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San Francisco, here we come.

This summer we ran the Hexa Hacker House as an experiment: give a small group of European founders a real base in SF, and see what happens when they build side by side.

The results went beyond what we expected. 83% of the founders were accepted into Y Combinator, signed US customers or raised money from US VCs.

We’re now doubling down on our early conviction: European founders building in SF need a dedicated space and a community of their own. We’re building it. If you’re a founder, investor or operator in SF and want to be part of it, say hi.

Say Hi

Demo Time opens its doors

For the first time in 15 years, we’re opening Demo Time to people outside Hexa. In December, our newest companies will present what they’ve built, and you can be in the room.

Save your seat in the Front Row

Welcome to the team, Antoine!

Antoine Durieux, founder of Alkemics, joined Hexa as a Partner to build software for critical industries: energy, aviation, shipping and defense.

Four new ideas, looking for founders

Four of our Partners are each launching a new company, and they’re looking for co-founders. If one of these is for you, reach out. If it’s for someone you know, send them our way.

IntegrityX
In aerospace, defense, automotive, medical devices and nuclear, code can never leave the company’s own network, and the hard part isn’t writing it faster but proving it’s compliant. Antoine Durieux is building an AI development suite for these teams. It runs on-premise, air-gapped or on a sovereign cloud, generates code against standards like MISRA, DO-178C and ISO 26262, keeps requirements, code and tests traceable, and produces the evidence pack certification requires. He wants founders who know this world from the inside. Read the idea → or reach out to Antoine →

Pong
Satellite operators want their data down in minutes, not hours, but land-based ground stations can’t reach the 70% of the planet that’s ocean. Guerric de Crombrugghe wants to fix that by putting ground stations on commercial ships. He’s looking for a founder with real engineering rigor, hardware execution experience, and the instinct to get in front of customers early rather than polish a prototype in a lab. Reach out to Guerric →

DesignX
Designers still lack a tool built for working with AI agents. Florent Quinti is building one, where designers explore several directions at once, iterate on a live product, make decisions with PMs and engineers, and carry the spec through to implementation. He wants people obsessed with product design: design-minded product or engineering profiles, or entrepreneurial PMs and designers. Reach out to Florent →

PhysicalAIx
General-purpose robots are still years away. Raphaël Vullierme’s bet is to start where sending people in is dangerous: teleoperation in nuclear decommissioning and defense logistics. That earns revenue now and collects the real-world data that will enable autonomy later. He wants robotics engineers, defense technologists, nuclear experts, and founders already working in hazardous operations. Read the idea → or reach out to Raphaël →

Explore Ideas

Portfolio news

Verso (HX26) raises $6M Seed

Founded by Lydia Bellahouel and Camille Epitalon, with the support of our Partner Florent Quinti, Verso has raised $6M to build the consumer intelligence layer behind business decisions. Angular Ventures led the round, joined by 100in, Kima Ventures, Olympe Capital, Sharpstone Capital and a group of business angels, including BCG Partners, Station F Managing Director Roxanne Varza, and industry experts.

Marble (HX22) raises €6.5M Series A

Started by Arnaud Schwartz and Pascal Delange inside our HX22 cohort, Marble raised €6.5M Series A to make compliance AI the norm. Smartfin led the round, with participation from Adnexus, Passion Capital, and 42Capital.

Lina Law launches Europe’s first AI-native law firm

Co-founded by Franck-Victor Laurant, Cyrille De Baerdemaeker, and Alexandre Cys, Lina Law (HX26) launched as Europe’s first AI-native law firm. Starting in Belgium and France, it aims to build a new category that goes beyond what Legora and Harvey are offering: a different kind of law firm entirely.

Eno launches across 131 and looking for co-founders

Founded by Gauthier Rodaro and Basile Cassiers, Eno (HX26) launched with a bold goal: build 131 industry-specific software products, each led by its own entrepreneur, on one shared platform. Eno is now looking for entrepreneurs to lead these industry products, and businesses willing to help shape the software for their sector.

Netra Power joins Hexa Sprint Energy Resilience

Founded by Alexis Hervieu-Causse and Sandro Matola Steffanetti, Netra Power (HX26) joined Hexa Sprint Energy Resilience. The Geneva-based company takes an end-to-end approach to energy storage: it develops battery storage systems and pools them onto a single platform, making storage available off the shelf.

PMF Collector: the company Requesty almost didn’t build

Thibault Jaigu set out to build product analytics for LLMs. What he actually built, almost by accident, was an AI gateway: the routing and auth layer his team needed to ship their real product. They’d put hundreds of unpaid hours into it before realizing other people needed it too. He tells our Partner Matthieu Vaxelaire how he noticed that his workaround had become worth more than his pitch.

Watch the episode

Build with AI: putting Jev into production

Jev, TypeSafe AI’s new model, launched on September 15 and is already getting a lot of attention on X. Camille Epitalon, CTO of Verso, was one of the first to put it into production. In conversation with our CTO Tanguy Goretti, Camille explains how a classification task that took 2h37 and cost $24 on GPT-5 mini now runs in 84 seconds for $0.75, with quality at least as good.

Watch the episode

How this CTO lets his AI agents redeploy to production without him

When Rose’s chatbot gets an answer wrong, nobody opens a pull request. Benoit Pothier, Rose’s CTO and co-founder, shows our CTO Tanguy Goretti how a flagged answer becomes a ticket within seconds. An agent writes the fix, tests it against evals, and redeploys it with no human review. The system closes about 20 tickets a week this way.

Watch the episode

Opportunities & Community

Careers

Hexa | VP Finance and Investments (Paris)
Hexa | Chief of Staff / GTM to Raphaël Vullierme (Paris or SF)
Pelagon | Head of Sales (Paris)
Plato | Founding AI Engineer (Paris)
Verso | Founding Sales (Paris)

Join our network of exceptional talent

Community Events

ElevenLabs Startup Meetup Paris

Tuesday 20 October, La Cristallerie, Paris

Register

EDTH x Hexa - Naval Meetup | Hosted by Hexa & Antoine Bassoul

Tuesday 20 October, Toulon, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur

Sign up

Thanks for reading! Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram to stay up to date between issues.

Cheers,

The Hexa Team

A visitor types a question into the chatbot on Cactus Inbound’s website: can you give me a cocktail recipe? The Rose bot politely explains that it’s a marketing assistant, not a bartender, and steers the conversation back to digital marketing. Cactus Inbound is a fake competitor site Benoit Pothier’s team built from scratch, just to demo Rose without touching a real client’s data.

Benoit doesn’t like the bot’s answer. He flags it as inaccurate. Within seconds, a ticket appears in Linear. Somewhere behind the scenes, an agent picks it up, edits the bot’s knowledge and skills, checks its work against an evaluation dataset, and pushes the fix straight to production. No pull request. No code review. Benoit never opens an editor.

In this episode of Build with AI, Tanguy Goretti, CTO at Hexa, sits down with Benoit Pothier, CTO and co-founder of Rose, to trace exactly how that loop works, from a bad answer flagged by a user to a production deploy, with no engineer in between.

Rose is a suite of AI agents born out of Hexa. Instead of a static chatbot, it holds a conversation with visitors, works out who they are, and hands qualified leads off for nurturing and sales outreach. Benoit and his team describe it as an “agent factory”, because the harder problem isn’t answering one visitor’s question, it’s keeping hundreds of these agents accurate as they run.

The harness: agentic, but on the clock

Rose’s core isn’t a simple RAG lookup, it’s a two-phase agentic harness built around one hard constraint: nobody waits minutes for a website chatbot to answer. The first phase pulls in context, screens for spam, and selects the skills and knowledge the response will need. The second phase generates the actual reply. The whole thing is built to land somewhere between 2 and 6 seconds, depending on how complex the question is and how the underlying model providers are performing that day.

“It’s a real agentic behavior, with a very intelligent system - not just going to fetch a basic RAG.” — Benoit Pothier

Structured knowledge beats loose chunks

Feeding that harness is what Rose calls the context engine. It ingests everything a client hands over (a scraped website, sales decks, even transcripts of calls between a rep and a prospect) material that’s often incomplete or flatly contradictory. Rose curates it, then builds two things from it: a standard vector store of chunks, and a graph of entities and relationships (clients, for instance, each represented as their own node).

The graph is what makes a question like “who are your clients” reliable. Pure chunk retrieval struggles with that kind of query, it’s built to find text that’s semantically close to the question, not to guarantee completeness. Querying the graph directly for the “client” entity type does.

“Much more deterministic than a vector search.” — Benoit Pothier, on why the graph handles these queries better than chunks alone

200 skills, kept on a leash

Rose currently runs about 200 skills (pricing guidance, competitor-comparison behavior, gated-content rules, and more) some shared across clients, some specific to one. An LLM selects which skills apply to a given conversation, but that selection is bounded by a rule engine, not left to free reasoning.

That’s a deliberate choice, and one Benoit pushed back on when Tanguy raised a comment attributed to Claude Code’s creator: that with more capable models like Opus 5, teams should delete their skills and let the model figure things out. Benoit’s answer was that newer models are more capable, but they explore more turns to get there, and Rose has to land an answer in one turn to hit its speed target. So instead of letting the agent reason its way to a plan, the system tells it what to do.

“We’re not leaving the agent to work out how it’s going to do it. We tell it what to do.” — Benoit Pothier

From a flagged answer to a Linear ticket

Back in the demo: Benoit opens Rose’s backoffice, finds the Cactus Inbound conversation where the bot dodged the cocktail question, and flags it as “not accurate,” noting what the bot should have said instead. That single action creates a ticket in Linear automatically.

The fix redeploys itself — after clearing the evals

An agent picks up that ticket, edits the relevant knowledge, skills, or code, and reruns the fix against Rose’s evaluation datasets, some scoped per client, some global, some built around a specific feature like the initial conversation classifier. If the fix clears its evals, it redeploys to production on its own. Rose closes roughly 20 tickets a week this way.

A second loop: catching problems before anyone complains

A separate loop watches the system itself rather than waiting on user complaints. An instrumentation layer (Grafana-style dashboards and alerts) tracks metrics like response latency; if the slowest 10% of requests cross 15 seconds, it fires an alert an agent can investigate, with access to the relevant client’s database and logs to diagnose, and sometimes reproduce, the problem. Not every alert needs a fix: Benoit described one case that traced back to a model provider having a bad day, where the right call was to do nothing. A human still checks the diagnosis before anything changes.

Takeaways

Constrain the agent, don’t just prompt it. Rose’s speed and consistency come from a rule engine that bounds what the LLM can choose, at both the skill-selection and response-generation stages.

Structured retrieval beats bigger context for factual reliability. For “how many clients do you have”-style questions, an entity graph gives a complete, deterministic answer that pure vector search can’t guarantee.

Every automated fix earns its way to production through the same eval gate a human would use. The agent that resolves a ticket doesn’t get to skip the check that would catch a regression.

Evals are what make autonomy safe, not optional. As the system does more on its own, the bar isn’t “trust the agent”, it’s “trust the evals that gate what the agent is allowed to ship.”

The bottom line

The interesting part of Rose isn’t the chatbot a visitor talks to, it’s the layer of agents working underneath it, watching for bad answers and infrastructure anomalies, and closing the loop without waiting for an engineer to pick up the ticket. That only works because every automated change, whether triggered by a user complaint or a latency alert, has to clear an evaluation gate before it ships.

It’s also a quiet rebuttal to a narrative going around as models get more capable: that skills, rules, and evals become training wheels you can take off. Benoit’s read is closer to the opposite: the more autonomy you hand an agent, the more precisely you need to define what “correct” means and verify against it, especially when the constraint isn’t intelligence but speed. Rose’s next step is teaching a supervision layer to optimize its agents toward business outcomes like conversion rate, not just correctness - while trusting the same eval discipline to keep it safe to deploy without a human re-checking every change.

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Jaigu set out to build a product-analytics layer for LLMs. Five years at Amplitude had taught him that you can’t improve what you don’t measure.

What he actually built, almost by accident, was an AI gateway: the routing and auth layer he and his co-founder needed just to ship their real product, and one they’d sunk hundreds of unpaid hours into before realizing anyone else needed it too.

What follows is a story about the discipline to notice when your own workaround has quietly become worth more than your pitch.

🎧 Full episode below.

1) The problem hiding behind a feature request

Thibault Jaigu spent five years at Amplitude, helping digital-native companies measure retention and engagement. It was analytical work, the kind that trains you to ask “how do we know this is actually working?” about everything you ship.

When GPT-3 landed, he asked the same question about language models. Companies were shipping AI features with no real way to tell if the answers were any good. His idea: a product-analytics layer for LLMs, labeling every prompt and response so teams could track coherence and quality over time.

“Why isn’t there a product analytics tool for LLMs over time?”

2) Fifteen conversations before a single dollar

Jaigu and a close friend spent weeks testing the idea before either of them quit their jobs. They talked to roughly fifteen companies that had already shipped some form of AI, mostly in customer support, and asked how they were judging output quality.

The answer, over and over, was: badly.

“They really didn’t have good ways to evaluate how the AI performed.”

That was enough to validate the problem. It wasn’t enough to get paid. When they finally quit, in September 2023, they had zero paying customers and zero revenue.

3) The whiteboard that told them what business they were actually in

The two of them raised a modest £400,000 pre-seed from angels they already knew (Amplitude’s former first engineer, a couple of ex-COOs) enough runway to build and test without panicking. They brought in a third co-founder, Daniel, whose enterprise background at Palo Alto Networks would matter later.

To actually deliver the analytics product, they had to build real infrastructure: a labeling pipeline, GPUs, data residency in both the EU and the US. Somewhere inside that build-out, without really planning to, they built their own AI gateway — pure internal plumbing to make the real product work.

Months later, they sat down and counted the hours. Literally: tickets logged, hours tallied, on a whiteboard.

“We’d spent hundreds of hours on this ourselves. That’s a real problem.”

The analytics layer they were trying to sell wasn’t the real problem. The gateway they’d built to support it was.

4) Finding out everyone else had the same problem

Around the same time, tool-calling got good enough that demand for their evals product started to evaporate - once an agent could take a concrete action (open a ticket, issue a refund), teams cared less about scoring the raw text of a response. Jaigu and Daniel started talking to more startups to figure out what they actually needed, and heard the same complaints on repeat: rate limits, models unavailable in the wrong region, config chaos wiring up a dozen different provider APIs.

Requesty had already solved all of that internally.

They found their first real traction inside the open-source dev-tool ecosystem '(Cline, Roo, the AI SDK, Mastra) plugging in as a default model provider alongside OpenRouter and the model vendors themselves.

“It’s much nicer to have one API key for two hundred models.”

5) Nice to have vs. must have

The distinction that reshaped the company was almost embarrassingly simple. The evals product was useful, but skippable - a nice to have. A gateway wasn’t.

“If you want to connect your app, you always need a gateway.”

Any team wiring an application to an AI provider needs some kind of routing and auth layer in between. Requesty had already built one, for itself, without setting out to.

They gave themselves one month to turn that internal tool into a public product.

6) The pivot that cost them a co-founder

The one-month deadline came at a cost. One of the three original co-founders, not drawn to the new, dev-facing direction, left for a strong offer elsewhere - while the company was still tiny, with no traction yet on the new idea.

Jaigu and Daniel rebuilt with two. The new version shipped publicly in December 2024. The first month brought in sixteen to twenty accounts, mostly individuals and small teams, with no real distinction yet between a solo developer and an enterprise account. By January, growth had turned a corner.

The business model was simple by design: take roughly 5% of a customer’s AI API spend routed through Requesty, and separately mark up the inference Requesty resells wholesale to most of its clients - margin on both sides of the transaction.

7) Two founders, two playbooks, one differentiator

Jaigu had spent years in enterprise sales; Daniel came from an enterprise background at Palo Alto Networks. That combination shaped the go-to-market early: win individual developers first through the open-source ecosystem, but build toward enterprise governance from day one - letting a company control where its models run, how they’re used, and under what budget.

“We had a lot of enterprise knowledge, and that became our differentiator.”

It paid off fastest in Europe. Many of Requesty’s earliest individual users turned out to be developers at large companies, who wanted their own side projects hosted with zero data retention in the EU - even on a personal account. That governance layer, built for individual peace of mind, became the same thing enterprises would later pay for at scale.

8) The deal that almost didn’t happen

Requesty’s biggest enterprise win followed exactly the land-and-expand pattern their dev-first strategy was built for: one engineer at ZoomInfo, a 1,300-person engineering org, started using Requesty on the side, liked it, and told his boss. That turned into a formal evaluation against serious, well-funded competition - Cloudflare and Databricks.

Jaigu and Daniel spent the three-week evaluation window shipping seventeen new features the client had asked for, barely sleeping.

They won it. Around the same point, Requesty had crossed roughly seven figures in annual revenue from developers and startups alone, and closed a $3 million seed round led by 20VC and Tapestry VC.

The takeaway

Requesty’s story isn’t really about spotting a market before anyone else. Plenty of people saw the AI-gateway opportunity - OpenRouter got there first, grew faster, and was acquired by Stripe for more than $7 billion in August 2026, a constant, slightly uncomfortable point of comparison for Jaigu’s team the whole way through.

What Requesty had, harder to copy, was the discipline to notice when their own workaround was worth more than their pitch. They didn’t find the gateway idea in a market report. They found it in their own ticket backlog, on a whiteboard, counting hours they’d already spent solving a problem they hadn’t thought to sell.

Most founders build the thing they set out to build. The more interesting version of this story is a team willing to throw that thing away, once the data made it obvious the byproduct was the business.

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In true Parisian style, la rentrée has fully kicked in and the Hexa office is buzzing with energy again. The news of the week has everyone talking: Hugging Face’s acquisition by Nvidia for $12.9B.

Join us in congratulating Clem Delangue, a Hexa alumnus who built the marketing and growth department at Mention, a company we backed when we were still called eFounders. Years later Thibaud Elzière and Partner Matthieu Vaxelaire, then CEO of Mention, came in as angels on Hugging Face’s first round. As Clem put it: “They really helped me get off the ground with our first round of funding.”

That’s what being in the Hexa network actually brings: believers who are in your corner from the early days, when you need them most.

Welcome to Hexa, Guerric & Thibault!

Guerric de Crombrugghe recently joined as Partner to build hardware startups solving problems in defense and energy. He holds a PhD in plasma aerospace engineering, and he’s already building a water logistics solution for military deployments and satellite ground infrastructure.

We’ve also welcomed Thibault Chassagne to Hexa Scale as Partner this summer. He co-founded Virtuo, the digital car-rental startup backed by Balderton.

Call for Founders

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗫

Our co-founder Thibaud Elzière and Partner Matthieu Vaxelaire are looking for founders to launch 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗫, the hardware and software infrastructure to capture physical conversations and turn them into usable context for teams and AI agents.

Reach out if you’re ready to build your next venture, or know a technical founder who’s a strong fit.

TokenX

Partner Matthieu Vaxelaire wants to team up with a technical co-founder ready to join him in SF to build an AI coach that reads what each employee actually does with AI tools (not self-reported surveys) and teaches them what their own company’s top performers already do.

Get in touch with Matthieu directly, or send along entrepreneurial talent from your network.

Portfolio news

Upflow (HX18), the Financial Relationship Management (FRM) platform for B2B finance teams, launched a new brand and a new category. Co-founder and CEO Alex Louisy also published The Cash Collection Book

Catch up on what’s been announced during the summer

Waniwani (HX26) raises $8M seed

Founded by Robin Diligent, Maxime Antoine, and Luiza Gusmao, Waniwani is the Revenue infrastructure for the age of AI buyers The San Francisco startup raised an $8M seed round, led by Seedcamp, with participation from Redstone, Zone II Ventures and Plug & Play.

Panora (HX25) raises $5M seed

Founded by Diane du Paty and Fabian Langlet, Panora is an AI operating system for insurance brokers. The Paris-based closed $5 million in seed funding led by Isai, with additional support from Kima Ventures, 100in, 199 Ventures and the founders of Pennylane.

Yousign becomes Youtrust

Yousign, a Hexa Scale portfolio company, has rebranded to Youtrust to reflect its evolution into a complete digital trust platform. Hexa (then eFounders) first backed founders Luc Pallavidino and Antoine Louiset in 2019.

Verso (HX26) on OpenAI’s Paris main stage

Verso (HX26) took the main stage at OpenAI‘s Paris event in June. Co-founder and CEO Lydia Bellahouel presented Verso as a company that never sleeps. The proof point: over 50 studies delivered in three months (roughly one every two days) for 30+ clients including Fortune 500 and CAC40 names, run by a team of four, versus the six weeks a traditional agency study typically takes.

PMF Collector with Vincent Bryant, Co-founder and CEO of Deepki

Thirty clients, self-funded, in 18 months, building custom mini-apps for each one instead of a real product. It worked until it didn’t. Vincent Bryant and his team at Deepki hit a wall on maintainability before they even raised a euro. In this episode of PMF Collector, hosted by Mat Vaxelaire, the Deepki co-founder and CEO explains why he stopped chasing the whole market and focused only on the 5-10% who already felt the urgency, what pushed him to finally raise and rebuild the product from scratch, and which early bets (international expansion, one-off client deals) he’d take back. “We weren’t selling urgency. We were finding the people who already felt it.”

Also tune into the previous episode featuring Jon Anguelov (Aircall)

Build with AI feat. Camille Epitalon, Co-founder and CTO of Verso (HX26)

Camille opens his terminal each morning to eight pull requests already created, reviewed, and pre-approved while he slept. In this episode of Build with AI, hosted by Tanguy Goretti (CTO at Hexa), Camille Epitalon, co-founder and CTO of Verso, breaks down the setup behind it: Claude Code and Codex reviewing each other’s work, three external AI reviewers on every PR, and one hard rule for his agents, no one-way-door decisions without him. Camille built Verso’s entire technical side solo in three months and now counts over twenty paying enterprise clients. “Vibe coding is the worst name for this practice. It’s real engineering work.”

72 hours in Ukraine with defense startups

Our Partner Guillaume Lerouge, former team member Emma Caillat, and Lancelot Convert, co-founder and CEO of Rhizome Labs (HX25) traveled to Kyiv and Lviv earlier this year to see firsthand how Ukraine’s defense sector is innovating under extreme pressure. The country now counts 1,000+ defense companies, some past $100M in revenue. Drones can be jammed and obsolete within two months, compared to 20–30 years for a tank. The army even runs its own marketplace, ranking systems by real battlefield performance. It’s a sobering look at what wartime necessity has forced into being, and what it means for defense innovation in Europe.

Feet on the Ground, Head in the Stars by Thibaud Elzière

Our co-founder Thibaud Elzière‘s story doesn’t follow a straight line. In his new book, Feet on the Ground, Head in the Stars (Iconic Edition, out June 9), he shares the failures and the wins behind twenty years of building: selling Fotolia to Adobe for $800M, co-founding Hexa and launching three unicorns, investing in 300+ startups, and chasing side bets in microcars, solar sails, and hospitality with his brother Robin. Along the way, he lays out his methods and his case for a bold, distinctly European kind of entrepreneurship.

Grab your copy

Opportunities & Community

Careers

Hexa | Chief of Staff - Hardware Projects (Brussels or Paris)

Pelagon | AI Applied Researcher (Paris)

Verso | Founding Sales (Paris)

Join our network of exceptional talent

Community Events

Paris Hardware Meetup

Our new Partner Guerric de Crombrugghe is hosting the Paris Hardware Meetup at our space on September 8.

Sign up

Storytime by Hexa

Join us on September 30 for an evening event focused on content and founder-led growth, with Guillaume Moubeche, founder of lempire.

Register

Thanks for reading! Follow us on Linkedin and Instagram to stay up to date between issues.

Cheers,

The Hexa Team

1) A market everyone hated, and nobody had fixed

Simo Lemhandez wasn’t a CRM person. He’d just finished an entrepreneurship master’s and was doing Le Wagon when a stranger named Thibaud gave a pitch that stuck with him. Thibaud wanted to go after “the king of SaaS” — Salesforce — using the design language of the tools everyone actually loved using: Notion, Airtable, Figma.

The category looked terrifying on paper. Salesforce alone commands roughly $200 billion in value. But that scale cuts both ways.

“We capture 1% of Salesforce, that’s already $2 billion of market capture.”

The market was massive, satisfaction with incumbents was low, and the competitive set — a handful of dominant players — was thin relative to the size of the prize.

2) Proving the idea before building anything

Before writing a line of code, Simo and Thibaud built a landing page. Just a page describing the CRM they imagined, with no product behind it. They put it on Twitter and LinkedIn to see how the market would react.

In a matter of days, over 7,000 people joined the waitlist. Some wrote long, detailed messages explaining exactly what they hated about their current CRM.

That flood of unsolicited detail became the foundation for everything that followed — a way to formalize their vision before spending a single engineering hour on it.

3) The DM that made it real

The founding story has no dramatic dinner scene. It has a Twitter DM. Simo reached out to Thibaud after the pitch, they grabbed a coffee, and it clicked immediately — a shared vocabulary, a shared read on where software was headed.

They started working together informally, with nothing written down. Months in, momentum built on its own. As Simo put it, they put a finger in the gears and got pulled along.

“We put a finger in the gears, and we were off.”

4) Choosing a wedge instead of the whole category

Rebuilding a CRM from scratch, on a mature market with entrenched expectations, is close to impossible without an enormous feature list. Simo calls this the “email client syndrome” — everyone has opinions about Gmail, but ship a version without Forward and nobody will touch it.

So instead of attacking the whole category, they picked one narrow, real pain point: building contact lists. Salespeople were doing this by hand in spreadsheets. Folk shipped a free Chrome extension that pulled contacts from LinkedIn in one click.

They deliberately kept the extension’s output inside Folk rather than letting it push contacts into competing CRMs — even though that could have been a growth channel on its own, because users loved the extension enough that it became a genuine differentiator pulling people toward the full product.

5) Eighteen months with no revenue, on purpose

For a year and a half, Folk didn’t charge anyone. Access to the waitlist was doled out cohort by cohort, and the team tracked usage and engagement obsessively — weekly and monthly frequency, retention, satisfaction — waiting for a level of “lovability” that would justify asking people to pay.

“The customers vote with their money.”

Five-star reviews and friendly feedback weren’t the bar. The bar was whether a team found the product indispensable enough to pay for it long-term. Monetization only started once usage data — not a roadmap milestone — said it was time.

6) From hand-sent Stripe links to a real pricing model

Folk’s first payments were completely improvised: Stripe payment links generated one by one and emailed to individual customers. There was no billing system, no fixed pricing rule — just a Slack channel where every incoming payment got showered in emojis.

From there, pricing and packaging were built through direct confrontation with customers rather than a pre-built plan. Average deal size started around $200 a year for solo users. As Folk layered in collaboration features for bigger teams, average contract value climbed — while the team fought to keep the product simple enough that a two-person team could still find their footing in it. Growth wasn’t purely linear either: distinct product launches, like the API and a WhatsApp integration, created visible step-changes in the revenue curve.

7) Two people who spoke the same language

Simo brought no CRM expertise to the table — Thibaud brought the ambition and the origin inside eFounders, the startup studio. What they shared was a read on how software should feel, shaped by tools like Notion and Figma rather than legacy enterprise software.

