How Pennylane hit 400k Clients by betting on a new product

🔍 TL;DR

• Company: Pennylane (Financial management made simple)
• Challenge: Continue growing at a high pace
• Solution: Launching a key feature — e-invoicing
• Impact: 1,000 new clients per day
• Takeaway: Being closely aligned with market shifts (e.g., arrival of e-invoicing) unlocks major product opportunities that drastically boost adoption.

Context

Today, I’m breaking down Pennylane and how to continue scaling at a high velocity by building embedded banking services and leveraging the arrival of mandatory e-invoicing in France, with key takeaways you can start applying tomorrow. Let’s dive in!

Product 101 for Executives

• Product-led growth: Growth driven by a product that attracts, converts, and retains users through its own user experience.
• Agile squad rotation: Regularly switching members between agile teams to share knowledge and skills.
• Product bets: Strategic initiatives or experiments to drive product impact.
• Vertical software tools: Software designed for a specific industry or niche.
• PDP: Payment Service Provider

Disclaimer: The organizational choices and technical solutions shared in this newsletter aren’t meant to be copied and pasted as-is. Always keep your company’s context in mind before adopting something that works elsewhere! 😊

The Company

Pennylane is an all-in-one accounting and financial management platform designed to unify accountants and business teams around a single, real-time financial source of truth. From invoices and expense tracking to embedded banking, it empowers SMEs and their accountants to collaborate and make smarter decisions.

🥵 Their challenge : Sustain High Growth

Pennylane had already achieved strong activation and adoption, but the key challenge was to keep growing rapidly and deepen product usage across a broader client base.

😢 How the Problem Affected Pennylane’s Performance

• Needed to unlock additional levers for adoption
• Sought to convert market shifts into opportunities for product-led growth
• Focused on scaling beyond existing strong activation

💡 Their idea to solve the problem

To address this challenge, Pennylane launched a key feature: mass e-invoicing, positioning itself as one of the official e-invoicing operators by working closely with the French tax authority committees (DGFIP) to co-define national e-invoicing standards.

🤷🏼‍♂️ Why would it work

Because regulation forces digital adoption — and by embedding the right tools at the right time, Pennylane turned compliance into daily usage, driving rapid scaling.

✅ Their decisions to make it work

🍾 The results

To launch a new key feature:

1. Launch with a "Reverse Pilot"
   
   Instead of starting with your most loyal users, launch the feature to your least engaged users first. This counterintuitive approach helps you test whether the feature has broad appeal beyond your core audience. If it resonates with disengaged users, you know you’re onto something. If it doesn’t, you’ve learned early without risking your most valuable users’ trust. This tactic works particularly well for features aimed at reactivation or expanding your audience.
2. Turn Your Launch into a Series of Micro-Events
   
   Instead of a single big splash, break your launch into smaller, ongoing moments. For example, release incremental updates, share behind-the-scenes stories, or highlight user success stories tied to the feature. This keeps the momentum alive and gives you multiple opportunities to engage users and the press.
3. Test the Feature with Non-Traditional Audiences
   
   Before rolling out broadly, test your feature with an audience that’s outside your typical user base. This could be a different demographic, industry, or even a geographic region. These groups often provide fresh perspectives and uncover blind spots you’d miss with your core users. For example, Airbnb tested features in smaller markets before scaling globally, which helped refine the product without risking their main user base.

My full interview with Pennylane’s CEO

Dive deeper into this topic with Arthur Waller, CEO & co-founder of Pennylane, in my latest podcast episode:

Watch on Youtube

Listen on Podcast

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