teams. Users type instructions in plain English, and the AI executes changes directly within open files, operating up to ten times faster than manual work with full audit tracking.
Who founded PleaseFix AI?
The company was founded in 2025 by Séverine Nolf (CEO) and Maxime Lahy (CTO), both former McKinsey & Company consultants from Belgium. They met while working at the consulting firm and experienced the operational inefficiencies their product now targets.
How much funding has PleaseFix AI raised?
PleaseFix AI raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding in February 2026. The round was led by Belgian venture firm Pitchdrive, with participation from Syndicate One, Entrepreneurs First, Transpose, 100IN, and finance industry angels.
How is PleaseFix AI different from Microsoft Copilot?
While Microsoft Copilot offers generalist AI assistance across the 365 ecosystem, PleaseFix AI focuses specifically on finance and strategy workflows within Excel and PowerPoint. It operates natively within existing files without requiring cloud uploads or ecosystem lock-in, and includes compliance features like audit trails designed for financial services.
Where is PleaseFix AI based?
The company operates from dual locations: the engineering team is based in Brussels, Belgium (at WAT), while commercial operations are headquartered in San Francisco, with planned expansion to New York City for sales operations.
What is PleaseFix AI’s pricing model?
Pricing details have not been publicly disclosed. The company is currently focused on enterprise and mid-market financial services firms, with a freemium or usage-based model likely given the productivity tool category.