Hexa (company)

Hexa, named eFounders until 2022, is a startup studio created in 2011 in Brussels and Paris, by Thibaud Elzière and Quentin Nickmans. The concept of the company, which initially specialized in software as a service (SaaS), is to start startups by partnering with founders and providing them, at project launch, with the idea, seed money and strategic advice.

Hexa's business model is based on identifying and solving specific problems encountered by the studio's founders or startups, from which it launches each new project with an average investment of 800,000 euros. The studio then recruits two co-founders, a CEO and a CTO, and sets up a team dedicated to initial product development.

The studio raises its first funds in 2015 and 2016, of five million euros each. In 2018, eFounders reaches a significant milestone with six of its startups raising a total of 100 million euros and proceeds with the sale of its first company, TextMaster. In 2022, eFounders launches a new studio, 3founders, dedicated to the Web3, and begins its restructuring. It then takes the name Hexa, while the eFounders brand is maintained for the historic SaaS studio. The studios thus become verticals dedicated to their own themes.

By the end of 2022, Hexa manages a portfolio of forty startups with a collective valuation of five billion dollars, having created around 2,800 for jobs and raised 700 million euros. In 2023, the studio announces a further fundraising round of 20 million euros, to support the launch of thirty new startups a year. In the same year, Hexa introduces Hexa Scale, a program designed to support mature startups in their development.

eFounders then Hexa
Hexa was founded in Brussels and Paris in 2011 under the name eFounders, by French Thibaud Elzière and the Belgian Quentin Nickmans. It is a startup studio: the principle is to launch a startup by providing the founders, recruited directly by the studio, with the idea, initial funding and strategic and operational support. Its activity is therefore similar to that of a business incubator, with the notable difference that the founders are provided with a turnkey project. eFouders raised five million euros on two occasions, in 2015 and 2016. The first time with Oleg Tscheltzoff, co-founder of Fotolia with Thibaud Elzière in 2004, the second time with forty angel investors and European family offices.

The startup studio crossed a symbolic threshold in 2018 with a total sum of 100 million euros raised by six of its startups: Spendesk, Aircall, Forest, Front, Slite and Station. These capital increases were dealt with well-established venture capital firms, such as Index Ventures, Accel Partners or Sequoia Capital. It was also that year, in April, that eFounders sold its first startup, TextMaster, to Technicis. Other startups, such as Front, also joined the Y Combinator program. The following year, eFounders replaced Yousign's existing investors. This was the first time the startup studio had invested in a startup it had not launched itself. The valuation of the twenty-five startups eFounders had launched reached 1.5 billion euros in 2020, up from 1 billion the previous year.

Opening of new verticals and name change
In 2022, eFounders ratified its reorganization into several studios, renamed “verticals”, and changed its name to Hexa, in reference to the hexadecimal system, which is understandable by both humans and machines. Thibaud Elzière and Quentin Nickmans were joined by Amaury Sepulchre, who became co-founder of Hexa. The eFounders brand was retained for one of its components, the historic vertical dedicated to softwares as a service, while a second vertical, named 3founders and dedicated to Web3, was created.

By then, the startup studio had launched some forty startups and had a portfolio valued at five billion dollars, with around 2,800 jobs created and 700 million euros raised. Hexa's aim is to launch several verticals capable of scaling several startups a year, where eFounders alone could only scale one or two per quarter. Hexa raised a further 20 million euros in 2023, to launch thirty new startups a year by the end of the decade. Like the first in 2011, it was done with entrepreneurs and family offices. On this occasion, Hexa also announced the opening of its Parisian office, named la Cristallerie.

Hexa Scale, an initiative to support mature startups financially, strategically and operationally, was launched in 2023. Its function is similar to that of growth capital or private equity funds, but on a smaller scale. Hexa takes a minority or majority stake, and intervenes directly in the startup's day-to-day operations. The aim is then to trigger a new phase of growth, with support over twelve to eighteen months, during which the startup's founders can sell part of their shares and a new CEO be appointed.

The following year, after Hexa AI, a vertical focused on artificial intelligence, Hexa launches Hexa Health, a vertical dedicated to improving the healthcare system. Julien Méraud, a former Doctolib board member, joins the studio to create it. The organization of this vertical differs from the previous ones: a physician is recruited to become its full-time medical director, while each startup is launched equally by an experienced doctor and a future CEO.

Method
Hexa is a startup studio, a company that creates startups by relying on founders recruited at the launch of a project, to whom the studio provides funds and advice. Hexa's business model is based on the creation of startups aimed at solving the problems encountered by previous ones. Thus, the studio was created by launching several companies working on problems encountered by Thibaud Elzière himself, while he was running Fotolia. Once an idea emerges, Hexa submits the project to entrepreneurs with whom it partners. Four or five startups are launched each year.

On average, up to 800,000 euros are invested in each project. This investment is particularly used to recruit two founders, a CEO and a CTO, and to set up a team of ten to fifteen employees to build the first version of the product, generally a software as a service. After around eighteen months, the startup is officially launched and becomes independent, notably to go in search of investors. Hexa then takes a 30% stake in the startup's capital, the majority being retained by the founders.

Hexa records around one exit per year, as was the case with the buyout of Briq by the unicorn Swile or that of Mailjet by its American competitor Mailgun, for sums reaching several tens of millions of euros. The startup studio has a 6% failure rate, with projects such as Bonjour, a platform to boost sales performance, and Station, a web browser for businesses, having ceased. This compares with the average survival rate of a startup, estimated at between 10 and 20%.

Startups launched
Hexa has launched forty-one startups since 2011, all specializing in softwares as a service. Most of these are affiliated with the historic eFounders vertical, as is the case, for example, with Folk, a contact management application, or Tengo, which aims to democratize access to invitations to tender from government procurements. The first startups in the other verticals were recently launched, like Numeral, which facilitates the automation of bank transfers and direct debits for companies or Cohort, focused on user account management, linked to Web3.

Hexa startups have raised a total of 700 million euros, mostly from venture capital funds such as Index Ventures or Sequoia Capital, and from angel investors, individual investors betting on fledgling projects. Since 2018 and the first acquisition of a startup from the studio, Textmaster, by Technicis, six of them have been acquired by competitors, such as Mailjet, taken over in 2019 by the American Mailgun. Canyon and Okko also became the first two startups to be acquired by another company that had itself grown out of the studio, the former in 2022 by Yousign and the latter in 2024 by Spendesk.

The studio is behind the creation of three unicorns, startups valued at over a billion dollars: Front, which enables centralized management of incoming flows such as emails or private messages, became a unicorn in 2022; Spendesk, in the same year, specialized in managing means of payment for businesses; Aircall, a telephony solution company, has been a unicorn since 2021. The latter has also become a centaur, a term qualifying startups with annual recurring revenues exceeding one hundred million dollars.