eFounders

eFounders was founded in 2011 by Thibaud Elziere, founder of Fotolia,[6] and Quentin Nickmans.[7] In 2015, the startup studio raised 6 million euros.[7][6] A second round of fundraising followed in 2016, with 5 million euros raised from investors.[7][8] eFounders had created 9 startups by the end of 2016, and had plans to launch another 8 with the funding.[7]

In 2018, six of eFounders' startups had raised 100 million euros:[9] Spendesk, Aircall, Forest, Front, Slite, and Station;[1][3][4] other startups had joined the Y Combinator program.[10] In April 2018, the startup TextMaster became eFounders' first release when it sold to Technicis.[2][4][11] eFounders later sold Hivy to Managed by Q and Mention to NewsDesk.[12][2] In 2019, eFounders bought out and replaced existing investors of startup Yousign. This approach was different in that eFounders did not design the company from scratch. Yousign was then treated the same as all other eFounders’ startups.[13]

In 2019, eFounders' startups had post-money valuation of $541 million and generated a combined $67 million in annual recurring revenue.[14] By July 2020, eFounders had launched 25 companies.[15][16] Those startups raised $148 million in 2020 and had a total valuation of $1.5 billion.[1][15] They generated around $10 million in monthly recurring revenue, or double that of 2019.[15]

In 2020, eFounders announced that they would no longer focus solely on Software as a Service (SaaS) startups.[16]

Founders Elziere and Nickmans identify a market opportunity and then recruit “co-founders,” a CEO and a CTO, to help promote and grow the project.[12] At this point, eFounders owns 100% of the business.[4] The startup works with eFounders to hire 10-15 additional team members and build the first version of the product.[17] The team looks for outside investors and the startup is launched to stand on its own after 18 months.[12][3] eFounders retains a portion of the business.[4]

Initially, eFounders specialized in Software as a Service (SaaS) products,[1] but during 2020, co-founder Elziere shared that the company would expand its projects.[16] The company invests an average of 600,000 euros per project,[2] and has fundraised more than 130 million euros for its startups.[1][3]

eFounders has launched the following companies:

• Aircall: business phone system[1][18]
• Bonjour: commercial management platform[1][18]
• Briq: employee engagement platform[1][18]
• Canyon: document management for legal teams[19]
• Collective: product for freelancers[19]
• Crew: workflows and management for new hires and job applications[19]
• Cycle: SaaS for product teams[3]
• Equify: equity management platform[3]
• Folk: contact management platform[3][18]
• Forest: universal back-office for developers[3][18]
• Foxintelligence: market intelligence platform[3][18]
• Front: collaborative platform for corporate email management[3][18]
• Hivy: office management platform[3][18]
• Illustrio: customizable image bank[3][18]
• Kairn: task-management platform[20][19]
• Mailjet: marketing and transactional email platform[3][18]
• Mention: social media monitoring tool[3][18]
• Multis: B2B crypto-bank[3]
• Once: story creation platform for business communication[3]
• Slite: note taking application for companies[3][18]
• Spendesk: SaaS enterprise expense management[3][18]
• Station: browser for professional use[3][18]
• Swan: Banking-as-a-Service platform[3]
• TextMaster: online translation service[3][18]
• Upflow: management platform for unpaid invoices[3][18]
• Yousign: electronic signature management[3]
• Zenvest: club deal management platform[3]

• Official website