That complementary setup extended into how they raised capital. Their first round came from Accel once usage metrics looked credible; the second, once growth toward $1M ARR was visible, came from Neo.com — backer of Motion, Cursor, and Ramp — alongside over 100 angel investors chosen specifically to fill expertise gaps the founders knew they’d hit.

8) The market they under-served: their own backyard

Folk sold into the US from day one — it’s been the company’s biggest market since the start — but ran the entire go-to-market from France, Spain, and Italian time zones for six years before hiring its first US-based team member.

Simo is candid that this was a missed opportunity to move faster. He now spends recurring multi-week stretches in San Francisco and encourages other founders to do the same — not to relocate necessarily, but to build a real network there, meet investors on the ground, and treat the company as an American company from the outset.

The takeaway

Folk’s path to $1M ARR wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t linear — it was disciplined about sequencing. Validate demand before building. Pick one narrow wedge before attacking a whole category. Let usage data, not a calendar, decide when to charge.

The channels that compounded weren’t the ones that looked scalable on a slide — they were word of mouth, which still drives 60% of signups, and an affiliate network that now touches 2,000 partners and 15–20% of ARR. Nothing about that required an outbound team.

What’s easy to miss in a story this orderly is how much patience it demanded: eighteen months of silence, a pricing model built one Stripe link at a time, and a market — the US — that the founders under-invested in simply because they were somewhere else. Discipline early, distribution second, presence last. That’s often the order that works.

“We built something incredible. And then we realized it was worth nothing to sell.” That’s how Ben Lasseri, founder of Plato, sums up the strangest side-project of his career.

In this episode of Build with AI, Victor Gross (Lead PM at Hexa) sits down with Ben Lasseri, founder of Plato, an AI copilot for litigation lawyers launched by Hexa just a couple of months ago. Plato’s first vertical is personal injury law (dommage corporel) in France. But the episode isn’t really about Plato, it’s about Plato JP, a jurisprudence search tool the team built on the side, in one week, without a single developer touching it.

The market nobody built for

Litigation lawyers who defend personal injury victims have one recurring problem: putting a number on compensation. French law breaks damages into roughly thirty separate categories (pain and suffering, loss of income, third-party assistance, and so on) and each one needs a defensible amount, usually anchored in precedent.

The existing legal-research tools, Doctrine, LexisNexis, Dalloz, are excellent at helping lawyers find a specific case. None of them are built to answer a statistical question: what have judges actually awarded, on average, for this specific type of injury? Nobody had built the numbers layer. The market was small too, around 2,000 personal-injury specialists in France, small enough that the big legal publishers had never bothered.

One week, Friday to Friday

Ben’s team decided to build that missing layer themselves, entirely with Claude Code, entirely outside their core product roadmap.

“We told ourselves we wouldn’t bring in a single developer. My CTO’s first reaction was: in two weeks they’re going to build me a rotten house of cards, and I’ll have to come clean up their code.”

The build ran in two phases. Week one: a working MVP, delivered Friday noon to Friday noon, with the team finishing at 1 or 2am most nights. Week two: polish, based on early user feedback, to make the product presentable to a notoriously demanding audience: lawyers.

The heaviest lift wasn’t the interface. It was the data. France’s court decisions are available as open data, but scattered across different formats and APIs for judicial versus administrative courts. Claude Code built a 12-step processing pipeline that scanned roughly 600,000 decisions and kept 80,000 clean enough to be useful.

“Two years ago, this would have taken a data scientist one or two months. It took us two days.”

The numbers that surprised even Ben

The tool launched quietly. It didn’t stay quiet for long.

Close to 1,000 lawyers requested access, roughly half of the entire French personal-injury bar. Around 500 signed up. Every week, about 150 log back in to search decisions. For a free side-project built in two weeks by a three-month-old startup nobody had heard of, that’s an unusually large chunk of a niche market showing up almost immediately.

The search and conversational layer runs on Algolia, still on the free tier, zero euros spent, plugged directly into an AI agent. It let a tiny team ship a search experience comparable to publishers who’ve worked the jurisprudence market for fifteen years.

“It’s worth nothing to sell”

Here’s the twist Ben is unusually candid about: Plato JP is a genuinely good tool, and it can’t be monetized.

“We understood we’d created something incredible. And that it was worth nothing. Any team could rebuild this in three weeks, a month. There’s no barrier to entry left.”

That’s not false modesty, it’s a structural read of what AI has done to software. The value used to live in the code: scraping government data, building search infrastructure, wiring up an agent. Today, a competitor with Claude Code and a weekend can replicate most of that. So Plato JP was never built to be sold. It was built to be given away, as a lead magnet and a product-discovery instrument, feeding Plato’s real, paid, RGPD-compliant product.

Turning credits into a sales pipeline

The business model reflects that logic directly. Users get 50 free credits, roughly 8 to 10 prompts a day. Once they run out, they’re prompted to book a call, where Ben pitches them the actual Plato product.

“Before, you’d write: ‘I’d love to show you our product.’ Now you give value first, for free, to the people who are your future customers.”

It’s a freemium play that would have been far more expensive to run before AI made shipping free software this cheap. And it doubles as market research: the team studied 200 to 300 users over three weeks, learning exactly how lawyers consume jurisprudence, insight that will shape Plato’s real jurisprudence feature down the line.

A media arm nobody had to hire for

An unplanned side effect: Plato JP produces weekly editorial content, also written with Claude. One piece analyzed gender bias in compensation awards and found that, across French jurisdictions, women are systematically awarded less than men for comparable injuries.

“This kind of editorial work used to take weeks. Today, it takes me two hours a week.”

Ben is quick to flag the catch: that barrier just dropped for everyone, competitors included. Proprietary-looking data and editorial output are no longer a moat by themselves, they’re a temporary edge that has to be reinvested constantly.

A house of cards, on purpose

Ben doesn’t oversell what he built. Plato JP will never become a Doctrine, he says flatly, it lacks the foundational data structuring, search architecture, and security work needed to serve hundreds of thousands of users.

“What you vibe-code lets you build a house of cards. Today’s house of cards is ten times bigger than what we could build six months ago. In two years, it’ll be ten times bigger again. But it’s still a house of cards.”

That’s a feature, not a bug, in his framing. The tool is a means, not an end, a “variable” in Plato’s go-to-market strategy. The day it costs more than it brings in, or the day the real product absorbs jurisprudence search natively, it gets deleted.

The bottom line

Plato JP is a small story with a large implication: when code stops being scarce, disposable products become a legitimate strategy, not a shortcut. Ben’s team didn’t try to build a moat with Plato JP. They built a two-week, zero-revenue tool, used it to learn their market and fill their pipeline, and stayed ready to throw it away the moment it stopped earning its place.

The lesson generalizes well beyond legaltech: as AI collapses the cost of shipping software, defensibility moves elsewhere, into proprietary data, network effects, or problems too specialized to be worth anyone else’s weekend. Everything else becomes a card in a stack you’re willing to knock down.

1) The insight was structural, not opportunistic

Real estate is the world’s biggest contributor to CO₂ emissions. That’s not a new fact. What was different about Vincent Bryant and his co-founder Emmanuel was how they saw it.

They weren’t building another consultancy or planning to push another energy audit report. They believed the data already existed (scattered across public databases, utility bills, regulatory filings) and that the right technology could turn it into decisions.

The idea didn’t come from a lab. It came from years inside companies like ENGIE’s subsidiaries and Carbone 4, watching the same problem repeat itself with no good answer in sight.

“We were both engineers. We could see how much data was available. And we couldn’t understand why nobody was using it.”

That shared frustration became the foundation.

2) They spent a year testing before jumping

Vincent and Emmanuel spent a full year exploring the idea - while still employed. They used Vincent’s auto-entrepreneurship structure to run small consulting jobs on the side and took vacation days to visit a prospect in Toulouse: a LED lighting reseller who needed to know which industrial buildings were the best targets for his product.

Deeepki crunched the public data, ran the algorithms, and delivered a ranked list. The client was happy.

On the train back, something clicked.

“I told Emmanuel: let’s go. We probably don’t have enough proof yet. But let’s do it.”

Emmanuel’s answer: “Let’s have dinner with our wives first.”

3) The dinner that made it real

Before quitting their jobs, both founders sat down with their partners for dinner. Only after walking out of that dinner did they truly commit.

It’s not a trivial ritual. Starting a company is a family decision. It changes income, weekends, mental load, and the whole fabric of daily life. Neither of them had done this before.

“We needed the sign-off from our Chief Family Officer.”

4) First priority: clients, not product

From day one, their focus wasn’t on software. It was on customers. They had a clear vision of what they wanted to build (a data platform for real estate) but wanted to build it in response to real problems, not assumptions.

First clients came through warm introductions from former employers: Carbone 4, ENGIE subsidiaries. The first fully external client was Picard, found at a real estate trade show: 1,000 stores, €20M in annual energy bills, and a need to identify which buildings to instrument first.

“We helped them identify the barycenters, the most statistically representative stores. That was our first real mission.”

5) No regulatory tailwind. No obvious ICP. Just hustle.

The EU taxonomy didn’t exist. The Décret Tertiaire hadn’t been passed. Real estate owners would say: “Energy? The tenants pay that. Not our problem.”

The companies that bought early were the ones who had already decided to care, for reputation, for tenant retention, for cost savings. Deepki’s job was to find the 5-10% of the market that had already felt the urgency.

“We weren’t selling urgency. We were finding the people who already felt it.”

Thirty clients, averaging €20-30k per year, in 18 months. Entirely self-funded.

6) Fifty apps, then a real product

The early version of Deepki wasn’t a SaaS platform. It was a constellation of mini-applications, each built for a specific client, running on R Project analytics and custom ETL pipelines. It worked, until it didn’t.

“We hit the ceiling on maintainability. And we could also see what all these use cases had in common.”

In 2016, 18 months after launch, they raised €2.5M from Demeter and High-Inov to hire a CTO and rebuild on a unified, scalable infrastructure.

7) The co-founder relationship was managed like a product

Vincent and Emmanuel brought in coaches from the very beginning, not to address a crisis, but to preempt one.

“Three quarters of companies fail within five years for financial reasons. And the same proportion fail because founders couldn’t get along. We didn’t want to fall into those traps.”

They still do it today, now extended to the full executive team.

8) What they’d do differently

Some client engagements were taken just for revenue, pulling the product too far from its core. Some partnerships didn’t deliver. They went international too early and not carefully enough.

“There were things I would have avoided. But I also think we were right to go all in.”

The takeaway

Deeepki’s story doesn’t follow the startup playbook. No viral launch. No obvious market pull. No regulatory wave pushing them forward.

What they had was a structural insight, a disciplined approach to building around real customer problems, and a co-founder relationship they treated as seriously as the product itself.

Thirty clients. One million in ARR. Self-funded. Then a raise. Then a proper SaaS. Then the regulation caught up and the market they’d been building for finally arrived in force.

“At 400 people, we’re less agile than when we were two. But we have far more impact.”

1) The structural problem that no one had bothered to solve

In 2013, Thibault Lauzeral was trying to set up a phone system at Fotolia. What he found was a landscape of expensive, legacy, on-premise hardware, completely disconnected from the SaaS tools the business already ran on. Nobody had built a cloud-based business phone system that integrated natively with CRMs and help desks.

The idea that came out of this experience was narrow and concrete: let companies spin up a call center anywhere in the world, in minutes, connected to the tools they already use. Not another telecom. A software product that sat on top of existing telecom infrastructure.

This framing (software, not telco) would turn out to be one of the most consequential decisions Aircall ever made. Years later, Jonathan reflected: “If we had positioned ourselves as a telco, our valuation would be terrible. By staying pure software, we built something completely different.”

“We decided from day one: we are not a telco. We are software. And history proved us right.”

2) The months before launch: a free MVP and a founding disagreement

The first version of Aircall was free and stripped down to almost nothing: you could receive calls. No outbound. You got a phone number, a basic greeting message, and hours of operation. That was it.

Within a month and a half, they had about a hundred users, mostly small businesses that wanted a professional-looking phone presence without a landline. The team watched how people used it, then added outbound calling.

Then came the first real test of the founding team: should they charge? Jonathan pushed back. The product felt too immature. His co-founder Olivier disagreed. They switched to paid. Fifty percent of free users churned immediately.

Jonathan now describes that moment as one of the most valuable early lessons. The half who stayed had a genuine problem to solve. Their feedback was actionable in a way that free users’ never was. “When people pay, what they tell you actually means something. Free users can say anything.”

“Once people pay, their feedback is real. Free users can tell you anything. You have no idea if it actually matters.”

3) The human moment: selling on Skype, scrapping the Web Summit

Before there were sales processes, there was Jonathan doing demos on Skype, sharing his personal account ID with prospects and hoping they’d connect. This was 2014. Zoom barely existed.

For lead generation, he scraped the full attendee list of Web Summit: 3,000 names, companies, and guessed email addresses constructed as firstname@companyurl.com. He emailed all of them, claiming to have met them at the event. Some replied.

He also built prospect lists by scraping every website in France and Europe that displayed a phone number (indicated by a “+” in the HTML). If they had a number, they were a potential customer. “We had tens of thousands of prospects this way. It was completely artisanal, but it worked.”

Alone, he reached €10K MRR. Then two interns joined. Then came the TechCrunch article following their first fundraise of €900K, and 20 new sign-ups appeared overnight.

“I emailed 3,000 people from the Web Summit pretending I’d spoken to them. Some responded. That’s how we got our first customers.”

4) First clients: what those early deals actually looked like

Early Aircall contracts were priced at €20/month for three users. That’s €6.66 per seat. Closing ten companies in a week meant €200 in new MRR.

The economics were painful but revealing. The customers who stayed at that price had a real need. The company’s ICP at this stage was clear: startups and SMBs who wanted a professional phone system without the friction of traditional telco. Companies that already had a number on their website but nothing real behind it.

Jonathan’s sales motion was relentless outbound: cold email, “warm calling” (which meant the prospect had received at least two emails before being called), and constant iteration on messaging. He describes it as “cambouille”: getting your hands dirty, grinding through the work no one else wants to do.

One of his most counterintuitive findings from this period: most of his “inbound” leads were actually outbound-seeded. Prospects who had received his cold emails but never responded would show up later as self-serve sign-ups. The outbound created awareness; the conversion happened silently.

“70% of what I thought was inbound was actually people who had received a cold email weeks earlier and signed up on their own.”

5) Why people bought before the product was obviously good

For four years (from 2014 to 2018), Aircall’s voice quality was poor. NPS was around -60. Customers would tell prospects it didn’t work. Jonathan openly walked into sales meetings knowing the word-of-mouth was negative.

And yet they closed deals. Revenue grew from €1M to €3M to €9M to €18M ARR, year over year.

Three things made this possible. First, the market was pulling: nobody had a better cloud-based alternative. The timing was exceptional. “The market carried us. Like saying Anthropic isn’t carried by AI. It’s the same thing.”

Second, the product’s value proposition was genuinely compelling even when the voice quality dropped. What Aircall could do (spin up a multi-user call center anywhere, integrated with Zendesk and Salesforce) was new enough that customers tolerated the frustration.

Third, and most surprisingly, the customer success team. Jonathan describes clients who wanted to leave but stayed because of how Aircall’s team treated them. “We had clients say: ‘I want to leave, but your customer success team treats us like family. They roll up their sleeves and fix things.’ That team saved us.”

“Customers told us: ‘I hate you as much as I love you. I want to leave but I can’t. Your product does things nothing else does.’”

6) The product evolution: from broken voice to the integration layer

The moment Aircall became a different company was in San Francisco, in the summer of 2015, during their 500 Startups cohort. US customers were asking for something French customers hadn’t pushed for yet: native integrations with their CRM and helpdesk tools.

In France, the SaaS ecosystem was still catching up. In the US, Zendesk was exploding. Salesforce was everywhere. Customers wanted a phone call to automatically log into the contact record. They wanted call outcomes to sync with their pipeline.

Aircall built the integration layer. Partners (Zendesk resellers, Salesforce consultants) started recommending Aircall to their customers. The company went from €10K to €50K MRR in four months, ending the year at €60K MRR.

Jonathan remembers closing that year’s target at 8pm on December 31st. “We hit exactly what we said we’d hit. That created something in the team: when we say we’ll do something, we do it.”

“In the US, we realized the product was missing its real layer: integrations. That was the unlock.”

7) The founding team dynamic: roles, equity, and the tractor tattoo

Four co-founders, clearly separated roles from day one. Olivier handled product and finance. Pierre-Baptiste did backend. Xavier did frontend. Jonathan owned revenue: go-to-market, sales, everything commercial.

The clearest expression of the founding team’s culture came in 2016, during a particularly dark stretch. The product wasn’t working. They went to get a kebab from the corner shop, came back, and made a pact: if the company ever reached €100M valuation, they’d all get a tractor tattoo.

The tractor had started as an emoji. A departing intern had signed off with a 🚜 in a Slack message, and Jonathan had felt something. “We’re not a rocket. A rocket hits its target once every ten tries. We’re tractors. We till the ground, we do the work, we get there.”

By 2018, the company hit €100M. They went to Corsica and found a tattoo parlor. Jonathan (who hates tattoos) spoke Bulgarian to the Corsican tattooist and asked him to dilute the ink. He got it on his hip, where no one would see it. Olivier got a tractor the size of a fist on his ankle.

“On se tatoue un tracteur. We are not a rocket. Rockets hit their target one time in ten. We till the ground.”

8) What he’d do differently: sell yourself, ignore the noise

Jonathan’s most direct advice: founders who refuse to sell are making a self-destructive choice. He watched too many CEOs delegate sales to avoid looking like a small company. He did it himself at his next venture, Offstone, and caught himself in the mistake in real time.

His second piece of advice: ignore geographic constraints. Aircall built its first €30K of MRR without leaving Paris. The US expansion accelerated things, but wasn’t the cause of product-market fit. “You can be in Clermont-Ferrand, build a team, prove it works, generate revenue. Geography is in your head.”

He’s also skeptical of the pressure to grow fast. Aircall’s path from 0 to €1M ARR took two years. “Don’t tell yourself your company is bad because someone else did 0-to-1M in three months. Focus on your product and your commercial execution.”

On the question of overwork: Jonathan is honest that Aircall ran seven days a week for years. But he’s careful not to present that as the secret. “Working more makes you better faster. But I don’t think success requires 24/7 grind. What it requires is resilience: showing up every day for years, even when you’re not sure it’s going to work.”

“C’est pas le meilleur produit qui gagne, c’est malheureusement le meilleur vendeur. The best seller wins, not the best product.”

The takeaway

Aircall’s 0-to-1M story is not a story about product excellence. It’s a story about what happens when you combine an anomalous market window, a sales culture built from scratch, and a founding team that treated customers like family even when the product let them down.

The NPS of -60 for four years is the detail that most founders skip over, because it’s uncomfortable. It forces the question: what actually drives early revenue? The answer from Aircall is blunt: timing, relentless outbound, the right integrations at the right moment, and a customer success team that made clients feel too taken care of to leave.

What Jonathan calls “being a tractor” isn’t just a metaphor for hard work. It’s a philosophy of compounding. Tractors don’t get airborne. They cover ground, row by row, and the harvest comes. The decade-long trajectory of Aircall (from a €6.66 SaaS with a broken voice layer to a billion-dollar company) is what that philosophy looks like at scale.

Starting a company, creating something new, it’s not just about building something people want and making it widely available, even if this book might sometimes make it seem that way. At its core, building a company is a human adventure. It’s about bringing people together, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and working as a team toward a clear goal.

Over the past few years, AI has exploded into our lives and is changing everything. It’s challenging how we work, and even what “work” means. It’s generating original ideas, reasoning through complex problems, and surpassing expectations in everything from writing and language to images, video, and presentations. AI is going to reshape every part of building a company: from how we come up with ideas to how we make them visible, from the products we imagine to the people we choose to work with.

But in the end, one thing remains true: companies are built by people.

Being a great entrepreneur will always mean sharing your passion and rallying a team around a common goal, with moments of pure joy and long stretches of doubt. It starts by choosing the right co-founders: people who complement you and who you can imagine working with for the next 10 years. Then comes hiring: your first employees, then the next, building a team that truly sticks together.

Founders who thrive in this new era will be the ones who understand that and double down on it. They’ll invest in strong co-founder relationships. They’ll treat hiring as a top priority. They’ll build standout cultures that attract ambitious people.

Beyond all the advice and methods we’ve shared here, what really gives you 10 times more chances to succeed is the team around you.

And at Hexa, we’ve built everything on that belief: that entrepreneurship is a team sport, powered by collective intelligence.

This book is proof. It’s not the work of one person, it’s the work of a whole team, and it’s our gift to you.

— Thibaud Elziere, Cofounder of Hexa.

Every morning, Camille opens his terminal. Eight new pull requests are waiting for him. Created, reviewed, and pre-approved while he was asleep.

Not by a team. By his agents.

In this episode of Build with AI, Tanguy Goretti (CTO at Hexa) sits down with Camille Epitalon, CTO and co-founder of Verso, a startup he built entirely solo on the technical side in three months, with over twenty paying enterprise clients already on board. Camille opens his terminal live and walks through, brick by brick, the setup that makes it all possible.

Verso: A full-AI qualitative research platform

Before diving into the setup, a word on what Verso actually does, because it’s inseparable from how Camille codes.

Verso is an AI-native qualitative research platform. In practice: where agencies like Kantar or Ipsos used to charge €100,000 and three months of lead time to conduct qualitative consumer interviews, Verso delivers the same output in three days for a few thousand euros.

The product covers the entire chain: an AI agent co-designs the interview guide with the client, other agents recruit participants, an AI moderator conducts the interviews (video, audio, screen share, emotion analysis), and researcher agents produce a dynamic report from the raw data. The client can then query that data through a built-in chat interface.

The philosophy: giving codebase ownership to your agents

From the very first minutes, Camille lays out the mental framework for everything that follows:

“From day one, I told myself: I’m handing ownership of my codebase to my agents. The codebase belongs to my agents.”

It sounds radical. But Camille is precise about what it means and more importantly, what it doesn’t mean.

Delegating ownership doesn’t mean letting go of the wheel. It means investing heavily in what he calls harness engineering: everything that surrounds the codebase so that agents operate within a safe, consistent, and opinionated framework.

Two conditions are non-negotiable, according to him:

1. Solid foundations in the code. Clear abstract classes, well-defined contracts, enforced patterns. For example, all his repos inherit from an OrgScopedRepo: which ensures that when an agent creates a new repo, it automatically picks up all the security and authentication abstractions. The agent doesn’t need to be told the rules: they’re baked into the structure of the code.

2. Well-equipped agents. Not just with instructions, but with the right tools to observe the environment: logs, tracking, GitHub, CI. An autonomous agent needs to be able to connect to everything it needs to make decisions without constantly asking its human.

The live setup: 6 worktrees, aliases, a terminal as cockpit

Camille moved from VS Code and Cursor to... his terminal.

His setup is built around 6 permanent worktrees, each associated with a color in his terminal (via iTerm). When he opens a profile, the worktree automatically re-syncs with main. The entire lifecycle (reset, sync, opening a PR) is managed through aliases. To launch Claude Code, he types c. Codex: x. Full dev environment: d.

The metaphor he uses is vivid: “My six worktrees are like six different engineers. I try to avoid having them work on the same thing.”

In practice, each worktree maps to one PR. Camille works async, he kicks off a task, switches to another worktree while the first one runs, and comes back to check the result later. Six instances in parallel, but never all active at the same time.

The cron jobs that code through the night

This is the part that raises eyebrows.

Every two hours, and especially overnight, cron jobs launch Claude or Codex agents in headless mode from Camille’s Mac. These agents follow predefined skills, do their work, and open pull requests on GitHub. In the morning, Camille just has to review them.

These cron jobs are primarily focused on clean code and refactoring. A few concrete examples:

• Backend audit: reads the Python/FastAPI guidelines, produces a report prioritized by criticality and fix complexity, then picks the best value/effort trade-off to create a targeted PR.

• Frontend audit: same principle on the React/TypeScript side.

• Skills sync: checks every day that the .claude and .codex config folders are in sync - if a skill was updated on one side but not the other, a PR is automatically opened.

• Simplify skill: a Claude built-in skill that identifies over-complex areas in the codebase and proposes simplifications.

The logic: rather than blocking a large refactoring project, agents chip away every night at small, targeted improvements. Day after day, the codebase cleans itself without friction.

“Verso is the codebase that never sleeps.”

The Ralph Loop: launch a feature before bed

For heavier features, Camille uses the Ralph Loop.

The concept: a bash loop running continuously in the terminal. At each iteration, it reads a Markdown spec written upfront, consults a tracking file that records where the implementation stands, spins up a new agent (Claude Code or Codex) to handle only the next step, and updates the tracking file with learnings and results.

Each agent operates with a fresh context and a limited scope, avoiding context bloat and drift over long tasks. The source of truth is never in the context window: it’s in the filesystem.

In practice: Camille writes the spec with an agent’s help before heading to lunch or going to bed. He launches the ralph loop. When he comes back, the feature is implemented, or close to it.

Camille notes that some sessions can burn through all his API credits in a single night on ambitious tasks.

The automated review chain

No PR ships without going through multiple layers of review. Here’s the full chain:

1. Auto-review during implementation. The Implement skill automatically calls Review Current Work at each step. The agent self-reviews before opening a PR.

2. Cross-review between agents. Claude Code and Codex review each other’s work. Camille doesn’t necessarily read the diff himself - he asks Codex to review Claude’s work and vice versa, via the Check Reviews skill, which triages comments and proposes fixes.

3. External AI reviewers. Three tools run on every PR: BugBot, Cubic (a YC startup that Camille says is taking off fast on benchmarks), and Code Rabbit (which he finds less impressive today but keeps out of habit). After each comment, a loop mechanism checks the PR 30 minutes after the push, triages the feedback, fixes what can be fixed, and pushes again.

4. Final human review. Camille steps in last, for high-impact decisions or complex trade-offs. The skills are explicit about this: “Don’t make one-way-door decisions without me.”

The cost of all these tools? A few hundred euros a month. Camille is unequivocal: it’s a non-negotiable expense.

Live Browser QA

To validate front-end changes, Camille uses a browser QA skill inspired by Vercel’s. The agent connects to the local app (each worktree runs its own instance with its own DB), navigates to the given URL, takes screenshots, clicks, interacts, and produces a report detailing what works and what doesn’t.

In the live demo, you can watch the agent open Chrome, auto-login to Verso, find the right component, test it, and validate that a video playback speed control button works correctly.

The current limitation: screenshots don’t capture animations. Camille thinks the real revolution in agentic QA will come when models can read video in real time.

Business skills: the whole team is AI-first

An often-overlooked point: at Verso, agents aren’t reserved for developers.

From day one of onboarding, everyone, including the business team, has access to Claude Code, Codex, and the terminal. Business-specific skills have been built for them: drafting an email, preparing a client’s context in the knowledge base, writing a LinkedIn post, or aggregating all call transcripts and emails from a client to pre-fill study templates.

There’s also the Teach skill: when Camille just accomplished something manually with an agent, he can immediately ask it to document what it just learned as a reusable skill. It’s the self-improvement mechanism of the harness itself.

