Newsletter #17: It’s All About “Firsts”

Entrepreneurship is a journey. And the moments to remember are all the “firsts” you hit along the way. As our founder, Thibaud, explained in his yearly letter:

“The first wireframe, the first lines of code, the first “aha!” moment, the first pilots, the first paying customers, the first investors, the first office: it’s for all these first times that we wake up every morning and that the best entrepreneurs join us to share the magic.”

Beside the thrill of all of these moments, it’s also knowing that a unique story is being written that makes each of them such a special experience. And this quarter has been no exception: our entrepreneurs hit a lot of “firsts”, as well as some “lasts”…

First version ⛵️

Multis has shipped the very first version of their product, and are now in closed beta to collect feedback from their users (sign up to be the first to try it). Incidentally, Multis is something of a first for us as well as it marks our entry into the blockchain arena! The idea is to build a cryptobank for companies: a simple interface to help teams manage, send, and receive payments in cryptocurrency. Check out their white paper for more insights into what they’re building!

First customers 🙋

Equify, the equity management platform, has started taking on their first customers. The second project out of our eF18 batch of startups is geared to help companies manage their cap table as well as issue and manage company stock. It is the brain child of Alexandre Léger, a former tax lawyer turned SaaS founder, who teamed up with us to bring this simple vision to life: to make employee stock options easy to manage for founders and easy to understand for employees.

First offices 🔑

1 year (364 days to be exact…) is all it took for our first company out of our eF18 batch to fly the nest. Upflow, the platform powering better receivables for B2B businesses, has become fully independent and their rapidly growing team of 8 took residence in offices right nearby our Paris HQ. It’s a hugely important step in the life of a company, and the first of many big steps to come on their journey to reinvent payments for B2B businesses!

First M&A transaction 🤝

5 years after writing their first lines of code, Mention experienced their first acquisition. A huge step for the company, renewing their vision and strengthening our conviction that our model — a bet that we made 7 years ago — is virtuous. With 2 acquisitions this year (the other from TextMaster), our startup studio is reaching new heights. And it’s only just a start.

Last attempts… ⌛️

This quarter wasn’t all “firsts”. For Folk, it also marked an important “last”: we’ve spent our last efforts trying to find our Product-Market fit. The tool, which was started as an internal project to manage our network of contacts, was launched publicly last year as an attempt to offer our solution to other teams. But it never caught on the way we had hoped it would. However, it became indispensable to the way we work and we will continue the project exclusively for internal purposes. It will also stay open to other teams on a case-by-case basis.

Firsts wouldn’t be firsts if there wasn’t a real possibility they could also be lasts. We look forward to many more firsts to come. We know they’ll come with their load of lasts. But we wouldn’t change that for anything in the world. Curious to know what we have in mind? We released some (not all) of the ideas we are interested in working on…

Stay tuned for (much) more to come!

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