Nicolas Kopp, CEO of Rillet, raised $100 million in Series C funding last month for his agentic ERP platform aimed at finance teams. He sat down with a16z's Seema Amble to explain how he pulled this off in a market littered with failed competitors who tried and lost to NetSuite and SAP. His core bet was simple: he knew the problem existed from firsthand experience, he had a clear mental model of the solution, and he'd bet everything on execution rather than chasing a trend that might never materialize. Rather than follow conventional wisdom, Rillet spent years in stealth—not hiding from the market, but running micro-launches with real customers in production to get brutal feedback before a public launch two years ago. On the wedge strategy that many startups swear by, Kopp was blunt: don't do it if you're building a system of record. Rillet went platform-first because anything narrower gets you laughed out of rooms when you're selling ERP. The customer support burden and code interdependencies on a wide platform are brutal, but unavoidable in his space. His compromise was wedge messaging targeting SaaS and AI companies with similar pain points, while leading with a strong revenue recognition and ARR tracking module. He'd only recommend the narrow wedge approach if you genuinely have one that credibly expands into something bigger—otherwise you're just making your life harder. On hiring, Kopp's advice cuts against the pressure to move fast: maintain a high talent bar even when it means slow hiring and no brand recognition. Early good hires made Rillet what it is today. A strong talent bar becomes a flywheel—once you have people worth working with, better candidates want to join. Investors constantly questioned why filling seemingly simple positions took so long, but Kopp doubled down on the principle anyway. In the early days you have no leverage and everyone tells you to compromise, but he credits those early hiring decisions as the thing he'd most defend looking back.