The agnosticism principle: never get locked in

Camille emphasizes a structural point: his setup has to work regardless of the provider.

Skills are nearly identical between Claude Code and Codex (with minor format adaptations), and a cron job checks every day that both config folders are in sync. When Anthropic has outages he switches to Codex without friction.

“Tomorrow, if another provider is better, I’ll switch with pleasure. Being agnostic and not locked in is pretty important.”

Takeaways for ×10 (or ×100) developer productivity

In closing, Camille and Tanguy summarize the principles they apply at Hexa and Verso:

Invest in foundations first. Agents build on what they see. If the code structure is ambiguous or inconsistent, AI will drift in the wrong direction and it compounds. Clear patterns, well-thought-out abstractions, guidelines documented as Markdown files in the codebase: that’s what determines the quality of everything produced afterward.

Run regular audits. Periodically, ask the agent to cold-analyze the codebase: what are the main separation-of-concerns violations? Where is there code duplication? Which areas have drifted from the guidelines? It’s an effective way to identify technical debt before it accumulates.

Engineer the harness hard. Skills, hooks, agents, cron jobs: everything surrounding the codebase deserves as much attention as the codebase itself. It’s an investment with exponential returns.

Don’t panic about new tools. A new “game-changer” tool drops every week on LinkedIn. Tools change. Principles don’t.

“Vibe coding is the worst name for this practice. It’s real engineering work, defined workflows, clear foundations. It’s not ‘go with the vibe’ at all.” - Camille Epitalon

The bottom line

What Camille built at Verso isn’t just an efficient dev setup. It’s a way of working where agents are treated as real collaborators - with clear responsibilities, a well-defined framework, and progressive autonomy.

The result: an enterprise product in production in three months, built alone. Paying clients. And nights where the code keeps improving while he sleeps.

This book is about building exceptional companies - ones that scale across borders, become global in reach, and impact the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people. As a founder, your influence will extend far beyond the product you’re building. With that scale comes a profound responsibility to ensure that the company you create leaves the world better than you found it. Even if your business doesn’t directly tackle ESG (environmental, social, and governance) issues, the way you build it inevitably does. From who you employ and how you lead, to the emissions you generate and the governance structures you put in place, every decision contributes to your company’s overall impact.

Starting with ESG at the early stage is great because this is when you have the opportunity to set the right foundations. With a small team and nimble operations, embedding ESG practices (whether in hiring, supply chain choices, data governance, or environmental footprint) requires relatively little effort, but creates outsized long-term value.

Moreover, there are practical reasons why ESG matters early: companies are increasingly holding their vendors and partners to ESG standards, investors are factoring ESG criteria into their decision-making, and top talent is actively seeking out responsible employers. Embedding these principles from the start prepares you for future diligence and also makes your company more attractive to partners, funders, and the people you want to hire.

The checklist

At the early stages of a startup, simply being aware of ESG and acknowledging its importance is already a meaningful step forward. It’s about integrating ESG into your decision-making process from the beginning, ensuring that each choice is made with an awareness of its broader impact. ESG doesn’t have to be the top priority in every decision, just as cost isn’t always the sole driver. But like financial considerations, it should always be part of the equation. Thinking through the ESG implications, however small, helps you build a company that’s intentional and responsible.

We’ve put together a checklist tailored specifically for the very early stages
of your company, when you’re not yet measuring your carbon footprint (that typically comes at Series A or later), hosting employee culture celebrations, or setting up formal board routines with independent directors. This early-stage ESG checklist is designed to help you lay the groundwork now, so you’re well-prepared for what comes next. You’ll find additional resources at the end of the chapter for later-stage ESG initiatives, but for now, these simple steps are a great place to start and will help you build strong, future-proof foundations.

E - Environment

Focuses on minimizing your company’s ecological footprint and integrating sustainability into all aspects of the business.

Low-impact operations:

Set the tone early with simple practices: encourage remote-first or hybrid models (which often reduce commuting), minimize printing, and avoid unnecessary swag or wasteful packaging.

Carbon footprint awareness (not perfection):

You don’t need a full audit at this stage but being mindful of where emissions are coming from (e.g. travel, shipping, office energy use) helps you spot quick wins.

Sustainable procurement:

For everything from laptops to office snacks, choose vendors who align with your values. Those using ethical sourcing, recyclable packaging, or carbon-neutral delivery. And you can opt for energy-efficient data centers and cloud services that operate on renewable energy.

S - Social

Focuses on how a startup engages with employees, customers, and the communities in which it operates, fostering inclusivity, well-being, and social responsibility.

By following the guidance in the “Hiring” chapter of this book, you’ll be setting yourself up for success. Ideally, you will have taken steps to minimize bias in your recruitment process and foster an inclusive, feedback-driven culture from the very beginning.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI): build an inclusive and equitable company culture.

• Keep job descriptions concise and run them through free tools to identify and eliminate bias (such as Gender Decoder).

• Standardize your interview process with scorecards to ensure consistency and fairness for all applicants.

• Avoid bias by hiring from diverse networks and ensuring a broad candidate pool for each role.

• Use a salary grid to ensure pay equity.

• Implement an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) to promote ownership and fairness.

Employee well-being: prioritize the health and happiness of your employees.

• Create a supportive and safe work environment.

• Offer flexibility with work hours and remote work options. Schedule regular feedback sessions with employees to improve engagement and development.

• Communicate your company’s mission and purpose with your employees regularly to create a sense of belonging.

G - Governance

Focuses on transparency, ethical decision-making, and building strong management practices.

Founding team alignment = early governance:

• If you have co-founders, treat your working relationship like a board: set regular check-ins, document big decisions, and agree on escalation paths for conflicts.

• Create a basic decision-making framework (e.g. who leads on what, how tie-breakers work). It sounds small, but it prevents bigger issues later.

• Maintain clear reporting lines and transparency in decision-making. Document key decisions, financials, and milestones so that your early investors, advisors, and employees are well-informed.

Prepare for future governance:

• When the time comes to raise money or build a board, you’ll be in a much better place if you’ve already established rhythms of clear communication, documentation, and accountability.

• Aim for diversity and independence as you grow your advisory or board structure, outside perspectives reduce blind spots and build credibility.

Think about data ethics:

• If your startup deals with AI or large datasets, ensure that you have clear guidelines on ethical data use and that your AI models are designed to be non-biased and transparent. Address potential ethical issues early to avoid misuse.

• Very early on you should think about SOC 2 and compliance such as GDPR. It might not be number one on your agenda today but awareness at that stage is important.

• Implement strong data protection measures. Such as strong password prac- tices, two-factor authentication, and secure tools for communication and storage. Train your team (even if it’s just a quick onboarding doc) on how to spot phishing, manage credentials, and handle sensitive data responsibly.

To go further, we recommend exploring resources from Balderton, which provide practical guidance for scaling your ESG efforts as your company grows.

We’ve seen both ends of the spectrum: some founders close oversubscribed rounds in just a few days, others spend months chasing that elusive first term sheet, wondering if they’re doing it all wrong. It’s natural to read into that experience, to think a fast raise signals strength or a slow one means something’s broken. But speed or ease of your raise doesn’t predict long-term success. Some of the strongest companies out there barely scraped together their first round.

Still, running a smooth, focused fundraise can set you up for a stronger start and save you some time so you can get back to building. Because fundraising will take over your calendar if you’re not intentional. That’s why it’s critical to prep before you start, timebox the process, and stay in control throughout.

We’ll walk through each phase of the fundraising journey: deciding when to raise, crafting your story, running a disciplined process, and managing relationships after the round closes. You’ll learn how to build the materials that matter, navigate valuation and dilution, and bring the right people onto your cap table.

Deciding when to raise

The ideal timing

Fundraising isn’t always a matter of need, it’s often a matter of timing. You might raise even if you don’t strictly need the money, simply because the conditions are right. Maybe you’ve landed a major customer, hit a key product milestone, or noticed a surge in inbound interest. These moments create momentum - and momentum is what fuels investor excitement.

That’s why it helps to think in terms of your ‘local maximum’: the point where your traction, narrative, and market signals are all peaking relative to your recent history. It might not be your ultimate destination, but it’s a moment when things look their best so far. Investors are drawn to upward trends and raising at this point can shift the power dynamic and give you more control over the process.

Too early vs too late

Still, timing isn’t just about opportunity, it’s about readiness. Once you raise, you’re not just taking on capital, you’re committing to your cofounder(s) and to building a company for the next several years. You need to be sure that’s really what you want.

Raise too early, and you may be tempted to accelerate prematurely before you’ve found real product-market fit, which often results in wasted capital. Investors might initially back your vision, but their focus quickly turns to execution. If traction lags, confidence fades, and future fundraising gets harder.

Wait too long, and the opportunity might slip away. Momentum doesn’t last forever. If you miss your window, when the narrative is fresh and your numbers are trending, you may end up pitching in a cooler market, with less leverage, more competition and tougher terms.

And remember: once you raise, the clock starts ticking. Investors expect visible progress within 12–18 months, often measured in product milestones, revenue growth, or team expansion. If it takes too long to go from seed to Series A, the perceived attractiveness of your company can decline.

In short, timing matters as much as the story you tell. The best raises happen when you’ve built real momentum and you’re in the driver’s seat.

What you need to raise

There’s no universal benchmark for what makes a seed-stage company “fundable.” Team size, customers, user metrics, they vary by sector and model. Despite having raised more than 40 seeds, we’re still often surprised by which companies generate seed momentum and which don’t.

You typically raise on one of two things: a compelling story or clear results. Either you’re early enough (before traction and even before product) that investors are backing the promise (your team, vision, and market) or you’ve hit your first results that proves the model is working. In that in-between zone, fundraising is extremely difficult.

If you’re aiming to raise on traction, you need to show real progress. That means active usage, strong engagement, and clear customer adoption. Ideally, some of those customers are already paying - or clearly intend to. You should also be able to communicate a focused, credible roadmap to your next major milestone. That might include continued product development, key hires, go-to-market execution, or early revenue. The important part is that you understand what needs to happen next and can explain how you plan to get there.

It’s a strong signal if you’ve already identified or secured the early hires needed to execute that plan. Investors want to see that you’re not just raising capital, you’re raising to drive specific outcomes, and you know what those are.

Build your story from day 1

Prepare everything before your roadshow

Once you’re in the middle of fundraising, everything accelerates and you won’t have time to handle fundraising prep while pitching. Every hour you spend scrambling to fix your deck is an hour you’re not pitching, building, or closing.

That’s why you need to front-load all the preparation work. You’ll need to have ready:

• Your story

• Your executive summary

• Your pitch deck

• Your data room

And also administrative tasks like choosing your lawyers in advance.

“Preparation is everything. Rehearse your deck, refine the story, test your numbers. And before you pitch your “dream” VCs, start with 4–5 funds that you know aren’t the right fit. Use them as live practice, they’ll challenge you, they’ll poke holes, and that will make your pitch sharper. In those early rounds, feedback from real investors is gold. They see hundreds of decks and they’ll spot what you’re missing faster than you will.”

– Olivier Pailhes, cofounder of Aircall

Nail the narrative

From the very beginning of your company, you should start crafting the first version of your story and then commit to refining it continuously as you build. A compelling narrative doesn’t appear overnight. It takes time, practice, and feedback. Founders often underestimate how difficult this is.

We recommend starting with a simple executive summary: 7 questions that capture the essence of your story. Treat it as a living document. Iterate as your company evolves, and only then build it into a full pitch deck.

Use this executive summary to rehearse your pitch. Practice in front of a mirror, with teammates, and with trusted advisors. And don’t hesitate to bring in a coach, it can make a meaningful difference in how clearly and confidently you present.

Do not write your actual pitch deck before you’ve nailed your narrative. If you’re still figuring out what the story is, working in slides will slow you down and lead to weak framing. Get your narrative to at least 95% clarity before working on the deck.

Anticipating objections

When fundraising, it’s essential to anticipate the key objections investors might raise, things like “I’m not investing because a major competitor just raised a big round,” or “the market looks too crowded.” These concerns are common and predictable, and you need to be ready with clear, sharp responses. For each objection, build a well-structured argument that’s ideally supported by precise, data-backed reasoning: market segmentation, differentiation, go-to-market insights, or unique traction numbers. Some of these answers can be detailed in your dataroom (e.g. competitive landscape, pipeline data), but others should be rehearsed and delivered convincingly in the room. The best founders dry-run these hard questions in advance (like a stress test) so nothing catches them off guard.

Getting the executive summary right

Here’s a suggested structure for getting it right:

Getting the pitch deck right

There’s no one-size-fits-all deck. Every company is different, so your pitch should reflect your unique story. That said, here’s a recommended flow that we often see work well. Use this as a starting point and tailor it to fit your narrative.

Getting the data room right

Investors typically use your data room in two stages. Before offering a term sheet, they’ll use it for a quick spot check to validate your story and discuss it internally with partners. After a term sheet is issued, the data room becomes a key part of the due diligence process, providing deeper details to help finalize the investment.

A good data room is rare at seed stage, so it makes a strong impression. It shows you’re organized and serious, and it makes the investor’s job easier by helping them quickly understand your business and find the answers they need.

The easiest way to manage it is by centralizing everything in a Notion doc. That way, you can easily share a single link with investors and keep everything up to date in one place.

Below is the standard structure we recommend and what most of our companies use. It’s meant to be a guide, so feel free to adapt it based on what makes sense for your business.

Common data room mistakes

• Treating it as static – Your data room should evolve. Update it regularly with new customers, milestones, and quarterly revenue.

• Assuming investors understand your market – Don’t skip the basics. Educate them before diving into deep specifics.

• Unclear market sizing – Always show your math. Explain how you got to your market size numbers.

• Neglecting your long-term vision – Founders often focus too much on what’s built today. But investors are buying into the future. Make sure your data room tells the story of where you’re going

• Overly technical roadmap – It’s tempting to list every feature and sprint. Instead, highlight focus on outcomes, not just features. What major shifts will your roadmap unlock? Share the big objectives you’re aiming for.

• Tracking too many KPIs – More isn’t better. Curate a concise set of metrics that actually reflect momentum - or whatever best signals traction for your model.

Structuring your round

What instrument?

At the Seed stage, most founders face the same challenge: they need capital, but setting a formal valuation feels premature. Enter SAFEs (Simple Agreements for Future Equity), BSA AIR (the French equivalent), two instruments that have become go-to options for early-stage fundraising.

These tools are attractive for a few key reasons. First, they’re fast and lightweight. Unlike priced equity rounds, they require minimal legal work, often just a few pages of documentation, and cost a fraction of what a full capital increase would. Second, they provide flexibility. With a SAFE or BSA AIR, you can raise funds progressively, closing small tickets over time as investor interest emerges. There’s no need to round up a full cohort of investors before moving forward.

A typical SAFE includes three core terms:

• The amount invested

• A valuation cap

• And a discount on the next round’s valuation

Importantly, no new shares are created at the time of the SAFE, this means the price per share doesn’t change, and SAFE holders aren’t yet formal shareholders. They don’t appear on the cap table or in the shareholder agreement until their instruments convert. While this structure offers simplicity, it can also create discomfort for some investors, who feel they’re in limbo: as they’re. not quite equity holders.

From the founder’s side, the biggest challenge is dilution. Since conversion happens later, usually during the next priced round, it’s hard to forecast exactly how much ownership will be given away.

Use with care, especially when stacking multiple SAFEs or BSA AIRs with different terms. Misalignment across instruments can snowball into complexity and tension.

Much has been written about whether to raise using instruments like SAFEs or BSA AIRs versus going straight to equity. We won’t cover every detail here but the key takeaway is this: they are much simpler and work well (especially in the US).

Get your cap table in order

The capitalization table is the single source of truth when it comes to ownership. It should be clean and accurate. Yet, it’s often a source of confusion and delay. There is no way around it: a founder has to have precise and confident command of their cap table. And the cap table has to be ready before the start of the fundraising.

Action points:

• Have a precise and accurate pro-forma cap table in excel format.

• Get assistance from your lawyer but founders should remain in control of their cap table.

• After seed round, use a reputable cap table management tool (e.g., Carta, Pulley or Equify if your company is in France).

• Reflect all equity issuances - including SAFEs, convertible notes, options, and warrants, with correct terms and timestamps.

• Ensure that founder vesting schedules are properly documented.

Investors will review the cap table meticulously to understand their dilution, rights, and ownership stake. Ambiguities or inconsistencies here often raise red flags and can derail the process.

Choosing the right counsel

Fundraising isn’t just about storytelling and strategy, it also involves complex legal work, often under tight timelines and with limited resources. That’s why it’s critical to engage a law firm with deep experience in venture deals, and the pragmatism to balance ideal legal outcomes with real-world business pressures.

Make sure you’ve chosen your lawyer and agreed on legal fees before you begin fundraising and especially before a term sheet lands. VCs often use time pressure as a tactic. We’ve seen reputable funds issue term sheets late on a Friday with a three-day expiration window. The last thing you want is to be scrambling to secure legal counsel while already caught in the chaos of a live deal.

How to choose a counsel:

• Start by asking founders in your network who’ve recently raised a similar round for recommendations.

• Choose a venture capital expert locally recognized where your investors are.

• Look for someone who’s worked on Series A, B, and C rounds, they’ll take more balanced positions and help you plan ahead. The best lawyers know you’re tight on cash early on and may offer flexible terms, betting on a long- term relationship as you grow.

• Ask for references from their clients and verify that they have advised them not just at seed stage but through successive financing rounds.

Tips for working with counsel and what to expect from them:

• Be transparent about your goals and timeline.

• Your counsel’s primary goal is to defend your interests.

• During negotiations, always ask your counsel about “market practice.” While you can deviate from standard practices to address specific situations, understanding market trends helps ensure your positions remain reasonable and credible.

• Have them help you prepare a due diligence checklist and virtual data room.

• Ask for a “pre-diligence” review of your documents before going to market.

• Your counsel should help you navigate the long list of documents you’re signing. Have them walk you through the full documentation and ensure you understand every detail.

A good legal partner won’t just draft documents, they’ll anticipate investor questions and help you avoid common pitfalls.

Choosing the right investors

Who’s around the table

Understanding who’s around the table, and why, is key to running a successful fundraise. Every investor plays a different role, and knowing how to navigate those dynamics can help you structure a stronger round. Your lead investor, often a VC, typically sets the terms by issuing a term sheet and may take a board seat. Then come the co-investors: other participants in the round, which can include additional VCs, family offices, clients, or business angels. These investors often move faster and are great for quickly filling out the round once the lead is locked in. In some cases, especially in smaller seed rounds made up mostly of angels, you might not have a formal lead; in that scenario, founders usually define the valuation and terms themselves.

The many benefits of Angels

Raising from business angels isn’t just about getting cash in the bank, it’s about bringing the right people to the table. Great angels are typically current or former founders and operators who bring “smart money”, they’ve walked in your shoes, built companies, learned from mistakes, and understand what it takes to grow. They can open doors to early customers, help you hire key talent, and give real talk when you hit roadblocks. Angels tend to move faster than VCs, write more flexible checks, and often back you as a person as much as your business. For a first-time founder especially, having a few connected angels in your corner can be a superpower.

“When you raise from angels, especially operators, ex-founders, or people from your target ecosystem, you’re not just raising capital, you’re bringing in relevant expertise for your business. These are people who’ve built companies, made the tough calls, scaled teams. They challenge you where it matters: on product, hiring, GTM...

What’s more, they’re plugged into powerful networks. They make intros to customers, hires, future investors, and they do it naturally, because they’re invested in your success.”

– Evan Testa, CEO & Cofounder of Roundtable

Partner with people, not just capital

Not all value is visible on the term sheet. Some investors are hands-on, others more passive, but both can be valuable depending on your needs. The key is knowing what kind of support you’re looking for: strategic input, hiring help, intros to customers, or access to future funding. Have candid conversations upfront so you understand what each investor brings beyond the check and whether they’ll actually show up when it matters.

“When choosing investors, it’s important to be clear about the kind of support you’re looking for. Not all value comes from hands-on involvement. Sometimes, reputation alone can be a strategic asset. A well- known angel or fund on your cap table, even with a very small check, can send a strong signal to the market, helping you attract talent, open commercial doors, or gain credibility with future investors.”

– Quentin Nickmans, Partner and Cofounder of Hexa

That’s why choosing the right investors is about more than picking the biggest name. You’re not just raising money, you’re entering a long-term partnership. The relationship you have with the individual investor will shape your journey far more than the logo. Do they understand your vision? Will they challenge you in productive ways? Can you be real with them when things get tough? Finding someone you genuinely click with can make all the difference.

“Be careful who you let onto your cap table. Early on, I brought in a VC partner I didn’t click with, and I regretted it. You’re not marrying a fund, you’re marrying a partner. So make sure you genuinely respect and trust them, and that the chemistry is right. Also, do your own due diligence. Even in early-stage rounds, ask founders who’ve worked with them. When things go well, everyone’s friendly. But when it gets tough, that’s when true character shows.”

– Olivier Pailhes, founder of Aircall

Just as investors do due diligence on you, you should do the same. Talk to other founders they’ve backed. Do they follow through on their promises? Are they constructive during tough times? The wrong investor can slow you down or create friction when you least need it.

How much to raise

Raising more isn’t always better

There’s no precise formula for how much capital to raise, but two conditions should always be met:

• You raise enough to support at least 24 months of runway

• You raise enough to reach your next fundable milestone

These are non-negotiables. If either is missing, you risk either running out of time or failing to demonstrate enough progress for follow-on funding.

It’s important to recognize that raising more capital isn’t always better. While a larger round can give you more room to operate, it also sets a higher bar. Bigger rounds typically come with higher valuations, and those valuations create increased pressure to deliver results. It also becomes much harder to raise the next round, which typically needs to be larger. More money can lead to undisciplined spending and over-hiring, which can hurt long-term outcomes. In contrast, the constraint of limited cash tends to encourage efficiency and better decision-making - qualities that are especially valuable at the early stage.

The best founders deliberately raise smaller rounds, even when they have the option to raise more. This is not about limiting ambition. It’s about maintaining focus. Operating with some degree of constraint can create sharper prioritiza- tion, faster iteration, and stronger financial discipline.

“Capital efficiency between rounds is one of the most scrutinized metrics. Investors will look closely at what you achieved relative to what you spent. Did the funding translate into customer growth? Into revenue? Into meaningful milestones? The goal is not simply to spend, but to convert every euro into measurable progress. While every startup’s path looks different, the principle remains the same: the less capital you burn to reach scale, the stronger your position will be. Ultimately, every euro you deploy should have a clear purpose and move the company forward.”

– Amaury Sepulchre, Partner and Cofounder of Hexa

You don’t choose your valuation

Valuation might feel like a bit of a black box, but it’s crucial to understand how it actually works. One of the most important things to remember is that foun- ders don’t really “set” the valuation. It’s a reflection of market dynamics, your progress, and how much capital you’re raising.

Let’s start with the basics. Premoney valuation is the value of your company before new money enters the business. Postmoney valuation is simply premoney plus the new cash raised.

For example, if you raise $15M on a $50M premoney valuation, your postmo- ney valuation is $65M.

In practice, valuation is more art than science. While many founders imagine it as something they can define, it’s actually heavily shaped by external forces— mostly what investors are willing to pay for a given slice of equity. Here are some of the key drivers:

• How much cash you need to get to the next step (often targeting at least 24 months of runway)

• Comparable rounds in your space

• Your ability to excite investors and bring strong VCs into the deal

• Market competition - more interest can drive up your valuation

• Trendiness of your sector - hot markets tend to command higher valuations

Most early rounds (Seed, A) dilute existing shareholders by 20-30%:

~13-20% goes to the lead VC.
~5% for coinvestors (other VCs, angels and other investors).
~5% to top-up the stock option pool (investors usually require this post-round).

What many founders don’t realize is that valuation is usually reverse-engineered from how much money you’re raising. Since most VCs target a fixed ownership percentage, raising more capital tends to push your valuation up, not to reduce dilution, but to maintain their share. In other words, a higher valuation often means you’re raising more money, not giving away less of your company.

Running a tight fundraising process

Do not talk to VCs too early

As soon as you launch or generate buzz, you should expect inbound mes- sages from investors. This is totally normal. VCs are constantly scanning the ecosystem and will reach out quickly when something catches their eye. But at this early stage, it’s best to actively avoid spending time with VCs. While

it might feel flattering, taking meetings too early is usually more distracting than helpful - for both you and your team. Engaging too early can force you to define your story before it’s actually clear, and worse, it can pull your attention away from the real work of building product and closing early customers.

When you get inbound, it’s better to push back politely. One good way to respond is to say something like, “We’re fully focused on building product and closing early customers, let’s reconnect in a few months.” This keeps the door open while protecting your focus.

Always remember: it’s a VC’s job to reach out and build relationships. That doesn’t mean they’re serious about investing.

During this phase, be very intentional about your time. Founders consistently underestimate how draining and time-consuming these early conversations can be.

“You’re either fundraising, or you’re not. So don’t start the conversation before it’s time.”

– Quentin Nickmans, Partner and Cofounder of Hexa

Right before you start your roadshow

When you feel like fundraising is right around the corner, it is time to start war- ming up relationships with VCs, but not the time to begin your actual fundraising process.

Begin by reconnecting with investors who reached out earlier or who were introduced via highly credible, warm intros. Avoid cold outbound during this phase, it’s about building momentum quietly and setting the stage.

Treat these meetings as informal conversations, not pitches. Don’t share your deck or specific numbers. At this point, your equity story is still evolving. Instead, focus on telling your story with clarity. Remember that it’s ok to show ambition, but never exaggerate your traction. Your credibility is far more valuable than any boasting. Practice beforehand so you’re not winging it, first impressions are sticky, and you won’t get a second chance.

These early conversations are a great opportunity to test how VCs react to your story, and whether there’s genuine alignment. Most investors will be friendly and positive, they want to keep their options open but that doesn’t mean they’re truly interested. Be careful not to confuse vague enthusiasm with actual intent.

Look for signs of real interest. One powerful tactic is to ask for something, like a warm intro to a customer or advisor. Serious investors will lean in and show effort.

Finally, listen critically. Apply a “negative filter” to feedback. If a VC is vague, overly complimentary without follow-through, or avoids specifics, you can safely assume they’re not serious (at least not yet).

When it’s go-time, create momentum

While you may be tempted to pursue a preemptive round with minimal effort, this rarely succeeds. You need to commit to a full fundraising process. Because fundraising rounds don’t just happen, they’re intentionally engineered. The key is to create momentum and urgency.

Start by locking in a few early commitments from clients or business angels, this helps you build credibility and signals demand. Once you’ve got early inte- rest, compress the rest of your investor meetings into a tight 1 month window. This allows you to manage timing and create a sense of movement.

Set a clear public deadline for when you want to sign a term sheet. Then, push investors to do real work: ask for intros, reference checks, or customer calls. If they’re genuinely excited, they’ll engage quickly.

Negotiate with strategy, not emotion

Receiving a term sheet is a significant achievement but it also marks the be- ginning of a high-stakes negotiation that will influence your company’s control, economics, and investor relationships well into the future. The structure you establish in your first priced round often becomes the foundation for all subsequent financings. Yet many founders either rush through this stage or get caught up in the emotion of the moment.

