A profitable French accounting-software company just raised €175 million it has openly admitted it did not need.

Pennylane sells bookkeeping tools to small businesses, makes around €115 million a year doing it, and is at or near the point where it funds itself.

The CEO's explanation for taking nine figures anyway was refreshingly free of spin. The investors were offering, the terms were good, and the company sold roughly 5% of itself because someone showed up wanting to buy.

Every founder reading this has been told that you raise when you have a use for the money but pennylane raised because the money came to them, which is the version nobody puts in the fundraising guides, because it requires already being the kind of company that does not need to ask.

That is the part worth thinking about.The best time to raise is when you have no reason to, and the cruelty of it is that the companies in that position are exactly the ones being offered checks, while the ones who actually need the money are explaining their churn to a junior associate who has stopped replying.