Key principles for negotiating a term sheet:

Prioritize what truly matters. Not all terms carry equal weight. Focus on
the key economic terms (valuation, option pool) and control terms (board structure, protective provisions, drag-along). Don’t waste energy negotiating minor language details.

Understand the “market” terms but know where you can push. Investors will often present their term sheet as “standard.” While many elements are, others can vary. Know what’s market, and where you have leverage to nego- tiate. It is your lawyer’s role to make you understand everything.

Remember: you do have bargaining power. A common mistake is assuming that just because a term sheet comes from a prestigious or well-known VC, it must be taken as-is. That’s rarely the case. Founders have more room to negotiate than they often believe—especially when they’ve prepared well, have multiple conversations in motion, or show a clear command of their bu- siness. Investors expect some back-and-forth, and reasonable asks will not jeopardize the deal. If you engage a reputable law firm with strong venture capital experience they will help you adopt reasonable positions.

Don’t shy away from a detailed term sheet. A well-drafted, granular term sheet helps align expectations early and reduces ambiguity when it’s time to negotiate the long-form documents. It’s often the best way to avoid sur- prises later in the process.

Embrace a dual mindset during negotiations. As a founder, you’re wearing two hats: one advocating for your personal position, and the other acting in the long-term best interest of the company. It can feel schizophrenic at times, but striking that balance is critical. For example, pushing too hard for overly founder-friendly vesting terms might protect you individually, but it can send the wrong signal to investors and undermine confidence in the team’s long-term commitment. In some cases, what seems like a win for the founder can actually be detrimental to the company’s fundraising prospects and future governance.

Move quickly and keep the momentum. Fundraising is often about timing, and slow responses can cool investor interest. Promptly engaging on term sheet discussions and diligence requests signals professionalism and keeps the process moving toward closing.

Use your counsel strategically. Your legal team should be experienced in venture financings and should help you model scenarios, anticipate investor concerns, and protect your downside. But remember: your lawyer negotiates the how—you still set the tone and direction of the negotiation.

Don’t ignore the soft signals. A term sheet is not just about terms, it’s about who you’re going into business with. Pay close attention to how your inves- tor communicates, how they handle friction, and whether they approach negotiations collaboratively or aggressively. It’s a preview of your future boardroom dynamics.

Above all, remember that negotiating a term sheet isn’t about “winning”, it’s about setting up a relationship that supports your company’s long-term suc- cess.

Best practices to stay organized

From day 1, log every inbound VC and note the context.

Keep a Notion table or CRM to track who reached out, what was discussed, and when to follow up.

Take notes in each meeting, VCs will, and so should you.

Over time, develop your own VC fit criteria: Who felt aligned? Who made you feel heard?

To watch out for during fundraising

Before and during a fundraise, how you communicate with investors matters just as much as what you’re building. These aren’t just best practices, they’re rules that protect your credibility and long-term reputation.

VCs talk to each other

Don’t assume anything you say in a meeting stays private. VCs compare notes regularly, on founders, traction, competitors, and terms. If you say different things to different people, it will get out.

Don’t fake a term sheet or invent competitive pressure

Pretending you’ve received a term sheet or hinting at a bidding war when there isn’t one can backfire spectacularly. It’s easy for VCs to verify, and once they sense bluffing, you’ll lose all leverage and trust.

Never lie or overpromise

Avoid inflating your traction, pipeline, or product readiness. VCs are used to founders being optimistic, but if you cross the line into dishonesty, they’ll disengage. Worse, it can follow you for years.

Keep your story consistent

Whether you’re discussing valuation, revenue, team structure, or the cap table, your narrative needs to be aligned across all conversations. Inconsistencies raise red flags and make VCs question your reliability.

Post-raise: communicating with investors

Make your updates consistent

Once your round is closed, a new responsibility is keeping your investors informed.

The most important principle to follow is simple: always tell the truth. Investors understand ups and downs. What matters most is transparency and consistency, it’s how trust is built over time.

If you’re preparing monthly or quarterly investor updates, make sure to include the key metrics investors care about. These typically include revenue, user growth, and any significant milestones or accomplishments. Don’t just share the numbers but also provide context and analysis to help investors understand the story behind the data. What’s working? What’s changing? What challenges are on the horizon?

To save time and reduce the operational burden, it’s a good idea to send the same report to all your investors. Just make sure the level of detail and timing works for everyone. Consistency is key: avoid changing the format or message from one investor to another or quarter to quarter.

“The best way to manage investor relationships is with radical honesty. Send regular updates even when things aren’t going well. Especially then. It’s better to underpromise and overdeliver than the opposite. Over time,
it will build a huge amount of trust.”

– Quentin Nickmans, Partner and Cofounder of Hexa

Here’s a template to follow:

Think about your next round

Closing your round is a huge milestone, but it’s also the starting line for the next phase. Fundraising is a continuous process, and the relationships you build now will shape your future rounds. Start thinking about your next raise early, track your milestones, stay in regular touch with potential future investors. By nurturing these relationships and maintaining momentum, you’ll be in a much stronger position when it’s time to raise again.

“Raising is a numbers game. You have to contact a lot of people, be everywhere, keep track, follow up. But it’s not just about volume, it’s also about timing and nurturing. One of the best things I did, although a bit too late, was starting to build relationships with the VCs for the next round. Tell them your goals early on:

’Here’s what we’re going to achieve in the next 6 months.’ Then come back in 6 months and say: ‘We did it.’ That makes a huge impression. The best founders are always planting seeds ahead of the next round.”

– Olivier Pailhes, cofounder of Aircall

Most founders don’t think much about brand in the early days. It doesn’t feel urgent - building, shipping, and fundraising take priority. Brand can seem like something for later, once everything else is in place.

But you already have a brand, whether you’ve thought about it or not.

Customers, investors, partners, they’re forming impressions based on what they see: your landing page, your first deck, a job post, even your LinkedIn bio. Whether or not there was intention behind those things, people are making snap judgments. Who is this company? Do they seem credible? Do I like them? What does using their product say about me?

That’s brand: the feeling people get from what you put into the world. And
in the early days, when attention is scarce and trust is fragile, those signals really matter. If they’re generic or inconsistent, people move on. But if there’s a thread - something clear, confident, emotionally resonant - people are more likely to take you seriously, and even start believing in what you’re building.

There was a time when being modern and simple was enough. Not anymore. Everyone can look modern now. And with AI and faster dev tools, any existing B2B SaaS can be copied or rebuilt in months. As product quality evens out, it’ll be your brand - and the people behind it - that makes people choose you over a competitor.

In this chapter, we’ll show you how to build a strong early-stage brand. From defining your identity and voice to bringing it to life through design, messaging, founder presence, and strategic communication across the right channels.

Why brand matters in the early stage

Brand isn’t just a late-stage concern or a luxury for when you have a marketing team. Your landing page, your first pitch deck, a job post, even your LinkedIn bio - it’s all brand, and they leave important first impressions. You’re trying to earn attention, attract top candidates, get investors excited, convince early customers to take a bet on you… all of that hinges on what they feel when they encounter your company.

There are two primary ways you shape that feeling:

1. Visual identity: how you look. It’s your product interface, your landing page, your logo, your color palette.

2.Communications: how you sound. Across your website copy, social media, investor emails, and even the way you talk to users.

It’s easy to dismiss the importance of brand at the start, especially in B2B. But in B2B, professionals are still human. They don’t show up at work, switch off their emotional brain, and put on a purely rational hat. Professional purchases are human purchases, influenced by feelings: What does this choice say about me? How does it make me feel? What will it signal to my team or industry? When multiple products could meet their needs, the brand that makes them feel something will win.

When the functional differences between products are slim, it’s the brand that evokes the right emotion that wins.

That’s why at Hexa, we push founders to think about brand early. But it’s not about creating a polished, expensive deliverable or 50 pages of brand guidelines no one reads. It should be a focused, intentional effort to signal who you are and why someone should care. At this stage, you’re building a “just good enough” brand. One that creates an emotional hook and helps you stand out.

Defining your brand

Get clear on who you are - really

Consistency is the foundation of every strong brand, but you can’t be consistent if you don’t know exactly what you’re being consistent about.

This is a challenge most early-stage founders face: things move fast, priorities shift, and your story can evolve week to week. One day you’re focused on one angle, the next day it’s something entirely different, and that’s perfectly normal.

But from a branding perspective, it’s essential to commit to a single, clear narrative, at least for a given moment in time. If you try to say everything at once, you risk saying nothing at all. Consistency is what makes you memorable - it helps your audience associate your brand with one strong idea, rather than getting lost in a swirl of mixed messages.

The solution is simple: document your core brand elements in one place to force clarity on a single version of who you are. You can refer back to this document to keep every company action aligned with the bigger picture, from writing your landing page copy to making strategic decisions.

Here’s a template to fill out:

“I think our secret weapon early on was internal alignment. We didn’t intentionally build a brand back then, but looking back, it was strong from the start. We cared deeply about what we were building, and that came through.

I remember sharing a deck early on with a simple diagram, three concentric circles: the team, our customers, and the broader community. The idea was to show how our values, like remote work, CO2 impact, and work-life balance, could radiate outward. It was a small gesture, but it resonated and helped shape how we showed up.

Over time, we heard again and again that customers chose Slite because of who we were and what we stood for, not just the product.”

– Christophe Pasquier, CEO & Cofounder of Slite

Find your brand feeling

Your core brand elements (above) are crucial for alignment and consistency, but your audience will never read your vision statement. Instead, they’ll experience your brand as a feeling. Simply put, your brand feeling is the emotional response you want people to have when they interact with your company. It’s not what your product does, it’s how it makes people feel.

As an early-stage founder, defining this feeling early gives you a major advantage. While you may not have the marketing budget to compete with established players, you can create a distinctive emotional connection that helps you stand out from day one - whether through your product, website, copy, or anything else you put into the world.

You probably won’t get this perfect on the first try, and that’s okay. For early-stage startups, your brand feeling doesn’t need to be polished or permanent. It’s just a starting point that gives you enough direction to be consistent while you’re still figuring things out. You’ll refine it as you learn more about your customers.

Examples:

Spendesk

Spendesk tapped into a feeling of liberation – they free finance leaders from being perceived as mere “spreadsheet people” and elevate them to strategic business partners. Users buy a vision of themselves as valued, strategic leaders in their organizations, not just spend management software.

“We had a few strong convictions early on that we held onto firmly and that ended up shaping our brand in meaningful ways. One clear example was around color: I remember working with an agency on our logo and overall visual identity, and at the time, most companies in our space were using very similar, fairly conservative color palettes.

We decided to break away from that by choosing purple. A choice that felt bold and different back then, even though today purple has beco- me much more common in tech branding. The idea was to make our Spendesk cards stand out: we didn’t want them to look like the usual, traditional black corporate cards that conveyed a very formal image; instead, we wanted something more vibrant and joyful. It wasn’t necessarily the “safe” or conventional choices but those bets paid off, helping us build a brand identity that felt memorable.

At some point, it became more than just branding: people would lite- rally pull out their purple Spendesk cards and proudly say, “I’m with Spendesk,” which for us was a clear sign that the brand had truly reso- nated.”

– Rodolphe Ardant, cofounder & CEO at Spendesk

Swan

Swan evokes a feeling of quiet empowerment – they help businesses offer financial services without surrendering their own brand identity to a bank. Their approach is built on the philosophy that “it’s about you, not us.” While traditional financial services dominate the experience, Swan steps into the background, allowing businesses to remain authentically themselves while gaining new capabilities. They’ve transformed what could be a purely technical service into something more meaningful: the ability to extend your brand into financial experiences without compromise.

“It’s easy to focus solely on things like product in the early days, but investing in brand early can be just as important. At Swan, one of the most impactful decisions we made was hiring a key brand leader early on. That hire helped shape Swan’s tone of voice and identity in a way that made the brand stand out, especially in a fintech space where most companies sound the same.”

– Nicolas Benady, cofounder & CEO at Swan

Turning it into a voice

Once you’ve defined the feeling you want to create, choose 2–3 adjectives that describe how your brand should speak to evoke it. For example, if your brand feeling is creative freedom (like Figma), your voice might sound: encouraging, approachable and a bit playful.

Each adjective should support the emotional experience you’re aiming for. “Encouraging” language helps people feel more free and capable. “Playful” gives people permission to loosen up a bit. Together, they reinforce the feeling you’re trying to create.

You don’t need a full set of brand guidelines at this stage, just a few clear voice adjectives can provide enough direction to shape your tone across everything: landing page copy, social posts, job descriptions, even how you respond to customer support tickets.

Bringing your brand to life - Visual Identity

One of the biggest worries founders have is: does building a good brand mean spending a ton of money? At this stage, no, it really doesn’t.

You can DIY 90-100% of your early brand, which makes sense when things are still evolving. Being scrappy now doesn’t mean settling for a sloppy result, it just means being smart about what actually matters.

Your name

While not visual in itself, your name is a crucial element that will strongly influence your visual identity - particularly the logo, which in many cases needs to visually represent the name. Naming your company can easily send you into endless loops. Yes, it needs to tick a few boxes, but not as many as you might think. Founders often put way too much pressure on finding the “perfect” name. The truth is that unless it’s actively bad, people get used to it. And if you do the brand work right, you’ll create meaning around it over time. The goal is finding a ‘good enough’ name that you can build on.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what your name does and doesn’t need to be:

“The name Swan came to us quickly and it just felt right. It captured the essence of what we wanted to build, something elegant but powerful. It also fit the naming trends we admired at the time: short, simple, starting with ‘S’ like Swile, Stripe, Shine. But more than that, it had emotional resonance. It was a name people would remember and feel something about.”

– Nicolas Benady, cofounder & CEO at Swan

Where and how to show up

Early on, your visual identity doesn’t need to be fancy, just clear and consistent. A simple logo and a basic color palette will take you a long way.

You can absolutely do this yourself using tools like Figma or Canva. Choose 1–2 signature colors that stand out in your space, pick a clean font, and keep it consistent across everything. If you’re using a website template, you can even start with the default styles and tweak them to suit your brand.

If you’ve got a bit of budget (even under €5K), consider working with a free- lance designer. There are plenty of talented ones who offer high-quality work at reasonable rates. A good freelancer can help you quickly pull together:

• A simple but professional logo

• A basic graphic system (font, color, layout rules)

• A lightweight style guide or Figma kit that makes it easy to apply consistently

Let’s walk through the essential visual brand touchpoints, the places where your design shows up.

Working with freelancers

If you manage to DIY everything, that’s amazing. But if you’re struggling and you have a small budget to spare, you should consider working with a freelancer or a small studio agency. Keep the large agencies for later on as you scale and need more strategic work.

Finding the right freelancers is about smart networking. Start by asking other founders, especially those with brands you admire, who they worked with. Most are happy to share their contacts, and this comes with the added benefit of a built-in reference.

Online platforms like Dribbble and Behance are gold mines for finding designers with specific aesthetics.

Once you’ve found someone promising, the success of the project hinges on your communication. Create a simple brief that clearly outlines what you need, when you need it, and why it matters to your company. Share the brand foundations and feeling you’ve already worked on - this strategic work will save them a lot of time, and you a lot of money.

Provide concrete reference points by sharing 3-5 examples of brands that capture elements of what you’re looking for, with specific callouts of what you like about each. “We love how this feels approachable but still technical” is much more helpful than “make it modern.”

Bringing your brand to life - Comms

Defining your core message

Earlier in the chapter, you defined your brand elements - your vision, mission, benefits, and what drives you. That work gives you internal clarity. But when it comes to communicating with the outside world, you need a core message.

It’s not a tagline or a sentence to slap on every slide or web page, but the thread that runs through all your comms. It’s the one idea you want people to walk away with, whether they’re a customer, candidate, investor, or friend of a friend.

It can show up in many different words, but it almost always shows up in spirit.

A strong core message communicates:

1. Who you are
2. Why you’re different
3. Your brand feeling

You’ll refine this message over time, and you might adapt it for different au- diences. But early on, one clear message is enough.

Examples:

Spendesk

“Where finance connects” – Reframes Spendesk as more than a tool, it’s the connective layer between finance teams, employees, and spending decisions. It speaks to trust and collaboration in one elegant line.

Swan

“Banking features that feel like product, not infrastructure” – Captures a strategic shift: finance is no longer just a backend layer, it’s something your users experience directly. Swan enables companies to embed branded fi- nancial features into their product quickly and seamlessly, making embedded finance part of your value proposition, not your tech stack.

Aircall

“The only phone system that feels like your other SaaS tools” – Aircall behaves the way modern teams expect software to behave: fast to set up, easy to use, and built to work seamlessly with the rest of your stack. This positions it as the phone system designed for the SaaS generation, not a relic from the telecom past.

Getting your message across

Once you’ve defined the message you want to get across, the next challenge is making sure they actually hear it and hear it in the right places.

You don’t need to be on every channel. In fact, spreading yourself too thin early on usually backfires. What matters most is being intentional: showing up where your audience already spends time, in formats they naturally engage with.

One common mistake people make is starting with the channel. You de- cide you want to launch a podcast, or start a blog, or write a newsletter then scramble to find something to say. That approach is backwards.

Instead, start by defining the message first, that way, you can make a more intentional decision about which channels are best suited to deliver it, whether that’s:

• Website

• Social media

• Blog

• Newsletter

• Podcasting

• Youtube / video

• PR

• Live demos

• Events

• ...

Not every message belongs on every channel. Some things are better suited to quick, skimmable formats like LinkedIn. Others need longer-form content like a blog post, podcast, or founder letter. The key is matching your message to the format that will carry it best.

And don’t overcomplicate it. Early on, you only need one or two channels. Pick the ones where your audience is most active and where you’ll actually follow through.

Channel spotlight: your website

Your website is one of the most powerful places to communicate your key messages. It’s often the first (and sometimes only) place where users, candidates, or investors will encounter your company, which makes it your single most important brand touchpoint.

Start with your tagline

Your tagline is usually the headline on your landing page, the first thing people see. It should clearly express the core benefit of your product (refer back to your ‘brand elements’ doc to find it) while reflecting your brand feeling. Here’s what makes a good early-stage tagline:

• Clear: no jargon or clever wordplay that hides the point

• Benefit-led: focus on what the user gets, not what you’ve built

• Emotional tone: calm, bold, empowering, urgent — whatever fits your brand feeling

• Short: aim for 5-8 words

Structure to follow

Here’s a suggested structure to follow that can be adapted to the specificities of your business.

• Hero: Your tagline, 1–2 supporting lines, and a clear call to action

• Social proof: Logos, testimonials, or early traction to build credibility

• Benefits: The key benefits of/use cases for using your product, e.g. “proto- type quickly”

• Key features: 3–4 features with light visual support (icons, screenshots) How it works:

• A simple 3-step overview of the user journey

• Call to action: Repeat your primary CTA

• FAQ: Pre-empt questions and remove friction to conversion

Tips to keep in mind

• Don’t try to say everything - focus on what converts best

• Lead with outcomes – your headline should tell people what they’ll gain

• Write for skimmers – use clear headers, bullets, and short paragraphs Prioritise benefits over features – talk about them, not you

• Stay aligned with your brand feeling – what emotion do you want to provoke in people?

• Keep it human – use simple, confident language

• Be ruthless – only include what helps someone say yes

Channel spotlight: founder branding

In the early days of your startup, your personal brand as a founder is often your most powerful marketing channel. While your company is still unknown, you are immediately visible and accessible.

Your personal presence is the approachable entry point that draws people in before they fully understand your product.

Align with your brand’s feeling, but stay authentic

Your personal brand should exist in the same universe as your company’s brand, but it doesn’t need to be identical. If your company’s feeling is about empowerment, you don’t need to become a caricature of empowerment in your personal presence.

The most effective approach is to find the natural overlap between your authentic self and your company’s values. Your personal content might be more casual, more opinionated, or more playful than your company’s voice - and that’s perfectly fine.

Tell your story

Your personal story (why you started the company and what problem you experienced) is one of your most valuable brand assets. It humanizes your company and creates connections in ways that talking about your product can’t.

To tap into your founder story in a way that aligns with your brand:

• Identify the emotional core: What feeling drove you to start this company? Frustration? Inspiration? Determination? This should connect to your desired brand feeling.

• Find the relatable moments: Which parts of your journey will resonate most with your audience’s own experiences?

• Connect past to present: Show how your personal history directly shaped your company’s approach or values.

• Keep it authentic: Share genuine challenges alongside victories, perfect stories are less believable and relatable.

Remember that you’re building two parallel but connected brands - your personal reputation and your company’s identity. When managed deliberately, they strengthen each other, creating more entry points for people to discover and connect with your vision.

Channel spotlight: PR

PR is obviously an important lever in any GTM strategy, particularly when it comes to driving inbound interest and creating early momentum around your product. In that sense, this section could easily sit within the GTM chapter. However, PR also plays a broader, longer-term role. It’s not just about short- term traction, but about shaping perception, building credibility, and increasing brand awareness over time. PR is especially valuable in the early stages of

a startup, when you’re still building trust. A well-placed article or feature in a reputable publication can act as powerful social proof. At a time when no one has heard of you yet, earned media can help reinforce what your brand stands for, and bring that story into circles you wouldn’t reach on your own.

Be genuinely helpful

Start by identifying journalists who regularly cover your industry. Read their articles, understand their angles, and get familiar with the topics they care about. If you notice gaps in their reporting or have insights that could deepen their coverage, don’t hesitate to reach out—share constructive feedback, offer data, or connect them with experts in your network.

The goal is to build a relationship before you need something. Position your- self as an expert voice in the space. When the time comes to pitch your own news, they’ll already know who you are and how you think about the industry. The most effective relationships with the press are built on mutual value, not transactional asks.

How to get them interested

When you’ve got something to announce and want press coverage, the first question to ask yourself is: is this truly newsworthy? Journalists aren’t going to write about your first sales hire. And unless you’re a tiny startup landing a major, high-profile customer, that alone likely won’t make the cut either. What might get coverage? Things like a significant product launch, a noteworthy fundraising round, or traction that signals a broader trend. But even then, it has to be positioned well and actually stand out.

Also, remember: journalists aren’t here to provide free advertising for your startup, they’re here to write stories that matter to their audience. That’s why it’s crucial to understand who that audience is and tailor your pitch accordingly.

Here are a few tips to help cut through the noise and connect with journalists who receive hundreds of pitches every day:

• Uniqueness - What makes your news genuinely new or different from anything else out there? Why are you uniquely positioned to solve this problem better than anyone else?

• Relevance - How does your story tie into a broader industry shift or cultural trend? Go beyond what your product does for your users, frame it in terms of a growing problem or unmet need that many people or companies are starting to face.

• Humility - Avoid buzzwords and vague claims. Especially in a climate saturated with AI jargon and overblown promises. Journalists can spot fluff from a mile away, make every word count.

• Expertise - Demonstrate a strong grasp of your industry. If you can position yourself as a credible voice (not just about your product, but about the space as a whole) journalists will start to see you as a go-to expert. That means they’re more likely to come back to you for quotes or background on future stories.

Keep in mind: a funding announcement alone might not be enough to spark interest. What’s unique about your investors, your timing, or your market? Are you solving a pressing, widely felt problem in a new way? Are you riding, or resisting, a major trend? The sharper your angle, the better your chances of getting picked up.

Example: Roundtable

Rather than simply announcing their €3M seed round, Roundtable crafted a compelling narrative: “100 business angels from across Europe back a new way to fund startups.” This angle aligned perfectly with their brand mission and tapped into ongoing discussions about early-stage investing. Their clear messaging secured substantial coverage across major tier-one publications.

Be clear on your angle

Imagine this: if you could choose the headline of the TechCrunch article that features your startup tomorrow, what would it be?

That’s the level of clarity you need. Your ideal headline should guide how you craft your press release and how you pitch your story. It should appear in your subject line, your opening paragraph, and be echoed throughout your messaging.

Journalists ultimately decide how they frame a story but if you’re unclear about your positioning, you leave that framing entirely in their hands. And that can lead to a message that misses the mark or fails to resonate.

The clearer and more compelling your angle, the more likely it is to be picked up and accurately represented.

Pitch yourself

Early on, you don’t need a PR agency. In fact, most agencies aren’t a good fit before Series A, they’re costly. At this stage, you don’t need polish, it’s best for you to start building relationships and pitch to journalists.

Start with:

1. A short, authentic pitch

Write a concise email:

• Clearly lead with your news and why it matters.

• Explain your product simply, in one or two sentences.

• Include a link to the press release in your email (more details below).

• Zoom out: Why is this relevant right now? What’s the bigger shift you’re part of?

2. A thoughtful target list

• Look at coverage your competitors received. Who covered them?

• Read recent pieces from those journalists. Understand what resonates.

• Prioritize media your ideal audience genuinely reads, including industry-specific outlets.

3. Personalize every email

• Mention something specific the journalist wrote.

• Keep it brief, conversational, and buzzword-free.

• Offer interviews, data, or insights that genuinely add value to their readers.

Sending 5–10 thoughtful emails is infinitely more effective than blasting out dozens of generic pitches.

Make journalists’ lives easier

Journalists are juggling tight deadlines and overflowing inboxes, so the less friction you create, the more likely you are to get coverage.

Here’s how:

• Prepare a press release (a Notion doc works fine) that’s easy to reference and written in the right tone:

  • Keep it neutral and factual — Press releases must be written in the third person, using clear, impartial language. Avoid opinions, feelings, or hype.

  • Use quotes to express opinions — If you want to include emotion or pers- pective, do it through quotes (typically from the founder, a customer, or an investor). Keep it to 2–4 concise, impactful quotes max.

  • Lead with the essentials — Start with the most important facts: who, what, when, where, and why. Keep the entire release to one page with a strong, clear headline.

• Include a media kit with all the assets a journalist might need: founder bios, product screenshots, company logo files, key facts and figures, customer testimonials, and anything else that makes their job easier.

• Be available and responsive if they follow up with questions or request an interview. Timeliness matters.

• Don’t micromanage their work once the story is published, only reach out to correct factual inaccuracies. Respect their editorial independence.

For high-priority announcements, consider offering an embargo - a way for journalists to prepare their piece ahead of time, with a clear publication date. It shows you understand their workflow and builds professional trust.

When to get help

For early-stage founders, hiring a full-scale PR agency is rarely worth the cost. But working with a freelance PR consultant can be a smart move, especially in situations like these:

• You have no idea where to start, you’re short on time, have no media contacts, and you need someone to maximize the impact of your first big announcement.

• You’re getting a sudden surge of journalist interest, with lots of inbound requests, and you’re unsure how to prioritize or respond strategically.

• You’ve landed opportunities for live interviews (TV, radio, panels) and need media training to present confidently and stay on message.

• You’re planning an international announcement and need help localizing your press release or connecting with media in other regions.

That said, always stay actively involved in your messaging and outreach. No one knows your story better than you do, and journalists often prefer hearing directly from founders. A PR freelancer can help you refine your story, manage logistics, and open doors—but don’t outsource the relationship-building. Taking the time to build direct connections with journalists is one of the most valuable long-term PR investments you can make.

The one question that matters

Whether you’re pitching a journalist, designing your landing page, or creating content, the success of your brand ultimately hinges on one question:

“What do I want people to feel when they encounter my company?”

This single question cuts through the complexity, turning abstract concepts into concrete choices. So as you build your brand in these early days, keep coming back to this question. Let it guide your choices, big and small. Your answer might evolve as you learn and grow, but the question itself will always be your most valuable brand asset.

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🎙️ PMF Collector with Rodolphe Ardant (Spendesk)

Rodolphe didn’t start with a polished product. He started with a browser extension that didn’t work. Then he found a partner, issued virtual cards, and watched usage grow week over week at every client. In this episode of PMF Collector hosted by Mat Vaxelaire, the Spendesk cofounder covers why your first MVP failing can still point you toward the right signal, the 3 concrete moments that told him he had a real business, how to raise a round in 3 weeks after 3 months of VC rejection - and why ignoring your instincts in favour of outside advice is almost always a mistake.

🛡️ Europe’s defense tech moment - a collaboration with Mind the Gap

Hexa Sprint’s Emma Caillat and Agathe Thiery (founder, Mind the Gap) co-authored a piece on European technologies driving real geopolitical and societal impact. Hexa Sprint is currently supporting defense startups through its program - €500K investment and operational support. If you’re building in defense, applications are open.

⚡ Event: CTO Voices x OpenAI

OpenAI has shipped a lot lately: Super App, Codex, 111 new plugins, GPT-Rosalind, a new Agents SDK, ChatGPT Images 2.0, and $122B raised along the way. This Wednesday, Katia Gil Guzman (formerly CTO at Emera, now at OpenAI) joins Hexa CTO Tanguy Goretti for a conversation on how to get the most out of these tools without getting caught in the hype cycle. Drinks follow.

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🌱 Oligoplus (HX26) joins Hexa Sprint

Maxime Imhoff and the Oligoplus team join Hexa Sprint’s Climate cohort. Their bet: precision foliar nutrition by drone. Agronomists identify deficiencies, apply the right micronutrients at the right moment. Farmers pay for results — not inputs. That means +30 to +50% yield increases, less dependency on synthetic fertilizers, and healthier crops. €1.5M revenue in 2025, fully bootstrapped. Target: €5M in 2026.

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🏦 Marble (HX22) launches v1: autonomous AML & fraud monitoring

Marble v1 is live. The platform now covers the full compliance journey (from screening and transaction monitoring to automated detection and AI-assisted investigations) with no gaps between modules. A swarm of AI agents handles what the industry has been billing for separately: tuning detection rules, calibrating scoring models, pre-qualifying alerts. All under the direct supervision of the compliance officer, not a vendor. 100+ financial institutions from the US to Singapore are already on it. Open-source core. On-prem or SaaS.

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🥞 Pancake (ex-Basalt - HX24) — new name, beta next week

Basalt is now Pancake. The team has been heads-down on something big: new name, logo, and identity: done. 50 alpha users already testing: done. Beta launch: next week. More news coming very soon.

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Hexa news

🚀 Six new ideas live on hexa.com/start

Hexa Start Partners Florent Quinti, Mat Vaxelaire, and Raphaël Vullierme each bring their own ideas to the table and are looking for the right founders to build them together. Six highly ambitious bets: QAx, CompanionX, LLMx, PhysicalAIx, CustomsX, PayX. Twelve months of hands-on support, a team to help you build and close your first customers, and three months fully covered in San Francisco.

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🤝 Hexa partners with OpenAI

Every startup in the Hexa portfolio now gets direct access to OpenAI from day one: credits, model access, shared engineering support, and co-hosted events. At Hexa, AI is the core architecture of every company we build, not a feature. From Parallel deploying agents inside hospital workflows to Waniwani helping companies sell inside AI assistants, our founders are reimagining industries from the ground up. This partnership means they’ll have the best tools to do it.

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🏛️ Inside Hexa: investor events in Brussels & Paris

We opened our doors to LPs and investors to share what’s changed. The conversations covered where value is being created, which business models will be reshaped, and where capital should flow next. Hexa Start, Hexa Sprint, and Hexa Scale each presented, with founders from Panora, Forest Admin, Spendesk, Enobase, and Yousign joining to give their perspective.

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The Hexa Team

This article is written by (founder at Mind the Gap) & (Defense Tech & European Sovereignty - VC @ Hexa Sprint). It is a collaboration between Mind the gap and Hexa Sprint. Mind The Gap investigates European technologies and innovations driving real geopolitical and societal impact.

Hexa recently launched a new accelerator, Hexa Sprint, which is currently supporting defense startups through its program (500k investment and operational support)

If you’re building in defense and looking to accelerate your growth, you can apply here.

When we first met at Hexa on a Sunday afternoon a few months ago, we had no idea we would end up here. Friday evening. 6:30 PM. Martin de Gourcuff welcomes us warmly to his bunker-like offices and shows us around the former production lines of the startup turned unicorn.

The next day, the news is brutal: the war in Iran has just begun. Like the Russian-Ukrainian war before it, this new conflict reveals a profound paradigm shift, a new era of the battlefield. While the collective imagination still pictures the so-called “Primes”, like Safran, Thales, or Airbus, as the drivers of innovation, it is now startups that are developing cutting-edge technological products at record speed, addressing the challenges of today’s conflicts directly on the ground. These startups support the military directly on the front lines, delivering the best solutions in a world where everything moves fast. A world where mechanization gives way to dronization, where automation and artificial intelligence play an ever-growing role, and where electronic warfare has become a major stake in modern conflicts.

Beyond software, it is also production capacity, factories, and supply chains that are changing the game, at a time when the multiplication of regional conflicts makes a large-scale war increasingly plausible. At the same time, an existential question arises: is Europe capable of producing its own weapons, on its own soil, with full control over its components?

It is in this context that we had the chance to meet Martin de Gourcuff, co-founder and CTO of Harmattan AI, but also Hadrien Canter, CEO of Alta Ares, and Arnaud Valli, Head of Public Affairs at Comand AI. Come on board with us to the heart of the “New Defense Edge” to discover these French startups at the forefront of modern conflicts.

Part 1: New rules, New players, New game

The peace dividend era is over. As global conflict intensifies and the shadow of a large-scale war has never loomed closer, Europe no longer has a choice: the time has come to rearm.

Asymmetric wars have multiplied and complicated threats (electronic warfare, drone swarms, cyber attacks), creating new challenges that traditional defense strategies struggle to address. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has provided a brutal demonstration: the most sophisticated weapons no longer guarantee victory. Drones costing a few thousand euros are destroying armored vehicles worth several millions. To quote Andrius Kubilius, European Commissioner for Defense and Space, we are now witnessing “€1M missiles facing €10,000 drones.” The conclusion is clear: the rules of the game have changed.

European defense is going through a pivotal moment, shaped by both geopolitical tensions and economic transformations. Under the constant pressure of an open war at its doorstep, and caught in the grip of Sino-American rivalry, Europe must respond. In this new paradigm, traditional defense players are less equipped to operate at the required pace, leaving considerable room for startups capable of iterating quickly and adapting to constantly evolving threats.

Harmattan AI, Alta Ares, Comand AI: the new French startups redefining the European defense landscape.

Born from this urgency to rearm, these three companies were built around the same conviction: today’s threats call for responses that traditional players cannot provide.

Cheap to produce, practically invisible to traditional radars, and capable of being deployed in massive swarms, drones create a radical asymmetry against classic interception systems, which they overwhelm as easily as they bypass. This is the problem Harmattan AI, founded in April 2024, is tackling. Initially focused on detecting anti-personnel mines (an activity it continues to develop in parallel), the startup gradually focused on drone interception, offering verticalized solutions from software to hardware. A trajectory that convinces investors: in January 2026, Harmattan raised $200 million, bringing its valuation to $1.4 billion.

Alta Ares takes a similar path, but its origin is radically different. Founded two years ago directly in Ukraine by Hadrien Canter, the startup was literally born on the front line. Its first solution, Gamma ISR, helps relieve the cognitive load of operators forced to scan video feeds for hours. The second, Pixel Lock C-UAS, powered by artificial intelligence, allows for the automatic interception of loitering munitions like Shahed drones. Validated on the Ukrainian battlefield, the technology has since been tested under extreme conditions in Estonia and validated by NATO.

Beyond counter-drone warfare, modern conflict poses another equally critical challenge: command. In environments saturated with sensors, drones, cyber signals, and OSINT, decision-makers face unprecedented volumes of data, well beyond what a human alone can process in real time. This is precisely the challenge Comand AI wanted to address. Founded by Loïc Mougeolle, former Director of Strategic Innovation at Naval Group, the startup develops military command software enabling faster decision-making by officers, along with automated after-action reviews to extract real-time lessons from operations.

Three companies, three approaches, but a shared genesis. That of a generation that chose to put its skills in service of European defense, not out of opportunism, but out of conviction. Arnaud Valli, former political advisor to NATO and now Head of Public Affairs at Comand AI, summarizes this shift: “We are right in the middle of an AI arms race, and if we are going to have effective systems, it would be better if liberal democracies had them. And I agreed with the secondary option: it would be good if Europe and France had them too.”

A sentiment shared by Martin de Gourcuff, who admits he never imagined working on defense systems: “Today, I have a much clearer sense of the purpose it serves.” At Alta Ares, this utility takes an even more concrete form. “Alta Ares is a mission-driven company,” asserts Hadrien Canter. “There are few companies today in Europe that code in the morning, and by the evening, what they coded is running on interceptor drones shooting down Shaheds. And that is a point of pride.”

Software as a lever for operational superiority

War has always been a technological accelerator. From gunpowder to the atomic bomb, from World War II radars to the drones of Mosul, every major conflict has reconfigured the relationship between innovation and military power. But something has fundamentally changed this time: the decisive advantage is no longer about tonnage or caliber. It comes down to the software layer, the one that turns an ordinary drone into a precision system, or a thirty-year-old platform into an augmented combat tool.

Beyond the robotization of the battlefield, we are now witnessing the autonomization of the entire chain, from decision-making to combat action. As Martin de Gourcuff sums it up: “We can add far more features to the defense systems we develop thanks to software and algorithmic advances, especially in machine learning. And that, in particular, makes it possible to render the systems much more autonomous than they were before.”

In a context where defense budgets do not allow everything to be replaced, and where acquisition cycles remain long, software becomes the fastest and most cost-effective lever to increase the power of existing arsenals. Software thus improves hardware, as Arnaud Valli points out: “We have systems like the T55, a tank dating back to the 50s, which is still used but is improved thanks to software. Software is not just an application overlay: it is a way to improve the hardware, to make it more competent and more effective [...]. Software is still quite decisive in today’s digitized armies, which are increasingly robotic.”

A paradigm shift in the defense industry

In a war of position like in Ukraine, this autonomization translates into a concrete operational advantage: mobilizing fewer soldiers, in a context where armies are struggling to recruit, with better-performing equipment. Above all, it provides an agility that large industrial groups are structurally incapable of offering. In Ukraine, the rules of the game evolve in a matter of weeks: jamming, fiber-optic drones, electronic countermeasures, new flight profiles. The Primes, excellent at building sophisticated systems over long cycles, find themselves outpaced by the rhythm of a war of attrition where what matters most is resilience against enemy innovation and the ability to mass-produce.

Arnaud Valli, who observed this system from the inside during his years at NATO, points out its limitations: “In France, the armed forces make a request, the DGA translates this operational need into an industrial need and asks the manufacturers to produce it. And the user hardly ever spoke to the manufacturer, except upon delivery. Which, unfortunately, sometimes resulted in absurdities between the demands of the operators and the final product.” Startups, on the other hand, operate with a different mode of functioning, often referred to as DefTech. “What does that imply? It is a much more iterative way of working, directly with the users,” specifies Arnaud Valli.

Major industrial players have clearly taken the measure of these new actors: Dassault Aviation took a stake in Harmattan AI, while Safran acquired Preligens, a French startup using AI for satellite image analysis. These moves go beyond mere financial logic: they reflect an assumed complementarity. Hadrien Canter places this dynamic in its broader context: “I think we are right in this pre-war phase, and that we have an enormous responsibility, which obliges us to have the greatest rigor in what we do. France has an important role to play in building the European defense of tomorrow. And this role can become a reality with the help of startups, but also with the help of large corporate groups.”

The awakening of institutions and private players

This realization is not limited to large manufacturers; institutions are also beginning their shift. Certain initiatives have emerged, such as the creation of the Future Combat Command (CCF) or the Defense Innovation Agency (AID), aimed at modernizing the French army and integrating startups into the Defense Technological and Industrial Base (BITD). Hadrien Canter measures its daily impact: “There is a real awareness compared to when we started two years ago. This is largely due to an organization called the Drone Pact. It is a real success; it helps us enormously to identify the right points of contact and to bridge the gap between the final need and the manufacturer. It is a link that was stretched too thin for too long, and we take great pleasure in shortening it.”

This openness also translates into concrete contracts: Harmattan AI has secured commitments with the French and British armies, a strong signal of institutional credibility acquired in barely two years of existence.

Private capital is following suit. Funds like Sisyphus Ventures or Expansion, and dedicated acceleration programs like Hexa Sprint Defense, have turned DefTech into a full-fledged asset class, where it was still taboo a few years ago. Martin de Gourcuff observes this in his own fundraising: “There has been a huge shift. Investors are much more open now to the defense industry. Many of them told us that we were the first defense company they put money into.”

The BITD is transforming. It attracts capital, talent, and a new generation of founders who would not have imagined building weapons systems five years ago. The cards are being reshuffled, and for Europe, the momentum is here. The challenge now is to transform it into the foundations of lasting sovereignty.

Partie 2 : Produce or Perish

Sovereignty is no longer an abstract concept. In a world where armed conflict is once again the norm, it refers to a concrete and brutal reality: the ability of a State to decide its own fate on its own territory, without depending on the goodwill of an ally or the supply chain of an adversary. This is exactly what Ukraine has been fighting for since February 2022, and it is precisely where the three startups we spoke with have chosen to commit themselves.

Because being “on the edge” is not a metaphor. The solutions from Alta Ares, Harmattan AI, and Comand AI are not tested in Parisian labs or German simulation centers; they are running on the front line. Alta Ares produces its interceptor drones in Ukraine, as close as possible to the units that use them. Harmattan AI and Comand AI are also deployed there. These startups do not use war as an experimental playground: they respond to real, immediate, and vital needs. Every successful interception is an impact avoided. Hadrien Canter testifies to this: “Today the results are quite good, we have already been able to shoot down more than a dozen Shaheds. And we keep counting. Every night. And we tell ourselves that every Shahed shot down is potentially a piece of critical infrastructure that is protected.”

Beyond their agility as startups and their software-oriented product design strategy, the context of high-intensity war on Europe’s doorstep has allowed these companies to test their solutions in real conditions and produce for immediate needs. “One week of development for us in Ukraine is the equivalent of two months in Germany or France,” Arnaud Valli emphasizes. This access to a massive market hungry for innovative options and products has allowed them to develop solutions that meet the needs of the Ukrainian armies for their fight, for their freedom. And more broadly, these solutions also allow Europe and European armies to prepare for future battles.

The situation in the Middle East has reinforced, with added brutality, what Ukraine had already demonstrated. Iran was one of the first States to systematize the large-scale use of low-cost drones, the Shaheds, produced for a few thousand euros, capable of inflicting considerable damage, and which cost several millions to intercept. A radical economic asymmetry, revealing a fundamental rule ignored for too long: in a war of attrition, mastering production capabilities is just as decisive as the sophistication of the systems.

The rapid depletion of missile stockpiles in the region is the starkest illustration. And while some European leaders have become aware of this reality, translating it into concrete industrial capabilities remains painfully slow. As Hadrien Canter observes: “Our adversaries understood long ago that quantity has become a quality. And unfortunately, some of our leaders have understood it, but it takes time to implement.”

Designing high-performance and autonomous systems is one thing. Producing them on a large scale, at a low cost, and without depending on foreign powers is quite another, and this is often where everything is decided. In a war of attrition, the supply chain is not a logistical detail: it is a full-fledged strategic issue. The factory has become a weapon once again. And mastering it is a condition for sovereignty.

Whoever controls their supply chain controls their destiny

This change of scale shatters Western military orthodoxy. Until now, calibrated for one-off expeditionary operations, our armies favored ultra-sophisticated systems produced in very small numbers. But once a conflict turns into a war of position, the real moat inevitably moves to the assembly line.

Survival no longer depends solely on R&D, but on the absolute primacy of physical production capacity. A brutal reality summed up by Martin de Gourcuff (Harmattan):

“In Ukraine, what makes the difference is being able to produce hundreds of thousands of units. It is not so much the intrinsic performance of the system, although obviously that helps. But performance and cost are generally highly correlated; so we end up with a fundamental trade-off to make between performance and mass.”

In a world where high intensity is becoming the norm again, mass production implies total control of the supply chain. For our Defense Tech startups, the ambition is clear, albeit complex: breaking free from the double dependency on China and the United States.

The case of the United States is particularly tricky. While they remain historical allies, protectionist tensions, exacerbated by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, are rewriting the rules. The main threat to European companies lies in the ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) compliance. The moment a single American component subject to ITAR is integrated into a system, no matter how small, the entire final product is “infected” by the standard, forcing the European company to request an export license from the US government.

On the software side, the market remains largely dominated by American tech giants. To train its models, Comand AI must source GPUs outside of China, turning to Taiwan, South Korea, or Vietnam. At Harmattan AI, which uses powerful hardware accelerators, there is currently no viable alternative to the American giant Nvidia.

At Alta Ares, strategic partnerships in Asia, particularly with Taiwan, are a deliberate choice, as Hadrien Canter explains:

“We work with Taiwan for production capacities and niche expertise, but also because they are an ally. Taiwan faces the same threat as Ukraine today, and buys French equipment. We created this company out of conviction. When we know that China supplies 75% of the electronic components for Iranian Shahed drones, why shouldn’t we provide our assistance to Taiwan?”

Wanting to relocate the entire value chain back to Europe, however, runs up against the wall of economic realities. The production of cutting-edge semiconductors requires massive investments and relies on indispensable civilian players. Arnaud Valli (Comand AI) provides a lucid assessment:

“We are dependent on civilian market structures to get our GPUs. As long as Nvidia manufactures its cards in Asia, we will be dependent. The smallest TSMC factory in the United States requires $12 billion in investment. Relocating therefore requires a strategic investment vision from the State, from data centers to production, and above all accepting, at least for a time, to produce at a loss compared to components made in Vietnam that will always be cheaper. It is a real political and industrial choice.”

Furthermore, the chain is globalized and hyper-specialized: TSMC cannot manufacture its chips without extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines from the Dutch company ASML, which holds a near-global monopoly on this technology. Europe cannot do without Taiwan, which cannot do without Europe.

While there are vast European programs to relocate the manufacturing of micro-components or batteries, the road is long. In the meantime, the hardware remains dependent on Asian or American civilian markets for cost and labor reasons. Faced with China’s hegemony over rare earths, which are essential for motor magnets, batteries, or radiofrequency systems like radars, agility is essential. French startups are expanding internationally to secure their supplies and markets: Alta Ares is forging ties in the Middle East for radar and electro-optical expertise, while Harmattan AI is expanding into Switzerland, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates.

European Defense: An unfinished puzzle

Ultimately, building a sovereign supply chain raises a much broader question: the harmonization of European defense systems. And the task is colossal.

Despite their geographical proximity, European countries think about war through the prism of their own history. A former colonial power does not project its forces in the same way as Germany, which was militarily constrained for a long time, or Poland, which lives with the Russian threat at its borders. This divergence of objectives creates an industrial fragmentation bordering on the absurd: “In Europe, there are 15 different types of tanks. In the United States, there is only one,” points out Martin de Gourcuff.

The relationship with the American nuclear umbrella is just as divisive. Driven by de Gaulle’s vision, France built a strategic autonomy unique in Europe, distinguishing itself by its ability to design its own aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and fighter jets. Constrained by a small domestic market, this model contrasts with the reality of many European neighbors, strategically and technologically vassalized by Washington.

One might have thought that recent geopolitical upheavals, up to Donald Trump’s most surreal proposals, like his idea of taking Greenland back from Denmark (by buying it or, if necessary, by force),would be a definitive wake-up call. But the inertia remains, and many Europeans still refuse to consider that their historical ally might prioritize its own interests to the detriment of those of the Old Continent. Faced with these industrial and political realities, one question remains unanswered: is European Defense condemned to be nothing more than a chimera?

Part 3: Hardcoding the Red Line

The sovereignty imperative goes far beyond simply mastering hardware components. Today, the true frontline lies in the adoption of artificial intelligence within our defense systems. While the technical and strategic challenges are vast, the most pressing questions remain ethical in nature and fundamentally entangled with the growing autonomy of our arsenals.

Many whistleblowers are raising concerns about the rapid development of AI. Could an artificial intelligence with amplified capabilities become a systemic threat to humanity? While these narratives echo the most famous works of science fiction, the concerns are real and voiced by leading figures in the ecosystem itself. In a recent essay, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, clearly outlines the threats posed by AI if it is militarized without safeguards: the risk of a hostile nation achieving military dominance or launching large-scale cyberattacks, the appropriation of these tools by terrorist groups to multiply their destructive capacity, or the concentration of absolute power in the hands of dictators.

Described as “patriotic” by Arnaud Valli, this essay is a strike warning against the potential excesses of defense AI, but also raises deep philosophical questions. Martin de Gourcuff shares that wariness, and confirms that there is no such thing as zero-risk when dealing with fully autonomous systems:

“LLMs provide access to a vast body of knowledge and open up a wide range of possibilities. Unfortunately, it is a technology that can be used for harmful purposes. How worried should we be? I’m not entirely sure. But we must not forget that this tool is not fundamentally constrained to do good.”

In this context, a key question emerges: does the growing implementation of AI in Defense inherently represent a risk?

The startup paradox: more AI for more ethics?

When it comes to weaponry, AI primarily translates into autonomy. While automated systems (drones, missiles) have existed for decades, the current robotization of the battlefield marks a new step forward. Yet for our startups, the conclusion is unanimous and almost counterintuitive: controlled automation enables a level of efficiency and performance that strengthens the ethics of strikes.

In practice, this plays out in one concrete advantage: video feedback from autonomous drones makes strikes reversible. Where launching a traditional missile is irreversible, an interceptor drone strike can be canceled up to the final five seconds. Hadrien Canter recalls a tragedy that could have been avoided:

“When pro-Russian separatists and Russian armed forces shot down civilian flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014, they believed they were targeting a Ukrainian military aircraft. [...] Today, when a drone is launched to intercept a target, if we realize that the radar lock was actually on a friendly or civilian drone, video feedback allows us to cancel the strike at the last second.”

Harmattan AI takes the argument one step further: specialization itself is the safeguard. “We are developing Gobi, a drone interceptor. Unless we modify its code, it can never be used to target civilians. From that perspective, it is almost more secure than a traditional anti-aircraft gun, which can easily be turned against anyone,” explains Martin de Gourcuff.

Automation is not limited to deploying swarms of drones; it relies on the resilience of communication networks to operate a global command and control (C2) system, similar to the American Combined JADC2 program. However, Arnaud Valli points out the fragility of this hyper-connectivity: “This connectivity can always be compromised, even if Starlink or other constellations make 5G available everywhere.” To what extent can armed forces rely on cloud availability in the middle of combat?

What makes this automation inevitable is a single imperative: accelerating the Kill Chain, the sequence of processing a target. The goal is to drastically reduce the time between detecting the enemy and neutralizing it.

“The Russians have improved their detection-recognition-strike system in a very impressive way: previously, it took them five minutes to identify and destroy a target, now it’s under 30 seconds,” notes Arnaud Valli.

AI is revolutionizing targeting, even reshaping the economics of war, as observed through the Iranian conflict. “During the first strikes [recent ones in the Middle East], there may have been 1,000 strikes managed by only around a hundred analysts… That is 100 times fewer personnel than during the Gulf War, for four times as many strikes. When applied to data aggregation, this multiplier effect is terrifying. But ultimately, it does not win a war on its own,” tempers Arnaud Valli.

The “Human-in-the-loop” and the wall of operational reality

Despite these advances, operational safety is only guaranteed if humans remain in the decision-making loop. AI helps reduce the operator’s cognitive load by filtering information. “AI provides suggestions, but humans remain at the core of the decision-making process,” insists Hadrien Canter.

Technically, autonomous defense systems face the same limitations as autonomous vehicles: handling rare events. Martin de Gourcuff illustrates this challenge:

“If a monkey crosses the road in front of our car, we understand the situation. The algorithm, however, does not: it either misidentifies the obstacle or makes a poor decision because its training data contains very few instances of monkeys crossing roads.”

These perceptual limitations, combined with sensor constraints (sunlight, hallucinations…), slow down the development of fully autonomous systems, even though technologies such as World Models aim to address them. Hadrien Canter sets the record straight regarding tech-driven fantasies: “While some competing companies oversell a futuristic vision where everything works at the push of a button… operational reality is very different. There is noise in the data, sensors get jammed. Human lives are at stake, and that must not be forgotten.”

Beyond the technical dimension, automation raises deeply political questions. Arnaud Valli highlights the risk of desensitization to war:

“It is clear that systems are becoming increasingly autonomous, with humans simply ‘turning the key’ because they can no longer compute everything. But if China were to deploy a fleet of robots in the Pacific against a US fleet, would there not be far less political and social resistance to initiating a conflict, knowing that there are no direct human casualties?”

The uncomfortable truth is that hostile powers aren’t waiting for a consensus on the ethics of autonomous warfare, they’re already fielding it, pushing Western armed forces toward an essential doctrinal renewal. Who, human or machine, is legally responsible for an autonomous strike? What delegated authorities to open fire are permitted? It is along this narrow tactical and moral backbone that Defense Tech must evolve. “Our companies must work with the military, but also with theorists, to build a clear, defined framework capable of evolving,” concludes Arnaud Valli.

Part 4: The war of tomorrow is being shaped today

As institutional trust strengthens and private capital finally opens up to Defense Tech, the time for mere proof of concept is over. For these startups, the ambition goes beyond providing isolated technological building blocks: the goal is to establish themselves as the backbone of tomorrow’s armed forces.

The ultimate objective? To become the central infrastructure, the global operating system of European defense. A direct response to American technological ambitions, such as the highly interconnected Combined JADC2 military program. Martin de Gourcuff confirms this desire to be at the core of the system: “There is real value in being at the heart of the data system. It is fully aligned with our ambition to build the operating system for command centers, the data infrastructure, and the communication systems of armed forces.”

To summarize this pursuit of interoperability and software dominance, Arnaud Valli offers a striking metaphor:

“Why do you think American Defense Tech giants use names drawn from Tolkien’s universe, like Palantir or Anduril? It’s one to rule them all. [...] In an ideal world, we would want a piece of software connected to everyone. The goal, within a European ecosystem, is to reach several billion in revenue. If we manage to shake up how procurement agencies operate in favor of end users, we will have achieved a great deal.”

This software sovereignty must also enable Europe to compensate for the shortcomings of its historical allies. Hadrien Canter sees this as a strong strategic signal: when the United States runs out of stock and can no longer supply Patriot missiles, the emergence of France and its ecosystem with agile and effective interception solutions shifts the balance on the global geopolitical chessboard.

But to turn this vision into reality and establish the continent’s security architecture, money and political will alone will not suffice. The true decisive factor of this decade will be human. “Join us to build concrete solutions and have an impact. There is work to be done, we are looking for motivated people committed to this mission-driven mindset,” says Hadrien Canter as a general call to action. The message is clear: tomorrow’s European sovereignty urgently needs the best talent of today.

Closing words

Writing this article opened our eyes to a world most of us instinctively turn away from: Defense, its mechanisms, its realities. A world opaque, sometimes uncomfortable but more urgent to understand than ever.

Because tomorrow’s threat may not yet have a name, but already exists. And while we look away, entire teams are coding, testing, iterating, sometimes just a few kilometers from the front line, so that Europe can defend itself in a world that did not wait for us to become hostile.

We thank Martin, Hadrien, and Arnaud for opening the doors of their offices to us. And we thank them even more now that we fully grasp the fight they carry every day, to protect the sovereignty of peoples. A fight that, ultimately, concerns us all.

If you enjoyed this edition, please consider sharing it with a colleague or friend who wants to understand how geopolitics and tech intertwine.

Best,

Agathe & Emma

Read up on the 10 takeaways from the episode:
1) The real problem wasn’t spending - it was how decisions were made

Before Spendesk existed, Rodolphe had already lived through the problem inside fast-growing companies. Teams were encouraged to move quickly and take ownership. That autonomy was essential to growth. But the moment money entered the equation, everything slowed down.

Finance, understandably, needed control. Visibility over cash, approval processes, compliance. The result was a system where every expense had to be validated and justified - often manually. And as the company scaled, that system became heavier and heavier.

At some point, the contradiction became obvious.

“I was rebuilding the exact bureaucracy I had hated before, just to regain control.”

That’s where the real insight came from. The issue wasn’t that employees were spending too much, or that finance lacked tools. It was that companies were trying to operate in a modern, decentralized way with systems designed for centralized control.

Spendesk was conceived as a way to resolve that structural mismatch: to give teams the ability to act, while allowing finance to keep a clear, real-time view of what was happening.

2) The first version failed and clarified everything

Like most early-stage products, the first version of Spendesk was far from what it would eventually become. The initial idea was to solve a very specific pain point: the sharing of company cards.

The solution they built was simple. A browser extension that allowed employees to access a shared company card, while logging who used it and when. It worked, technically speaking. But it didn’t solve the core issue.

Finance teams didn’t trust it. Security concerns remained. And most importantly, the product sat on the surface of the problem rather than addressing its root.

That failure turned out to be decisive. It forced a realization that would shape everything that followed: you can’t build a meaningful finance product if you don’t control the transaction itself.

In other words, visibility without control isn’t enough.

3) Building under constraints and learning faster because of it

At that stage, nothing was in place to make things easier. There were no obvious payment partners in Europe, no infrastructure readily available to issue cards, and no fully formed technical team to build the product quickly. Rodolphe himself went back to coding to push things forward, even though he hadn’t done it in years.

“I would spend four days building what a good engineer would do in one hour.”

From the outside, this looks inefficient. But in practice, it created something far more valuable than speed: proximity to the problem.

Eventually, they found a partner that allowed them to issue virtual cards. It wasn’t perfect, and the setup introduced friction that would normally kill adoption. But it was enough to test the next hypothesis.

4) The first real signal: customers taking irrational risks

The early product allowed companies to generate virtual cards for online purchases. To use it, however, customers had to pre-fund accounts - through a structure that was far from reassuring.

They had to wire money to Gibraltar.

And yet, customers did it.

That moment revealed something fundamental: the pain was strong enough that companies were willing to accept friction, uncertainty, and risk to solve it.

When users behave in ways that seem irrational on paper, it’s often because the problem you’re solving is much bigger than you thought.

5) The second signal: usage that grows instead of fading

If the first signal proved that the problem existed, the second showed that the solution was working.

Typically, early SaaS products see a burst of activity followed by decline. Users test, explore, and then slowly disengage when the product doesn’t integrate deeply enough into their workflows.

That didn’t happen here.

Week after week, usage increased. More transactions, more teams involved, more use cases emerging organically inside companies. What started as a tool for marketing teams quickly expanded to other departments, without any push from the product itself.

“Normally usage declines. For us, it kept increasing.”

6) The final signal: willingness to pay - without friction

Up to that point, everything had been free. Which meant one critical question remained unanswered: would companies actually pay for it?

When they introduced pricing, the expectation was cautious. Losing a significant portion of users would have been normal, even healthy. Instead, almost all customers converted.

Out of around a hundred companies, only a handful chose not to continue.

“We thought we would lose half. Almost everyone stayed.”

7) When investors don’t believe what customers already know

With these signals in hand, fundraising should have been straightforward. It wasn’t.

For several months, the response from investors was largely negative. The core idea — giving employees direct access to company spending — went against deeply ingrained assumptions about financial control.

“Companies will never give cards to employees.”

The breakthrough came when they changed their approach. Instead of trying to convince traditional venture capital, they turned to people who understood the problem directly: founders, operators, and early customers.

Within three weeks, the round was closed.

8) Building in Europe means building complexity from day one

Spendesk’s early development was rooted in Europe, largely because that’s where the founders had access to their first network and customers. But this choice came with a structural challenge that shaped the company’s trajectory.

Unlike the US, Europe is not a single market. Expanding means navigating multiple countries, each with its own regulations, behaviors, and operational constraints. What works in one market doesn’t automatically translate to another.

“You end up duplicating your effort in each country.”

This makes growth slower and more complex, but it also creates a different kind of strength. Companies that succeed in this environment build resilience early, and develop systems that can handle fragmentation.

9) The role of intuition when everything becomes less clear

Looking back, one of the most striking lessons doesn’t come from the early product decisions, but from how decisions evolve as the company grows.

In the beginning, founders rely heavily on instinct, simply because there are no established rules to follow. As the company scales, that instinct is often diluted by external input — advisors, investors, benchmarks, best practices.

That shift can be dangerous.

“Every time I ignored my intuition, it was a mistake.”

The challenge isn’t to reject advice, but to avoid overfitting to it. The ability to filter signal from noise becomes a critical skill, especially when navigating uncharted territory.

The takeaway

What makes Spendesk’s early story interesting isn’t just the outcome, but the sequence of signals that shaped it.

A problem that felt operational turned out to be structural. A failed MVP clarified what truly mattered. Customers validated the product not through feedback, but through behavior — by taking risks, increasing usage, and ultimately choosing to pay.

Behind it all, there’s a consistent pattern: progress didn’t come from perfect planning, but from continuously testing assumptions against reality, and adjusting quickly when they didn’t hold.

In the end, building a category isn’t about having the right idea from the start.

It’s about recognizing, early enough, when you’re onto something real and having the discipline to follow it all the way through.

In the early days of building a company, go-to-market is about experimentation. Your job isn’t to find the perfect channel or build the definitive playbook. It’s to test everything. Try ideas, kill what doesn’t work, double down on what does.

This is the part of the journey where nothing is obvious. You don’t yet know which channel will work best, what message will resonate, or which customer segment will bite first. And that’s normal.

Don’t fall into the trap of over-engineering your growth too early. It’s not the time to hire a performance marketing team or automate a funnel you haven’t validated. It’s a time for hands-on, founder-led discovery: testing outbound, inbound, partnerships, communities, content, even just good old conversations.

Think of this as your testing lab. The goal is to get from zero to something and to learn as much as you can in the process.

This chapter is your guide for that phase: how to test, what to test, and how to turn early signals into momentum that carries you toward your first 100 customers.

The founder’s role in go-to-market

In the early days, there’s no dedicated sales team. No growth hire. No account manager. There’s just you: the founder.

Before you delegate go-to-market (GTM) to experts, you need to understand the mechanics yourself. GTM at the start isn’t just about execution, it’s about experimentation and learning.

At this stage, a founder is the GTM team. That means wearing several hats:

• Sales: You need to know how to pitch, handle objections, close deals and understand why people say “yes” or “no.” If you want to attract great sales talent later, you need to prove you can sell first.

• Lead generation: You need to have an idea on how to find your early users, whether it’s cold outreach, warm networks, events, or content. One tip: be creative.

• Growth marketing: You need to test and learn quickly, from landing pages to email sequences to acquisition channels. What messaging gets attention? What drives conversion?

• Account management: You need to own the relationship after the sale. The best way to reduce churn is to stay close to your first users, solve their problems, and learn what “value” really means in their context.

But you won’t be good at everything. That’s normal. What matters is knowing where you’re strong and where you’re not.

Tomorrow, you’ll hire specialists to take over these roles. But today, your job is to master the basics and know where your strengths and weaknesses lie so you know exactly what kind of person to bring in next.

“In the beginning, like many entrepreneurs, we focused almost entirely on the product... But the problem is, even if your product is great, if nobody uses it, it’s worthless... From day one, think hard about how you’re going to distribute it. Search for your Product-Market Fit and your Go-To-Market Fit at the same time.”

– Alex Louisy, CEO and Cofounder of Upflow

“The goal of the early-stage GTM phase is to establish direct contact with the market and define your ICP. At this stage, you should avoid over-optimizing or automating too early. It’s important to not automate processes that you haven’t first validated manually. Especially now, with the explosion of AI tools and sales engagement platforms that make automation easier than ever.”

– Vasco Alexandre, CEO and Cofounder of Dotfile

Defining and refining your ICP

You won’t nail your ICP on day one - and that’s ok

A great ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is narrow and precisely scoped. But getting there starts broad. Early on, you need to be open to different ICP possibilities and then test those hypotheses.

Begin by listing all the attributes that define your potential ICP(s). Your MVP and early discovery interviews will give you strong signals about who stands to benefit most. Use the list below as inspiration, not as a checklist to complete for the sake of “best practices.” Only include attributes that clearly align with the problem your product solves and help you concentrate your go-to-market efforts.

It’s normal at this stage to define not one, but two or three possible ICPs. That’s a good thing. Your job now is to describe them clearly so you can validate them later. The goal isn’t to land on the one right away, it’s to generate strong candidates to test.

Eventually, a solid ICP boils down to just a few key attributes. But early on, being too narrow too soon can be limiting - exploration comes first.

Here are some attributes to consider when defining your early ICP(s):

• Company size: instead of saying “SMB” or “mid-market,” get specific. If your product works best in companies with 100–300 employees because that’s when certain workflows start breaking down or when an IT director is in place, use that specific range.

• Sector: what verticals get the most value from your product? Healthcare? Fintech? E-Commerce?

• Geo: if you sell a finance product, a US-based company might expect QuickBooks integration, while an EU-based one might demand Cegid and GDPR alignment.

• Role: be crystal clear on who experiences the pain — and who makes the buying decision. Your tool might solve a daily headache for an SDR, but if the CRO is the one signing the check, your ICP is the CRO. Always anchor your ICP to the role that drives the purchase.

• Team size: different from company size, sometimes what matters most is the size and composition of the team you’re selling to. For example, if your product brings significant value specifically to finance teams with at least 4 people, define your ICP accordingly.

• Tools used: If your product fits neatly next to tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, or QuickBooks, or replaces a clunky part of them, bake that into your ICP. If 80% of your best-fit users already use Tool X, it’s a signal.

• Willingness to buy: don’t just describe who your ICP is — define what makes them ready. Ideal buyers have the pain now, the authority to make a decision, and budget to move.

  “Many founders aren’t ruthless enough when defining their ICP. It should feel almost absurdly narrow. That precision makes product decisions and sales conversations dramatically easier because your customers all share the same needs. Early on, prioritize ICPs that are easy to close and deeply engaged. Your first users should help shape the product with serious usage and real feedback.”

  – Vasco Alexandre, CEO and Cofounder of Dotfile

It’s time to test and refine your ICP

The purpose of working with design partners (DPs) is to see who gets the most value from it, and just as importantly, who doesn’t. In the next section we’ll dive into how to run a successful DP program.

“You start to define your ICP through three key signals: who you can engage in meaningful conversations, who you can convert, and who actually sticks with your product. To test that third dimension, we made a deliberate choice early on: avoid locking design partners (or later customers) into long-term contracts. Instead of offering annual commitments, we went with one-month engagements. This gave us the agility to iterate quickly and see who truly fit. While shorter contracts made deals easier to close, they also led to higher churn. But that churn was incredibly valuable as it clearly showed us who wasn’t part of our ICP, and helped us sharpen our focus moving forward.”

– Hugues Renou, CEO & Cofounder of Tengo

Once you’ve selected your DPs, it’s time to test your assumptions. If you’ve defined multiple ICPs, this phase will help you see which one engages most deeply with your MVP. Pay close attention to usage patterns, feedback, and the key metrics that you’re following - they’ll help you refine key ICP attributes like tooling fit, team size, or urgency of the problem.

But your ICP shouldn’t be treated as fixed after this phase. It’s a living hypothesis, and ongoing refinement is essential. Continue testing through outbound campaigns, inbound leads, and sales conversations. For Spendesk, they quickly realized that small companies weren’t the right ICP fit:

“When speaking with a three-person company, it was clear that managing spending wasn’t yet a significant issue; they would simply share one company card around the table, without any real friction. However, we observed that once a company reached a certain stage of growth — when it began structuring itself more formally — things changed: the finance manager or CFO typically became the one holding the company card, and that’s when the real pain surfaced.”

– Rodolphe Ardant, cofounder of Spendesk

Feedback loops between ICP and MVP

When you’re validating your early market, the instinct is often to tweak your ICP when things don’t click to look for a “better-fit” customer. But sometimes, the insight isn’t about changing who you’re targeting. It’s about changing what you’re offering.

As new customer segments start to emerge, you may realize they use your product differently and could unlock more long-term value. You might shift your ICP toward this new segment and evolve the product to better serve their needs. It becomes a flywheel: a more valuable product attracts better-fit customers, which further informs product direction.

“At first, our customers were very small teams but as we started signing slightly larger companies, with five to ten users, we noticed a critical pattern: they weren’t just using phones. They were using entire tool stacks to manage their operations. We quickly realized that if Aircall wanted to be truly valuable, it would need to develop integrations.

If we had stayed focused on very small teams, with a lightweight product, we might have built a great business, but probably not a product that needed deep integrations. So it wasn’t just product logic, it was also customer evolution that led us toward integrations and being part of a broader tool stack.”

– Olivier Pailhes, cofounder of Aircall

From 1 to 10 clients: Design Partner program

Why run a DP program?

In the earlier chapter on Product, we covered how crucial design partners are for validating your MVP and sensing early product–market fit. Now let’s look at how you can turn your design partners into your first 10 paying customers.The DP Program is your first real confrontation with the market. It’s where theory meets friction. You’re not just talking to potential users, you’re solving real problems for real people, inside real companies.

You’re using your time, your product, and your expertise to help them achieve something specific. When you do, you’ve not only validated the need, you’ve earned your first customers.

How to find your DPs

Here’s how to find your design partners:

• Tap back into discovery. The people you spoke with during discovery are a great start. If they fit your ICP and showed a real need, circle back.

• Leverage your network. Design partner programs are built on trust, and warm intros go a long way. These folks are more likely to give you a shot, and more forgiving of early bugs.

• Go public. Post a “call for design partners” on social media. Be specific: what you’re building, who it’s for, what you’re offering.

• Run targeted outbound. Send small batches of highly personalized messages that fit your ICP and cold call if necessary.

If you have interested prospects but your MVP isn’t ready yet, start nurturing them. What works well:

• Short, regular product update emails

• Behind-the-scenes content (screenshots, design decisions, early wins)

• Intimate invite-only events or roundtables to bring early believers together

“Our approach was completely outbound, primarily through discovery calls. We would tell potential partners about our Design Partner Program using a Deck and invite them to join.”

– Hugues Renou, CEO & Cofounder of Tengo

It shouldn’t be free

Yes, DPs should pay. A fixed fee, for early access over a defined period. At
the end of that period, they get a discount if they decide to become long-term customers. But the fee matters — if you can’t find five companies ready to pay for your product, even in its earliest form, you probably shouldn’t be building it.

“Have the ‘Willingness to Pay’ conversation as early as possible — ideally during the first user interviews... If they respond vaguely or seem unsure, that’s a red flag.”

– Jordane Giuly, Cofounder of Spendesk

It helps qualify serious partners and creates a clear expectation of value. The price doesn’t need to be high, but it should be high enough so that it’s still a commitment. For a bank, $1000 might feel like nothing and they’ll treat it that way. But for a startup or scaleup, that same amount could signal real buy-in. Find the number that makes your DPs care.

We often recommend splitting the payment, 50% upfront when the product is delivered, and 50% at the end of the program, once value has been proven.

“People only truly value what they pay for. If they don’t pay, they won’t use your product with the same intensity, and they won’t give you as relevant feedback. So it’s good to always try to monetize from the beginning.”

– Vasco Alexandre, CEO & Cofounder of Dotfile

“We monetized about two years in. 95% of people said they were willing to pay. But that also meant we clearly waited too long. Our pricing model was overly generous. In hindsight, it was a mistake not to be more firm: either you pay, or you don’t use it.”

– Christophe Pasquier, CEO & Cofounder of Slite

“Setting your price is a craft, not a formula. Mathilde Collin, cofounder of Front, famously asked early design partners to put a price on the value it created for them telling them, “It won’t be free, so tell us what it’s worth to you per user.” They could pay in money or even physical gifts. This approach grounded pricing in real perceived value. It’s not about getting the number right immediately, but about deeply understanding where the product sits in the customer’s mind.”

– Quentin Nickmans, Partner and Cofounder of Hexa

Think of it like a sales process - because it is

A Design Partner Program isn’t just about feedback, it’s your first sales motion. Yes, your MVP might still be rough, but you’re still selling it. And the fundamentals of sales apply.

You first call with potential DPs should be structured like this: 15 minutes of discovery to understand the prospect’s need 15 minutes on your DP deck — see structure below

Use the BANT framework to qualify:

• Budget: Do they have the budget or flexibility to pay?

• Authority: Are you speaking to the decision maker?

• Need: Is the problem clearly defined and urgent?

• Timing: Can they start using it within a reasonable timeframe?

If the lead isn’t a fit, it’s okay to cut the call short. Respect your time and theirs.

If they’re not the decision maker but show real interest, set up a second call with the right stakeholders.

Every call should end with a clear next step. After each call, define exactly where the lead stands:

• Not a fit → Close the loop and move on

• Not now → Add to your nurture list and check in later

• Qualified → Send an offer (not a pitch deck, an actual offer)

• Second call → Only if you need other teams (product, dev, ops) to assess feasibility or finalize with the decision maker

It’s perfectly okay to say no to a prospect. Don’t dilute your positioning by accepting every edge case.

“What really matters in a Design Partner Program isn’t how many partners you have, but how deeply they’re committed. Some of our most valuable partners couldn’t afford to pay but they were fully aligned with our vision and deeply invested in shaping the product. Charging can help filter out those who aren’t truly motivated, but it also risks excluding high-conviction partners who bring immense value. The key is to assess motivation, not just willingness to pay. In the early days, learning is far more valuable than cash.”

– Christophe Barre, CEO & Cofounder of Tandem

The design partner deck

At this stage, you don’t need a polished website or a lead qualification flow. What matters is having conversations via direct outreach or warm introductions. You won’t have a finished product, so what you’re really selling is your vision and your approach.

Use a simple, clear deck to explain what you’re doing and why it matters. Here’s a structure that works:

1. Your value proposition — one sentence, crystal clear

2. Market pain points — three key problems you’re solving

3. Feature overview — the MVP that addresses the pain points. If your product isn’t ready yet, show your wireframes.

4. Your team — showcase your expertise and credibility in their industry, highlighting how you can deliver value beyond just the product
   at this early stage

5. Design Partner Program — how it works, what they get, and what you expect

6. Next steps + contact info

Sending the offer

When sending an offer, one of the most important levers you have is urgency. Always include a validity date to encourage faster decision-making, it sets clear expectations and keeps momentum going.

It’s also a good practice to copy your CTO when you send the offer. They can follow up with next steps on implementation or onboarding. This adds credibility and gives the prospect a direct line to your operational team which builds trust.

Once the offer is accepted, send over your Design Partner agreement.

If your product isn’t ready yet, a Letter of Intent (LOI) is a solid alternative. It formalizes the commitment while giving you time to finish building.

Making the most of your DPs

Avoid stretching the program too long. Three months is a good rhythm, it gives you time to iterate without dragging things out.

Your goal during that time is to learn how your partners are actually using the product: what works, what doesn’t, and what they still need.

Set the right structure to encourage feedback and collaboration:

• Create a shared Slack channel: so they can reach you easily, ask questions, or flag bugs in real time.

• Set clear rituals: a weekly check-in call (to review issues, updates, new needs), and a monthly deep-dive workshop on a specific topic or use case.

When the program ends:

• Offer a discount or price lock to reward their early commitment and help convert them into long-term customers.

• With their consent, turn them into advocates — case studies, testimonials, webinars, or simply quotes on your landing page.

These partners are your first believers. If the program is well-structured, they’ll often become your best growth drivers.

“My goal was simple: that on a Friday night, when they’re out to dinner with friends, they’d proudly say, ‘I’m helping this small company that’s going to become huge.’ You want your design partners to feel like they’re part of the story. Invite them behind the scenes: bring them into your office, introduce them to your team, share your wins, your struggles, your fundraising journey. That shared sense of adventure is what they buy into. That’s how they become your strongest allies.

We ran weekly check-ins with operational teams and monthly reviews with decision-makers. But beyond the structure, trust is everything. I personally spent a full day with each partner, in their office, just observing how they worked, getting to know their team. You have to invest in the relationship and genuinely care about the problems they’re trying to solve.

These people aren’t just early users, they’re true partners in the project. And many of them became much more than that. Some even turned into angel investors.”

– Hugues Renou, CEO & Cofounder of Tengo

From 10 to 100 clients

GTM should be founder-led, still

Just like design partner sales, getting to 100 clients should be founder-led.

Because at this stage, every sales conversation is an opportunity to learn, not just to sell. You’re not simply pushing a product; you’re refining messaging, identifying objections, validating your ICP, and adapting your pitch in real time. No one is better positioned to do that than the founder.

In fact, founders should aim to personally lead sales until at least $1M in ARR, and ideally close the first $50K themselves.

“In the early stages, prospects are often buying as much into the foun- der as they are into the product. They’re investing in the team and the potential they see in you. They may tell themselves, “The product isn’t perfect today, but I like the approach and I trust this team will get there if I support them and give feedback.”

– Vasco Alexandre, CEO and Cofounder of Dotfile

Leverage your DPs with a lookalike strategy

Reaching this stage is a meaningful milestone, it signals that you’re starting to understand who your ICP really is. Now it’s time to put that insight to work and validate it at a broader scale.

At first glance, outbound might seem simple: build a list, enrich the contacts, send sequences, wait for replies. But in reality, that spray-and-pray approach almost never delivers real results - especially in early-stage B2B.

To break through, you need to move toward what we call “not-so-cold” outbound: outreach that feels warm from the first touch. One of the best ways to do this early on is by running a lookalike strategy, using your existing Design Partners as your foundation.

Start with your refined ICP, shaped by what you’ve learned from your current Design Partners. Look closely at the patterns: What industries are they in? What’s their company size and where are they located? Which roles are involved in using and championing your product? And how, exactly, are they using it day to day?

From there, identify lookalikes. Who are their direct competitors? Which companies serve the same customer segments? Who operates in a similar space, with comparable team structures, workflows, or challenges? These are your warmest leads, because they’re most likely to understand the value your product delivers.

When you reach out, keep the message simple. A line like:

“We’re the solution currently used by [Company] to manage [problem]...”

It immediately adds relevance and builds trust. It frames your product as pro- ven and significantly boosts reply rates.

The magic of this strategy is that it compounds. Every successful Design Partner opens up a network of similar companies to explore. If done well, outbound doesn’t feel like cold outreach anymore, it becomes a warm expan- sion of a trusted ecosystem.

To keep the momentum going, focus your efforts on clients who’ve seen the most value from your product. These become your reference points not just for outbound, but for use cases, testimonials, and messaging.

“Once we had those early users, something powerful happened: they started recommending us... That allowed us to expand into a second circle of users... With a clearer understanding of our ICP and the key verticals where Spendesk could bring value, we launched an outbound strategy.”

– Rodolphe Ardant, Cofounder of Spendesk

Not-so-cold outbound

Another way to achieve that warm intro and to avoid sounding generic, is to start by identifying subtle cues that show real intent or context.

Start by identifying signals of intent

Before you write anything, gather insights that show what matters to your prospect right now.

Look for:

• Social activity: Recent social media posts, comments, or who they follow — all can hint at current interests or priorities.

• Public content: Job postings, blog articles, press releases, or podcast inter- views often reveal strategic initiatives and upcoming needs.

• Community engagement: Notice which Slack groups, Discords, or events they’re active in — it shows how and where they like to engage.

• Potential value-aligned offers: Can you give them something useful for free? A tailored teardown, a template, a short consult, or a playbook that matches their current goals.

Reach out through the right channels

Email is just one option and not always the best one. Early-stage outreach can benefit from meeting people where they already are. Try:

• LinkedIn DMs (especially if they’re active there)

• GitHub (if you’re targeting developers)

• Slack or Discord communities

• Events or webinars they attend

Setting up a CRM

In the early days, a complex CRM isn’t necessary. If you haven’t used one before or aren’t comfortable with setup, it’s better to wait until you make your first business hire and use a no-code tool and flexible tool for now.

At this stage, the goal isn’t complex tracking, it’s clarity. You need to know exactly what’s happening in every deal, at every step of the process. That means building a pipeline with zero black hole where every stage reflects a clear action taken.

If you’re seeing deals pile up in one stage (especially post-initial contact), it’s usually a signal that something’s broken: unclear next step, misalignment, or low engagement.

Here’s a simple CRM flow we’ve seen work well at the earliest stage:

• Inbound → Lead requested a demo or reached out

• Qualified to contact → You’ve reviewed the lead and it fits your ICP

• Outbound to start → Lead identified or imported, ready for outreach

• Contacted → You’ve sent a message or launched a campaign

• Meeting planned → A call or demo is scheduled

• Offer sent → A formal proposal is out

• Won → Deal closed: paying customer or signed design partner

• Come back later → Good lead, not the right timing — worth nurturing

• KO / not interested → Clear no, don’t include in product updates or events

• Not relevant → Bad fit (wrong company, role, etc.)

Always set up a clear follow-up, and never end a call without establishing the next step or sending an offer.

“Sales is not an art form that needs to be reinvented for every company. There are tried-and-tested methods for selling software that have been working for years. Entrepreneurs have plenty of space to innovate but innovating on sales methodology is usually not a good idea. Instead, relying on proven sales frameworks can be incredibly valuable. Once we started applying real methods and processes, and the whole team began operating in the same structured way, it became much easier to create repeatability in our sales motion.”

– Vasco Alexandre, CEO and Cofounder of Dotfile

Don’t limit content to your product

A common early-stage mistake is making your content too narrowly focused on your product.

Say you’re building a company meal voucher platform. You might be tempted to stick with calculators or pricing comparisons. But that’s limiting.

Your product lives in a broader narrative — employee happiness, workplace culture, team rituals, HR benefits. That’s where the content opportunity really lies.

The best editorial strategies are anchored in a larger ecosystem. They give you dozens of angles to work with and build long-term relevance.

Front nailed this by acquiring its first hundred customers through content pieces: instead of focusing solely on the product, founder Mathilde Collin talked about what it was like to build a startup, how to run 1:1s, transparency at work, what it’s like to raise a seed.

“Front gained its first hundred customers through content pieces that I wrote. The founders who can really stand out with content are the ones who are both confident in their point of view and genuinely enjoy writing. Personally, I loved writing. And I didn’t even write directly about Front that much. I wrote more about the founder journey and things I felt were missing or not spoken about transparently.”

– Mathilde Collin, Founder of Front

Understand where your audience hangs out

Map out the marketing landscape: who the legacy players are, which challengers are on the rise, how the top companies position themselves, and what kind of content they’re putting out into the world. Study everything: the tone they use, the structure of their blogs, the angles they take on social media, the formats that resonate most, and the keywords that dominate the conversation.

Don’t stop at the obvious channels. Go wide. Scroll through Product Hunt, Reddit, GitHub, Hacker News, and LinkedIn. Everything is signal. The goal is full saturation — to be so deep in the space that subtle patterns start to emerge without you even looking for them.

Once you’ve absorbed the landscape, patterns start to emerge. You’ll begin
to recognize which topics dominate the space and which content formats or lead magnets consistently gain traction. You’ll see which marketing actions are actually visible, whether it’s polished inbound campaigns, memorable branding moves, or smart outbound strategies. You’ll also notice key trigger moments in the calendar: big conferences, regulatory shifts, product launches, or budget cycles that spark urgency in your target audience.

And equally important, you’ll understand where your audience actually hangs out — whether it’s LinkedIn, GitHub, Reddit, or somewhere more niche.

With all that insight, you can shape a clear point of view for your personal and company brand, identify 3–4 immediate marketing plays worth running, and begin sketching the contours of an editorial universe that your brand can own.

The power of mini-products

Mini-products are one of the smartest ways to generate inbound interest in your product by providing value to users.

They can take many forms: a free template gallery, a stripped-down version of your product, a niche toolkit tailored to a specific use case, or even a curated database. What they all have in common is that they solve a real, immediate problem for your target audience - without requiring a full product signup or sales call.

The best mini-products are built from your core product.

It’s about turning a valuable slice of your product into a marketing asset - something people can land on, use instantly, and get value from. Rather than explaining what your product does, you let them experience it.

You need to think carefully about the user flow to drive conversions to the real product: should users sign into the product to access the mini-product? Where should you place CTAs for maximum impact?

Why it works:

• Low friction, high value. Mini-products don’t ask much from users—no demo, no long onboarding. Just instant usefulness.

• Distribution-friendly. They’re easy to share, link to, or embed in other content—making them perfect for SEO, community, and virality.

• Audience-aligned. When done right, they address a precise need your ideal customer already has.

• Brand-enhancing. They position you as helpful, thoughtful, and an expert in your space.

Let’s look at some notable examples of mini-products launched by Hexa companies:

The myth of PLG

Product-led growth (PLG) is a powerful strategy but it’s far from the only one. A common myth is that PLG means the product “sells itself.” That’s not just inaccurate, it’s dangerous. It gives founders a false sense of security, leading them to avoid building a real GTM motion. And while skipping GTM might feel easier in the short term, it’s a risky bet in the long run.

In reality, PLG and sales are not opposing forces, they are deeply complementary. A successful PLG strategy often creates momentum, but that momentum needs to be captured, guided, and amplified. Even with a viral product, your team may still need to invest heavily in outbound efforts, customer success, and strategic sales to truly scale.

“What does it even mean to be ‘Product-Led’? Too often, founders take it to mean ‘not Sales-Led’ — as if building is somehow more virtuous than selling. But that mindset lets them hide in their comfort zone. They say, ‘We’re product-led, great products sell themselves,’ and then avoid sales altogether. They demonize outbound. They try to solve every problem with more product. And in doing so, they run away from product–market fit. We should stop trying to be PLG. PLG isn’t an identity, it’s a go-to- market motion. There’s no such thing as a ‘PLG company,’ only ‘PLG strategies’.”

– Mehdi Boudoukhane, CEO & Cofounder of Cycle

“We were caught up in the early wave of product-led growth and tried
to mirror Slack’s model. But we were not Slack. The usage behavior and economic units were completely different. With Slite, users come in with a clear goal, set up an internal knowledge base and improve collaboration. If they see value, they pay. If not, they leave.”
– Christophe Pasquier, CEO & Cofounder of Slite

Upflow had a similar experience. They launched a free, lightweight version of Upflow, but they quickly realized that it wasn’t going to sell itself. They realized it was more about product assisted sales than product led growth.

“At first, we imagined it would work like a textbook product-led strategy, where people would discover the tool, sign up naturally, and move smoothly through a conversion funnel, but in reality, it didn’t happen that way, it still required a lot of human interaction - our salespeople calling up doing demos, and personally guiding users through the experience.”

– Alex Louisy, CEO & cofounder of Upflow

Customers without borders

One of the biggest advantages of building software is its global reach - you’re not limited by geography. As long as your product complies with local regulations and addresses real user needs, it can be sold almost anywhere. Yet many European startups limit themselves to local markets far too early.

In the early-stages, you of course won’t open up an international office - but here’s what you can do to sell globally:

Hire native-speaking talent locally

Recruit sales or support reps from key target markets, even if they work from your HQ or remotely. You’ll gain native fluency and market insight without needing a local entity. It’s also a strong move for diversity and inclusion, which we’ll explore later in the ESG section.

“One thing I really recommend is hiring English-speaking locals wherever you’re headquartered before trying to fully set up in the U.S. In the early stages, when you’re only hiring a small number of people, finding a native English speaker locally is much better than having French teams cold-call American prospects with heavy accents and missing cultural references.”

– Alex Louisy, CEO & cofounder of Upflow

Follow your growth

Don’t wait until everything is perfectly in place to expand internationally, follow the momentum. If you’re seeing unexpected inbound interest from a particular country, lean into it.

“Our logic was simple: wherever we had inbound, we did outbound. Our mindset was: why limit ourselves? We’re on the internet, there are no borders... If someone wants your product, why say no just because of geography?”

– Jonathan Anguelov, Cofounder of Aircall

“With a product like CRM there’s no real geographic limitation, which opens up a huge international opportunity. So we built for that from the start. We also naturally developed a strong U.S. focus early on which was largely driven by our Product Hunt launches, where the majority of users discovering us were based in the U.S. Today, the U.S. represents about 40% of our revenue, which confirms the strength of that strategy.

– Simo Lemhandez, CEO and Cofounder of Folk

Get business angels onboard so they can open up markets and connect you to the right people

You’ll find more on this in our discussion with Evan Testa, CEO and cofounder of Roundtable, right after the fundraising chapter. But here’s a sneak peek at the strategy:

“Before entering a new market, I’d go find the right people one year ahead, usually people I knew I wanted on my cap table, and incentivize them early. In Germany, for instance, I connected with key folks, told them, “I’m not launching here yet, but I will,” and brought them in as early believers. By the time we officially launched, they already understood the value, the mission and they became our gateway to that market. Whether they were clients or connectors, they helped with hiring, distribution, and trust-building. It’s local distribution, built-in.”

GTM Rituals

By now, you’ve probably caught on to a recurring theme in this book: rituals are key. To make meaningful progress, your GTM efforts need both structure and cadence. That means establishing two core rituals from the very beginning, quarterly for strategic planning, and weekly for execution.

Quarterly GTM rituals

These are your high-level planning sessions, the moments to define clear goals, align with the broader company mission, and decide where to focus your energy in the upcoming quarter.

OKR guidelines:

• Set clear, quantitative OKRs - especially for sales. What exactly do you want to achieve this quarter? Put numbers to it.

• Balance two priorities: growing your current accounts and generating new ones. Don’t over-index on one at the expense of the other.

• Align your GTM OKRs with your company’s core mission, and more often than not, with your product roadmap. In early-stage teams, GTM often follows product OKRs.

• Break down your Objectives into Key Results that are tangible, testable projects. These are your experiments.

Experiment guidelines:

• Prioritize experiments that can be built, launched, and measured in under four weeks.

• Aim for a mix of inbound and outbound tactics to diversify your approach. Be precise.

• Rather than “launch SEO,” try: “Publish a 10-article SEO series focused on construction tenders targeting procurement leads.”

• Always justify the experiment: Why is this a priority? Why this audience? What signal are you betting on?

• Use a combination of market data and informed intuition. In the early stage, gut instinct often plays a valid role.

• Encourage creativity. Early GTM is about testing boundaries, not staying inside them.

Example of quarterly experiments:

Weekly GTM sprints

Once your quarterly plan is in place, it’s time to shift into execution mode. Each week, you’ll break your experiments into manageable tasks and move them forward.

The goal here is consistency: small, focused actions that compound over time.

Every week, ask:

• What are we shipping?

• What are we learning?

• Are we moving closer to validating or invalidating the experiment?

• Do we scale this or do we move on?

Example of a weekly GTM sprint table:

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📖 The 10x Method: New chapters

Four new chapters of Hexa’s sold-out book are now live, one dropping every week.

II. Finding & validating the idea — A startup idea is a framework: problem, solution, and GTM strategy. This chapter breaks down the three categories of startup ideas, why every great startup has to innovate on at least one dimension, and the validation process Hexa uses before writing a single line of code — including our ideas that didn’t make the cut and exactly why. → Read the chapter

III. Choosing your cofounder — After matching 100+ founders, we’ve identified the three ingredients that make or break a cofounder relationship: complementary skills, alignment on five non-negotiables, and radical transparency from day one. The chapter covers how to run the search like a sales funnel, what questions to ask, and why you should bring in a coach before things go wrong, not after. → Read the chapter

IV. Building your MVP — The biggest mistake founders make isn’t building the wrong thing — it’s building too much, too soon. This chapter covers how to scope ruthlessly, why your designs should be super basic, and how to work with design partners to get real feedback instead of theoretical reactions. → Read the chapter

V. Hiring early talent — Founders should spend 30-40% of their time on recruiting in the early days. This chapter covers who to hire first (engineers, then a founder associate — not a PM), how to run scorecards from day one, structure equity, and know when — and how — to part ways. → Read the chapter

🤏 How going narrow landed Yoobic €100K contracts

It can be tempting to cast a wide net to find customers. Fabrice did the opposite, narrowing until Yoobic was the obvious choice for fashion retail chains managing deskless workers across hundreds of stores. Hexa Partner Mat Vaxelaire sits down with the Yoobic cofounder in the latest episode of PMF Collector to break down the methodology behind it: validating only through paying customers, proving ROI before asking for budget, and why almost nothing from the European playbook transferred when they expanded to the US.

→ Watch the episode

🔧 How to scale from basic RAG to 200+ e-commerce sites

Louis Pinsard built Dialog, an AI shopping assistant now live across 200+ ecommerce stores, starting with a LangChain tutorial in production. Scaling meant solving problems no tutorial covers: catalogs that break your retrieval, queries too vague to search with, and six months of iterating by gut feel before building a proper evaluation system. In this Build with AI episode, Hexa Product Lead Pierre sits down with the CTO to go through every layer of the evolution and what he’d do differently from day one.

→ Watch the episode

Portfolio news

🏥 Parallel (HX24) secures $20M to make hospitals more efficient with AI

Paul Lafforgue, Chris Rydahl and the Parallel team just closed a $20M Series A led by Index Ventures, with Frst, Y Combinator, and angels. Their AI agents already live across several dozen public and private hospitals in France, automating the administrative workflows that eat up to 30% of healthcare spending. What makes Parallel’s approach distinctive is speed: their agents run directly on top of existing hospital software, no lengthy integrations, live in as little as a week. Very proud of the team! Learn more.

🔐 Hodor joins Hexa Sprint to secure AI agents

Karim Boussetta and Timothé Husson Bromberg founded Hodor after spotting a gap that’s only getting bigger: companies are plugging AI agents into everything, but nobody is controlling what they’re actually allowed to do. A misconfigured agent can give 90% discounts to everyone, send seven follow-ups per hour, or expose millions of records before anyone notices. Hodor is the identity and policy layer that prevents exactly that, joining Hexa Sprint’s AI for Work vertical led by Thibaud Elzière. Learn more.

Hexa news

🔧 Tanguy Goretti joins Hexa as our first ever CTO

Tanguy is a repeat entrepreneur who has been building for 20+ years, best known for co-founding Cowboy, raising €100M+ and building a fully integrated hardware and software platform connecting 80,000+ riders across Europe. He joins to work hand in hand with founders on the most technically ambitious AI companies in Europe - as AI shifts from product feature to core company architecture, the decisions founders face are increasingly deeply technical. Learn more.

🗣️ Ship your voice agent at Hexa next week

Next Thursday, we are co-hosting an evening with HappyRobot, Early Builders and OpenAI dedicated to voice and multi-modal AI agents. Come with a teammate and a problem in mind - mentors from OpenAI and HappyRobot will be in the room all night to help you build on HappyRobot, the infra platform behind some of the largest enterprise AI deployments right now. Start at 6pm, demo at 9pm. Spots are limited, apply here.

Jobs

• Founder Associate Intern at Hexa

• Founding Full-stack Engineer at Waniwani (HX26)

• Founding Full-stack Engineer at Verso (HX26)

• Founding Engineer at Panora (HX25)

• Founding Engineer at Plato (HX26)

• Legal Product Manager at Plato (HX26)

• Talent Acquisition Partner at Hexa

• VC Analyst Intern at Hexa

Thanks for reading! Follow us on Linkedin and Instagram to stay up to date between issues.

Cheers,

The Hexa Team

Founders often assume that structured hiring and people practices, like using scorecards in interviews, running regular 1:1s, or giving formal feedback, can wait. The belief is that those things are for later, once you’ve scaled. The truth is, hiring and retaining talent at the earliest stage isn’t fundamentally different from doing it at later stages. But it matters more. When you have a team of one or two, every person carries outsized weight. Hiring the right people, and keeping them, requires just as much structure as it does at 50 or 500 people.

This is one of the most critical chapters in the book. Early hires shape everything. We’ve seen it again and again: get them right, and you build a strong foundation. Get them wrong, and the risks are massive. Without the right early team, your product will suffer. You’ll struggle to acquire customers. Your brand won’t take shape. Your metrics will lag. Everything downstream depends on getting this part right.

The first people are setting the standard. At Spendesk, it was early interns who coined the phrase “ship, ship, ship,” capturing the company’s bias for action and fast execution. When those early hires moved on years later, some of that unique energy left with them.

At Swan, the first 20 hires are still with the company. They carry deep institutional knowledge and continue to reinforce the culture that made the business successful in the first place.

Early employees hire the next generation. That’s why the bar needs to be high from the very beginning.

In this chapter, we’ll show you how to find, attract, and retain the right early hire. From identifying who to bring on board first, to running a great hiring process, to building the kind of team culture that keeps top talent engaged and growing with you.

Who to hire

Time well spent

As a founder, hiring is one of the most critical responsibilities you will take on. It is not something you can delegate in the early days and so understanding the process firsthand is essential. You should be prepared to spend 30–40% of your time on recruiting and HR-related tasks in the early stages.

“Consider the first 10 people you hire with the same level of rigor as you would for a cofounder. Some first employees can eventually become late- stage cofounders, their impact can be just as crucial.”

– Quentin Nickmans, Cofounder and Partner at Hexa

“A company isn’t built by founders alone, it’s built by the entire team. But it can be undone by the founders alone... That’s why your early hires are so important: they set the tone for the culture, the ambition, and the way your company thinks as it scales.”

– Evan Testa, CEO and cofounder of Roundtable

The only way to learn is by doing. Before hiring someone to handle a function, you need to immerse yourself in it. This applies to coding, sales, product, and most importantly, recruiting. Sourcing, reaching out to candidates, and running interviews should be part of your initial efforts. Sending LinkedIn messages, following up, and refining your pitch will teach you what works and what doesn’t. Just like hiring a salesperson without having spoken to customers yourself makes little sense, hiring a recruiter too early disconnects you from a fundamental process.

That said, you don’t have to do everything entirely alone. It introduces too many biases and you end up making poorer decisions. While hiring a full-time recruiter as one of your first employees is unnecessary, you can leverage external support. Engaging a freelancer, a recruitment agency, or an RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) consultant can help you source and generate leads. However, this only works if you already understand the basics of hiring, otherwise, you risk relying on a system you don’t control.

Engineers

Your first 1 to 3 hires should be engineers, ideally full-stack. What’s most important is flexibility: even if they’re primarily backend or frontend, they must be willing to work across the stack. In the early days, your product will evolve quickly, and you’ll need people ready to adapt. Hiring someone too specialized, and unwilling to step outside their core expertise, can box you in before you’ve even figured out exactly what you’re building.

As discussed in the chapter on cofounders, the technical founder must be hands-on, not just managing, but actively coding. During those early months, this is non-negotiable. At this stage, you’re not building a tech organization, you’re building the product.

A frequent challenge we’ve seen? Founders moving quickly to hire freelancers. It can seem like the fastest path forward, you have a clear idea of what you want to build, and you’re eager to ship. But that early speed can lead to setbacks.

It’s important not to outsource your first build. This is the most critical phase of product development, and it needs to be done by people who are committed to the long-term success of the company. Freelancers won’t lay the groundwork for scale. They won’t set up clean architecture, strong processes, or thoughtful systems.

The only time we recommend working with freelancers is for very specific, tightly scoped tasks, for example, coding a specific part of the product. But you should never rely on freelancers to lead or drive major projects during this phase. And they should never replace a hire you will eventually make.

Coding is also strategy. And that’s why the technical founder should be in the trenches, working side-by-side with the first hires. That’s how you build a strong foundation, and bake long-term vision into the code from day one.

Yes, hiring great engineers takes time. But not as much time as you think. Especially if you follow the steps outlined in this chapter.

“One thing that’s been key is involving engineers deeply in the product. Product scopes and defines the goals, but engineers co-design the solution with them. That tight collaboration has been part of our DNA from day one. It’s also what helps attract truly valuable founding engineers: the kind of builders who don’t just want to execute, but want to be part of the creation phase, shaping the product from the ground up.”

– Titouan Benoit, CTO and Cofounder of Dotfile

The founder associate

Your first business hire should be a founder associate, a highly versatile, execution-oriented generalist who can plug into whatever the company needs most. In the early days, that could mean supporting customer calls, launching growth experiments, or building out investor materials. Think of this person as your right hand.

Range matters more than specialization at this stage. You need someone with broad skills, and even more importantly, the ability to quickly adapt, because priorities and scope will inevitably shift as the business evolves. Over time, one functional area like growth, account management, customer success, or marketing will naturally start to take precedence based on the company’s needs and their individual strengths.

This role becomes even more critical during fundraising. When founders are out meeting investors, someone has to keep the machine running. A great founder associate can step in as a chief of staff, prepping materials, managing the process, and ensuring continuity so nothing breaks while the founders are focused elsewhere.

Founders often underestimate just how stretched they’ll be once the company starts gaining momentum. A founder associate helps extend your capacity. They’re not there to “own” departments, but to push forward projects, uncover problems early, and make sure critical tasks don’t fall through the cracks.

“Once we had landed two or three clients, we realized we needed someone to help drive and support the business side more consistently. So, we hired a highly versatile profile, someone capable of handling a bit of everything: outbound sales, marketing content creation, direct sales conversations, and even product demos when needed.

For a long time, we operated with this highly versatile profile, because at that stage, the business was still fundamentally founder-led. It was only much later, once we had matured as a company, that we started hiring more specialized sales roles.There’s no definitive hand-off where a founder can fully step away from sales, it simply doesn’t happen. Even today, while the team handles certain segments successfully, I’m still actively selling: whether it’s entering new markets, expanding into new geographies, or building partnerships. As the company grows, sales remains a constant part of the founder’s role, just in different forms.”

– Vasco Alexandre, CEO and Cofounder of Dotfile

Don’t hire a product manager early on

In the early days, the product vision should live squarely with the founders. Great product managers naturally want to own the product roadmap and vision. If you hire one too early, they may start to behave like late-stage co-founders, leading to misalignment and friction. At this stage, that would be a mistake.

An alternative approach? If delivery is starting to slip or you need help with coordination, bring on a part-time freelance product owner. Just make sure the strategic direction stays with the founding team, at least until you’ve hit product-market fit.

You should hire a product manager only when your product is showing real traction and scaling execution becomes difficult. By then, founders will often be overwhelmed with new priorities like operations, fundraising, and hiring. That’s when bringing on a PM makes sense: someone who can formalize processes, take ownership of execution, and keep product development moving forward.

“In B2B software startups, your first product manager should come as late as possible — ideally after you’ve found product–market fit, not before. Until then, the founder is the PM. PMF isn’t something you can outsource; it’s something you earn. It demands obsession: talking to customers, shipping fast, watching how people react, and adjusting constantly. Bringing in a PM too early creates distance right when you need to be closest to the problem. It slows down the rapid learning loops that are essential at this stage. You don’t hire a PM because you’re unsure what to build — you hire one when you can no longer keep up with the demand.”

– Mehdi Boudoukhane, CEO and Cofounder of Cycle

Stay flexible

Some startups will need to make specialized hires earlier than others. The specifics will depend on your business.

For example, Roundtable, where legal complexity is central to the product, hired a Head of Legal very early, along with operations staff as part of the first few employees. It was the only way to get the business off the ground.

The key is to know what’s truly essential for your company to move forward, and hire accordingly.

Hire for attitude AND for skills

You’ve probably heard the phrase: “Hire for attitude, train for skills.” And it holds true, but more in the later-stage of company building. In the early days, that only gets you halfway there.

For your first hires, you need attitude and skills. You simply won’t have the time or management layers to train people from scratch. Early team members need to hit the ground running. They should already know how to operate in fast-moving environments, solve problems independently, and contribute from day one.

What you need to look for:

• Highly adaptable and curious. They’ll be wearing a lot of hats.

• Deeply autonomous. They don’t need hand-holding or constant direction.

• Entrepreneurial. Ideally, they’ve worked at a startup before or built something.

A common instinct when building your early team is to hire for your weaknesses, to fill the gaps. While that can make sense later, it’s not always the right first move. In the early days, what matters most is speed and execution.

“One of the least intuitive but most powerful moves you can make as a founder is to hire someone who shares your superpower. If you’re great at product, hire another strong product builder. It might feel counterintuitive, you’d think you should fill your gaps, but starting by doubling down on your strength makes delegation easy, hiring fast, and execution smooth. You’ll be able to transfer knowledge quickly, and free up your time without compromising quality. That time, you can then reinvest into tackling other areas, like sales or hiring, one by one. Only a founder has the grit to step out of their comfort zone and still give it everything they’ve got. By doing it themselves, they gain mastery over every aspect of the company. That’s how you grow your company: by reinforcing what you do best, then expanding deliberately.”

— Quentin Nickmans, Partner and Cofounder of Hexa

How to hire

Active search

There’s no way around it: if you want to find great candidates, you can’t sit back and wait for them to show up, especially when your company is still young and unknown. You have to go on the hunt. You need to put in the work, scour LinkedIn, and actively convince exceptional people to join you.

Define a clear search strategy: Think about where to find the right people. If you need a frontend engineer, target companies known for exceptional UI design.

Try the “indirect ask” trick: We’ve seen this work time and time again. Instead of asking someone directly if they’re interested, ask: “Do you know anyone great for this role?” This lowers their guard, and sometimes sparks interest in the role themselves. And if someone you’ve asked directly says no to the role, ask them if they know someone who could be great for it.

Leverage your network: Your best hires may come from referrals, but it’s not enough to send one message and hope for a response. Always follow up at least twice. Many great candidates don’t respond immediately, and persis- tence is key.

Track your response rates: If fewer than 20–30% reply to your outreach, something’s off. Are you targeting people who are too senior? Is your message clear enough? It’s important to test different messages and people to refine and improve your response rate.

Outbound is a numbers game, but quality still matters: Don’t just spam LinkedIn. Tailor each message. Reference their work. Make it obvious you’re reaching out to them, not just “someone.

“What’s interesting is that even though we didn’t hire a lot of people directly through outbound, it still paid off. Most people we reached out to didn’t join, but they referred someone in their network. Outbound actually created a kind of network effect. When you start reaching out, people often respond with, ‘Hey, I’m not looking right now, but I know someone who is.’”That ripple effect really worked for us.”
– Evan Testa, CEO and Cofounder of Roundtable

Build a brand early-on

Inbound recruiting for a young startup is a long-term game, but one worth starting early because these efforts will compound faster than you think.

• Start employer branding early: Even as a small startup, having a basic Notion career page with company values, images, and insights can make a big difference.

• Leverage LinkedIn: Regular posts about your journey, team milestones, and open roles help create visibility and momentum. Top talent often follows founders, not companies.

• Participate in events: Meetups, panels, and industry events are underrated for hiring. They build trust and help you connect with people who aren’t actively job-hunting, but might be open to the right opportunity. But be very selective about the ones you attend as they can become a significant timesink if you’re not too careful.

“Even when I wasn’t actively hiring, I made a habit of adding people on LinkedIn who looked like strong future candidates. It turned out to be incredibly valuable. When I eventually started recruiting for a PM role, many candidates already knew about Tengo from my posts. It made a real difference, the response rate was much higher.”

– Hugues Renou, CEO and Cofounder of Tengo

“I started posting on LinkedIn mainly for recruitment purposes. Finding great people, engineers especially, who share your mindset is very hard. By sharing thoughts, experiences, and opinions publicly, you naturally attract people who resonate with your way of thinking... It’s a kind of natural selection: people either connect with your energy or they don’t, and that’s exactly what you want in a startup team.”

– Paul Vidal, CTO and Cofounder of Collective

The job description

Most startup job descriptions are either too vague or too corporate. They either try to sound “cool” and end up confusing candidates, or they copy language from big companies that completely misses the early-stage reality. Neither works.

Your job description isn’t just a formality. It should excite the right candidates and filter out the wrong ones. Be clear about the mission, honest about the challenges, and specific about what success looks like. Make sure it also highlights the level of ownership early hires will have, because that’s what great early-stage candidates are looking for: real impact. Help them see it.

1. Title

• Choose a job title that people actually search for, not just one that sounds attractive. For example, if you’re hiring a “Founding Engineer,” that’s fine as a title, but make sure to include terms like “Software Engineer” throughout your job description so candidates can find the role when searching those common keywords.

2. About the company

• Remember, your company is new and unknown, so this section is crucial. Show what makes you unique and innovative.

• Early hires join startups because they care about the “why.” Start with a punchy paragraph that explains what you’re building and why it matters.

• It’s also a good place to emphasize how the first employees will play a huge role in shaping the company’s culture and impact.

3. What you’ll do (missions)

• Forget the laundry list of responsibilities. Instead, describe the core problems they’ll own. Early hires don’t need every bullet point spelled out but they need to know what’s broken and what they’ll be trusted to fix.
  → “You’ll be responsible for developing and maintaining scalable front-end and back-end solutions.”

• Early employees’ job descriptions change rapidly. The role can be completely different six months after hiring compared to when they first start. When writing the job description, think ahead and clearly communicate how the responsibilities will evolve from day one through the first six months.
  → “This role starts as an individual contributor, but within 6–9 months, we expect you to help hire and mentor additional team members.”

• Adding a section “What success looks like in 6 months” is a great way to be forward looking

4. Technical stack (for certain roles)

• List the technical stack for this role. This is common for engineering positions but should also be included for GTM, marketing, and operations roles. If you don’t have a technical stack defined yet and it will be the employee’s responsibility to create it, clearly state this in the description.

• Be sure to include a line like, “Don’t hesitate to apply even if you’re not familiar with every tool in our stack” to encourage more diverse candidates to apply.

5. Who you are (requirements)

Founders often make the mistake of listing too many requirements compared to the mission section, which makes the job description look unbalanced. This happens because founders typically have a clearer idea of requirements - that’s the easy part.

• Highlight just 3–5 traits or experiences that really matter

• Clarify what’s nice-to-have vs. essential

• The longer your requirements list, the less women will apply - so keep it short and impactful.

6. Why join (your company name)

• Here’s where you list your company’s values and benefits. You might not have defined your values on paper yet, and that’s okay. No need to rush.

• But you certainly have preferred ways of working. Are you async-first or meeting-based? Do you have monthly team lunches? Are there any special routines worth mentioning? This is your chance to let your culture shine, even if it’s still taking shape.

• Beyond the classic perks like health insurance and company snacks, early-stage companies offer unique benefits where employees can make a real impact. Make sure to highlight these opportunities here.

7. Hiring timeline

It’s crucial to outline the hiring process steps clearly so candidates know exactly what to expect. At the early stage, you likely won’t have many team members, or any at all, so focus on creating a quick process with key stakeholders. Even as a solo founder or duo of founders, it’s essential for candidates to meet several people. If you don’t have a team yet, bring others into the process, this could be peers, fellow founders, investors, or freelancers helping with recruitment.

1. Initial call – A quick introduction with the CEO/other person

2. Technical Interview – A discussion with the CTO about your experience and skills.

3. Meet the team – A casual conversation with a current team member to ensure a cultural fit.

4. Reference Calls – Final step before the offer. We conduct at least two reference calls, one with a former colleague and one with a former manager. Additionally, we offer you the opportunity to speak with one or two people who have previously collaborated with us, so you can ask any questions you may have.

The first interview is about convincing

Founders often treat the first interview like it’s about evaluation. It’s not. The first call is about attraction.

Your job is to make the candidate want to join, especially with outbound candidates. But also with inbound ones. They might not be sold on your company as it’s still largely unknown and so you have to hook them.

At the end of an outbound call, flip the script: “Do you want to be part of this process?”

Let them opt in. If they’re in, great - now you switch into interview mode.

From there on, it’s about assessment. Use a scorecard. Define what “great” looks like. But never forget: if you don’t win them on the first call, you may never get the chance to assess them at all.

“The goal of the first conversation is not to grill the candidate with technical questions. It’s to make them leave thinking, “I really want to work with these people.” As a new startup with little name recognition, you must actively inspire candidates. It’s a selling call. Another tactic I used: after a great first call, I would immediately introduce the candidate to another co-founder for a second “selling” conversation. It wasn’t announced in advance, but it made candidates feel valued and gave them the impression that the company was moving fast and cared about them.”

– Paul Vidal, CTO and Cofounder of Collective

The importance of follow-ups

Throughout the process, maintain a strong connection with the candidate. Quick check-in calls between each interview stage are key. These calls, or even a simple WhatsApp loop, help you:

• Keep the relationship warm - it helps show you care

• Track whether they’re interviewing elsewhere - you don’t want to lose the candidate because they got an earlier offer somewhere else

• Continuously gauge their motivation - it helps you know if they’re still en- gaged and interested in your company

Scorecards even at the start

Most founders aren’t experienced recruiters, and that’s completely normal. But it also means you’re especially vulnerable to bias. You might overvalue charisma, a shared background, or someone who just “feels right” in the moment. That’s why scorecards are so valuable at the early stage. It is a structured framework that helps you evaluate candidates based on clearly defined criteria, not just gut feeling.

A good scorecard also makes rejection easier. Instead of debating feelings, you have objective reasons to fall back on. It keeps the bar high and reduces the chance of bias creeping into your decisions.

Your scorecard should:

• Categorize skills into must-have, should-have, and nice-to-have.

• Include both hard skills (technical abilities) and soft skills (communication, problem-solving).

• Limit criteria to a maximum of 12 - more than that makes the process too complex.

Each mission or responsibility in the role should be linked to a corresponding question on the scorecard. Always ask the same structured questions to every candidate. This eliminates random judgment and makes comparisons more reliable.

Here’s a scorecard template we’ve used for Founding Engineer positions:

Case study

Founders often ask us: “How do I evaluate someone in a role I don’t fully understand?” The answer is ideally, you should have done the job yourself first. Whether you’re a CTO who’s built the first version of the product, or a CEO who’s already closed the first sales, having hands-on experience is key. It gives you the context to know what good looks like and what to ask for when hiring.

That’s why the case study you assign should be based on something you’ve already tackled yourself. This allows you to compare the candidate’s thinking and output with your own experience.

Importantly, a case study is never about getting free work or outsourcing an open question you’re curious about. Its purpose is to evaluate how someone approaches real, relevant problems, not to teach you something new.

And if you’re still unsure how to judge the outcome, don’t hesitate to bring in people from your network who have expertise in that specific area.

“A business case is the best way to see how someone thinks and to simulate what it’ll be like to work with them. You give them a real-life problem and see how they approach it. I don’t need someone who has all the answers but I want to see how they think, what questions they ask, where they acknowledge the limits of what they know, and how they start collaborating with us.”

– Evan Testa, CEO and Cofounder of Roundtable

Hiring entrepreneurial mindsets

Evaluating whether someone has an entrepreneurial mindset is one of the hardest parts of early-stage hiring. You need people who think and act like builders but spotting that mindset is tricky, especially when candidates know how to say all the right things.

The key is to ask the right questions and to ask them at different points in the process. You’re not trying to check a box in a first call. You’re looking for consistency over time and stories that hold up under deeper scrutiny.

Here’s how to cut through the noise and figure out who actually has the entrepreneurial DNA your startup needs:

What to ask

• “What other opportunities are you exploring right now?”

  → Are they targeting early-stage companies or defaulting to what’s available?

• “If you had a magic wand, what would your next adventure look like?”

  → If they say they want to be head of engineering at a huge scale-up, it’s a clear sign they’re not interested in a role where they’ll need to build everything from scratch.

• “Why are you looking right now?”
  → If the answer is purely about compensation, titles, or frustration with their current manager, that’s a red flag. You want someone who’s looking because they’re ready to build.

• “If you had two offers tomorrow, how would you decide?”

  → Are they driven by having an impact or chasing prestige? If they say, “I’d go with the bigger name or highest pay,” they’re not thinking like an entrepreneur.

• “Tell me about a time you led an initiative that has had an impact?”

  → Even if a candidate hasn’t started their own company, you can assess their entrepreneurial mindset by asking about initiatives they’ve launched, specifically ones they conceived themselves that had measurable impact on the business or product.

• “Why did you leave your last role? How did you choose the next one?”

  → You can learn a lot by asking this question and uncovering people’s inner motivations.

What to avoid

• Don’t ask vague or leading questions
  Example: “How do you handle risk?” or “Do you see yourself as entrepreneurial?”
  → Of course they’ll say what you want to hear.

• Don’t over-index on startup logos on a CV
  → Just because they worked at a startup doesn’t mean they thrived there. And not all startups are equal. Ask what they did and why they joined.

“The bar we used for early hires was simple: if they left to start their own company one day, would we invest? If the answer wasn’t a clear yes, we didn’t make the hire.”
– Hugues Renou, CEO and Cofounder of Tengo

Do not skip reference checks

Founders often say, “If candidates are giving us the contacts, they’ll only say good things.” That’s a myth. In our experience, reference calls give you a rare, honest window into how someone actually works. You could learn more in 20 minutes with a former manager than in three rounds of interviews, if you ask the right questions.

“During reference checks, you shouldn’t just ask open-ended questions like, “What is this person good at?” or “Not so good at?” Those kinds of questions often lead to vague or rehearsed answers. Instead, I like to use more structured questions, sometimes even multiple choice. I frame it by saying, “Which of these best describes this person: Are they a doer? Creative? Strategic? More of an executor?” We need all types of profiles in the company. But what matters is understanding which profile the candidate fits into — because depending on the role, we may need one more than another.”

– Evan Testa, CEO and Cofounder of Roundtable

Here’s the script we use for every reference call:

Intro & context:

The role is [briefly describe: e.g., a founding engineering position in a fast-paced startup environment]. The company is [stage – e.g., early-stage / scaling], and the role involves [key challenges, e.g., ownership, working across product/tech, autonomy, etc.].

The goal of this conversation is to better understand how [Candidate’s Name] operates and how suited they are to working at a very early-stage company.

1. Contact and context of collaboration

   When did you and [candidate’s name] work together? What was your working relationship (e.g., manager, peer)? What kind of project(s) were you collaborating on?

2. Strengths

   Can you share an example of a project or situation where [candidate’s name] really excelled?
   What stood out about their contributions?

3. Areas for improvement

   On the flip side, was there a situation or project where they struggled a bit?
   How did they handle it, and what did they learn?

4. Collaboration style

   How would you describe their communication style? How do they typically react to feedback?
   Do they actively give feedback to others?

5. Relative performance

   Compared to others in similar roles you’ve worked with,
   how would you rank [candidate’s name]?
   Follow up: so are they in your top 5, top 3? Why? (For example, would you place them in the top 10%, top 25%, etc.?)

6. Fit for a fast-moving environment

   How do you think they’d do in a fast-paced, less-structured

   environment where priorities shift and autonomy is key?

7. Rehire question

   If you had the opportunity, would you work with

   [candidate’s name] again? Why or why not?

8. Conclusion

   Is there anything else we haven’t covered that you think we should know

   about [candidate’s name]?

9. Overall recommendation

   On a scale of 1 to 4 (1 = no, 4 = absolutely), how strongly would you re- commend [candidate’s name] for this role?

Managing the hiring timeline

You need to run a tight hiring process. The longer it drags on, the more likely you are to lose great candidates.

A common pitfall is the case study phase. When founders wait to create the case study until they’re already in the hiring process, it causes unnecessary delays.

There are two hiring metrics you should always track:

1. Time to hire

This is the time from first contact (actually speaking with the person and not the first time you send them a message) to offer acceptance.
→ If this takes more than 2 to 3 weeks, you’re moving too slowly. Every extra day increases the risk of losing top candidates.

2. Time to fill

This is the total time from when a role is opened to when it’s filled.
→ If this goes beyond three months, something in your process is broken. Maybe the bar is unclear. Maybe the pipeline is weak. Either way, it needs fixing.

“Early on, I lost a great candidate because it took us too long to move through the process. After that, we completely changed our approach: we managed to hire someone else in just three days. The idea is simple: you must move at the candidate’s speed. If they’re ready now, you need to be ready now. I remember reviewing a candidate’s test late at night in a bar, laptop in hand, and setting up an offer meeting for the very next day.”

– Paul Vidal, CTO and Cofounder of Collective

Candidate experience matters

You might think candidate experience is a nice-to-have but a sloppy or disrespectful process can hurt your reputation and cost you future hires.

• Always close the loop professionally. If someone reaches final rounds, call them. Don’t send a generic email. It’s a small gesture that signals respect.

• Think long-term. A rejected candidate today might refer a future team member, become a customer, or reapply when they’re a better fit.

• Handle rejections with care. For inbound applications, a clear and respectful rejection email is enough. But for any candidate you’ve interviewed, especially more than once, always call. Walk them through your reasoning, using your scorecard to support the decision. It helps them grow, and it shows you care, which people remember.

How to retain and part ways with employees

Striking the right balance with salaries

At the pre-seed or seed stage, it’s rarely realistic, or even wise, to offer salaries on par with well-funded scale-ups. Instead of overpaying, early-stage startups should focus on offering meaningful equity and a deeply empowering work environment. A real sense of ownership and growth potential often resonates more with the kinds of people you want in the early days.

To ensure fairness and consistency, it’s important to avoid “à la carte” compensation where each person negotiates their own deal. Not everyone negotiates equally, and ad hoc decisions often lead to misalignment and frustration. Even a simple salary grid - based on levels of seniority and scope of responsibilities - brings structure. It also simplifies hiring conversations and scales better as the team grows.

When setting salaries, resist the urge to rely solely on a candidate’s expectations or demands. Just because someone asks for a certain amount doesn’t mean you should pay it. Use your internal framework to guide decisions, that’s what keeps compensation coherent across the team. At the same time, be careful not to underpay someone just because they ask for less. Even if a candidate is willing to accept a lower salary, compensating them well within your defined range avoids future frustrations.

Ultimately, you’re not trying to win people over with high pay. The right early team members join not because of salary, but because of the impact they can have and the long-term upside they see. Well-structured stock options are a great way to share that upside, but they only work if you take the time to explain them properly and tie them to a compelling company vision.

How to think about stock options

Equity is a topic every founder must fully understand and take ownership of. While using benchmarks is helpful, there’s no substitute for informed decision-making. You should talk to peers, align closely with your cofounder, and think carefully about what you want to build in terms of culture, team alignment, and incentives.

Giving equity to your team serves multiple purposes. At early stages, it’s the best way to align economic incentives across the company and attract high-quality talent. Given limited cash, you can’t offer salaries on par with later-stage, well-funded scale-ups. Equity helps close top candidates and provides long-term upside far greater than a competitive salary. It also plays a critical role in retention, aligning long-term commitment and shared value creation through structured vesting over time.

“For us, especially early on, one of the key levers has been stock options. That’s definitely a foundational element and one that retains talent. But just as important is the perspective for growth: giving each person a clear view of how they can evolve within the company.”

– Evan Testa, CEO and Cofounder of Roundtable

Timing is everything

One of the trickiest questions is when to start offering equity to your team. At the pre-seed stage, we generally recommend avoiding any commitment to a fixed number or percentage. Before the seed round, the company is still taking shape, you often don’t know yet how much equity you want to allocate, what the team structure will be, or who will be staying for the long run. Performance differences will soon become visible, and early team members may leave during their trial period. For all these reasons, avoid, if possible, committing specific figures too early.

However, in some cases, especially with high-caliber candidates, you may need to commit to a percentage or equity value to close the hire. That’s fine and there are thoughtful ways to handle this, which we cover further below.

So when is the right time to start issuing equity? In most cases, we recommend doing this after the seed round. The main advantages are clarity and simplicity, you avoid creating an initial ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) structure before your cap table is stabilized. The downside is that very early employees may pay a slightly higher exercise price. In some cases, where reaching the seed round takes time and a solid “core team” is already in place, it may be worth implementing a small plan earlier.

When hiring early employees, it’s essential to set expectations clearly. Reassure them that equity is a key part of your company culture and that everyone will be aligned through ownership. Let them know that equity grants will follow the seed round, in line with common market practice. Be transparent about the timeline (e.g., equity to be granted post-seed, potentially with retroactive vesting). Share examples and benchmarks from other startups and highlight success stories from your own ecosystem. After the seed round, you can begin to communicate the equity grant amount and vesting start date when making offers to new hires.

Who should receive equity and how much?

We generally recommend allocating equity to all team members within the first 30 to 50 hires. After that, the policy can evolve based on your compensation strategy. Some companies continue to grant equity broadly; others reserve it for key roles, opting instead for higher salaries.

At seed stage, most companies plan to provide somewhere between 5% and 10% of the post-seed cap table to the ESOP. This varies depending on founder count and company valuation. Early employees, typically the first 5 to 10 hires, often receive more grants expressed in % of ownership, without a real link to their salary but strongly linked to their performance. This early group might collectively represent one-third of the ESOP pool. Beyond that, equity starts

in general to be allocated based on benchmarks tied to role type, experience, and impact. A useful framing is linked to the base salary:

60–130% of annual base salary in equity value for senior profiles 40–60% for junior hires

Vesting, grants, and administration

Standard vesting terms are 4 years with a 1-year cliff, which means an employee must work for one full year before any of their equity grant begins to vest. Grants are typically made with vesting starting from the employee’s date of hire. To simplify administration, we recommend grouping vesting events quarterly or semi-annually rather than on a rolling basis. Monthly vesting is generally preferred to avoid “cliff effects.”

Exercise windows should also be well-structured, typically once or twice per year, with a one-month exercise period. This prevents ad hoc exercises and keeps things organized.

Some founders introduce “equity sliders” allowing employees to trade salary for additional equity. While this approach can work, especially when cash is available and salary competition is intense (e.g., for developers), it introduces complexity and scalability issues. Equity is long-term and illiquid; salary evolves over time. Mixing the two can quickly become difficult to manage.

Key rules and planning

Never introduce blanket acceleration clauses, which allow employees to receive unvested equity shares before the normal schedule. Accelerated vesting should be discussed individually and approved by the board on a case-by-case basis for key individuals only.

When planning your ESOP, define your total pool first. Then build a distribution model and align it with your hiring roadmap up to Series A. Forecast the number of hires and average salaries, ensure your pool is sufficient, and add a 25% buffer.

Create a simple, repeatable rule for equity allocation during the early stages - ideally one or two levels. Over time, evolve into a structured matrix based on role, seniority, and market benchmarks.

A golden rule: don’t over-allocate from day one. It’s far better to start conservatively and offer top-ups later to those who excel and grow with the company. Equity, once granted, is extremely difficult to take back without termination. On the other hand, smart top-up policies reinforce loyalty and reward long-term contribution.

Announcing and communicating the ESOP Plan

The purpose of ESOP is for you to talk about it. The way you explain the plan will matter far more than the exact number of shares. Prepare a detailed document explaining how your ESOP works, including examples of potential upside. Share it widely and update it based on feedback and team questions.

Discuss this thoroughly within the founding team, align on your narrative, and be confident when presenting it. For your first team members, announce the framework company-wide, then follow up with individual meetings to present each person’s grant. Be transparent about future top-ups and share stories of employees who grew into leadership roles and significantly increased their ownership.

Make it clear: there is no negotiation, and the policy is based on values, not percentages. Emphasize that equity outcomes depend on multiple factors— fundraising amounts, company valuation, investor terms—and use illustrative case studies to help new hires understand what’s possible.

For post-seed hires, include equity details directly in offer letters. You can also share a public version of your ESOP explainer to appear professional and transparent, while keeping confidential details internal.

Legal considerations

Employees typically have a 30 to 90-day window to exercise vested options after departure. You may offer longer periods (e.g., 6 months) but avoid overly long durations to maintain cap table control. You can consider tiered windows (e.g., 1 year for 2+ years of service, 2 years for 3+ years), and reserve the board’s right to extend timelines in special cases like friendly departures.

Finally, ensure that the company has a call option on the shares of any departing employee to prevent inactive or unfriendly shareholders from remaining on the cap table.

Onboarding

Great onboarding does three things: it aligns, engages, and enables performance.

First, you need alignment. From day one, new hires should be immersed in your company’s mission. They need to understand not just what you do, but why it matters.

Next comes engagement. Early relationships shape long-term retention. Make sure your new teammate feels welcomed. It’s also critical to invest in team bonding early, whether through team lunches or casual time away from office screens. The first few weeks is when newcomers decide whether they feel part of the team or just adjacent to it.

Finally, you want performance. That means setting clear expectations from the first week: what skills they need to master, how they’re expected to contribute, and what success looks like at one, three, and six months in. Don’t wait to share feedback. Give it often, both positive and constructive.

There are a few key milestones that should anchor your onboarding.

• The first week should focus heavily on integration, making sure the new hire connects with the team and understands how things work.

• At the one-month mark, hold a check-in to exchange feedback and recalibrate if needed.

• By month three, you should be ready to make a clear decision about continuing beyond the trial period.

“During the onboarding period, we conduct weekly feedback sessions. As employees settle in, we transition to biweekly sessions, and later to monthly check-ins. These comprehensive 360-degree feedback conversations always begin with the employee sharing their thoughts with us: What’s working? What’s not? What are the risks they see as we scale — what’s fine now but might break if we add 2, 5, or 10 more people?”

— Evan Testa, CEO and Cofounder of Roundtable.

Being consistent with routines

• Once onboarding is complete, strong management routines are what keep performance and growth on track. These routines don’t have to be complex, but they do have to be consistent. Here are some suggestions of routines that work well:

• The weekly one-on-one. These 30–60 minute conversations are where progress is tracked, blockers are surfaced, and challenges are addressed. While these meetings can touch on personal growth, they should primarily stay operational. Deeper development conversations are better suited for monthly or quarterly check-ins.

• Personal development meeting. Every month, or at least every quarter, schedule a more strategic conversation. This is where you zoom out to assess career goals, discuss progress against role expectations, and co-create a development plan. This discussion should be high-level: What’s going well? What needs improvement? What does growth look like? For structure, some founders use a scoring system to track how a person is performing across their core responsibilities (e.g., 0 to 5). Self-assessments and upward feedback can also be part of this rhythm.

• Feedback should flow continuously. Share praise or course corrections in the moment whenever possible. But also carve out dedicated time in your routines to go deeper. Make asking for feedback a habit, both from you to your team, and from your team to you.

• For sales and performance-driven roles, it’s important to tie these routines to goal-setting. Set quarterly targets and use monthly updates to track progress, adjust strategies, and stay accountable.

“From day one, we focused on empowering people. For example, early on, I was the only product manager working with about ten developers. Instead of handing them detailed specs, I’d sit with them, explain the problem, and ask them to come back with a solution. We’d challenge their ideas until we aligned, but the solutions always came from them. They truly owned the work. The only thing I fully designed myself was the MVP’s API interface, everything else, they built and shaped themselves.”

– Nicolas Saison, CPO and Cofounder of Swan

Spotting red flags

You’ve probably heard the saying “if there’s a doubt, then there’s no doubt”. It’s often that founders make the mistake of keeping someone who’s underperforming for too long expecting different results; You often have to do that mistake once to realize it and learn your lessons, and that’s ok. But here’s a list of some red flags to spot to see if someone is underperforming.

• Low ownership mindset: If they talk only about execution and not about outcomes or impact, that’s a problem.

• “Tell me what to do” attitude: You’re looking for builders, not task-doers.

• Avoids ambiguity: If someone needs everything structured, they won’t survive startup chaos.

For this episode of PMF Collector, Matthieu Vaxelaire sits down with Fabrice, co-founder of Yoobic — a platform used by retail networks to manage store operations, from communication and training to daily execution across hundreds of locations.

Built with his two brothers, Yoobic didn’t start with a product idea.

It started with a conviction: most people don’t work behind a desk — yet the tools built for them are still designed for headquarters.

What follows is not a story about luck or timing. It’s a story about method.

You can watch the full conversation above, or read the key themes below.

1) Starting from a conviction — then forcing it through reality

Yoobic didn’t begin with a feature.

It began with a simple observation: the vast majority of workers are “deskless”, yet almost no software is designed for them. That gap was the starting point.

But instead of jumping into building, Fabrice and his co-founders approached it methodically. First, identify a technological shift — in this case, mobile. Then apply it to a vertical where the gap is obvious.

Retail quickly emerged.

Still, a top-down conviction wasn’t enough. It had to survive contact with reality.

2) The only way to understand a problem: live it

So Fabrice went on the ground.

He spent weeks shadowing store managers, observing how they worked day to day. What he found wasn’t inefficiency — it was chaos. Hundreds of emails from HQ, constant onboarding due to high turnover, fragmented tools, and processes that simply didn’t scale.

In one case, sales reports were still being sent by fax.

“When you’re inside the system, you don’t see how broken it is. From the outside, it’s obvious.”

This wasn’t a feature gap. It was a structural problem.

3) Narrowing down to one painful, recurring process

Instead of trying to fix everything, they made a key decision: go extremely narrow.

They focused on a single process — executing promotions in stores.

Not because it was glamorous, but because it met three critical conditions. It happened frequently, it had a direct impact on revenue, and someone inside the organization was accountable for it.

That was enough.

“If you try to solve everything, you don’t have an MVP anymore.”

So they built only that.

4) The only validation that matters: a paying customer

From the beginning, Fabrice had a clear rule: no free validation.

The MVP had to be paid.

Even if the amount was small, the act of paying forced a different level of commitment. It meant budget approval, internal alignment, and a real problem being solved.

After a short pilot, the signal was immediate.

The client came back and said: “I want this in all my stores.”

That was the first real proof.

“The amount doesn’t matter. The fact that they pay does.”

5) Growth came from focus, not expansion

Retail is a huge market. Too huge.

So instead of expanding, they kept narrowing.

Through repeated sales conversations, they refined their positioning, their messaging, and their target. Eventually, they landed on fashion retail — a segment where operational complexity is high and execution directly impacts revenue.

This focus made everything easier: clearer messaging, faster sales, stronger traction.

“The more precise your target, the easier it is to sell.”

6) Customers as the only real growth engine

In the early days, Yoobic didn’t rely on paid acquisition.

They relied on their customers.

Case studies, testimonials, conferences — in a small ecosystem like retail, word spreads quickly. Once a few brands adopt a solution, others follow.

This created a compounding effect.

“Your best marketing is your customers.”

7) Enterprise sales: slow, but predictable

Selling to large retail networks meant dealing with long cycles — often six to nine months.

To make this work, Yoobic built a structured approach around proof. Start with a limited deployment, measure the impact, and turn that into a quantified business case.

Once the ROI is clear, the conversation changes.

“If you can prove ROI, you don’t need to wait for next year’s budget.”

8) The US expansion: rebuilding everything except the product

After finding traction in Europe, Yoobic expanded to the US.

But almost nothing transferred.

No brand, no references, no network. So Fabrice made a deliberate decision: start from zero again. Small team, narrow ICP, outbound-driven approach.

The product didn’t change.

Everything else did — from messaging to pricing to the sales process.

“Just because it works in Europe doesn’t mean it works in the US.”

It took months to land the first clients. Then momentum came back.

9) A company is built through iterations, not plans

At every stage, the approach stayed the same.

Form a hypothesis, test it quickly, define success in advance, and iterate. Short cycles. No endless discussions.

First, open debate. Then, once a decision is made, full execution.

“You need both: open debate first, then ruthless execution.”

This discipline compounds over time.

10) Keeping the founder mindset at scale

Today, Yoobic is a large organization.

Which creates a tension: you can’t operate like an early-stage startup anymore — but you can’t lose that energy either.

Fabrice’s solution is to carve out small spaces to keep experimenting. Not on the core business, but on the side. Fast loops, quick iterations, then reintegrate what works.

“If I do this on the core business, I break the company.”

It’s how he keeps the “day one” mindset alive.

11) Persistence vs. stubbornness

Behind everything, there’s one constant tension.

You need persistence to push through uncertainty. But too much of it becomes stubbornness — and keeps you going in the wrong direction.

The real skill is knowing when to adjust.

“You need to keep going — but not in the wrong direction.”

This episode is a masterclass in building vertical SaaS from the ground up: starting with a real-world problem, validating through payment, focusing relentlessly, and rebuilding your playbook at every stage.