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🎙️ From terrible investor first date to perfect match
For the first podcast episode of Underdogs, Hexa Scale partner Augustin Celier sits down with Antonio Velasco, founder and CEO of Veevart, a museum software company he bootstrapped to $2M ARR before partnering with Hexa. They revisit the bumpy first meeting that almost ended things before they began, and what it really takes to bring in partners without losing your vision. A candid, founder-to-founder conversation about timing, trust, and rebuilding for the next stage.
🚑 Scaling a healthtech in the AI age
Building AI for healthcare isn’t just about tech, it’s about trust, regulation, and staying humble in a field where the stakes couldn’t be higher. In this new CTO Voices conversation, Martin Raison (cofounder & CTO of Nabla, ex-Facebook AI Research) sits down with Guillaume Marquis (Basalt) to unpack what it really takes to scale meaningful AI in one of the world’s most complex industries. From navigating regulation to redefining the CTO’s role in the LLM era, this is a masterclass in building responsibly at the frontier of AI and health.
⚠️ How a €100M exit fell apart
In 2021, Hexa Scale partner Augustin Celier was running Uptime, a deeptech startup on the verge of a €100M deal with a global industrial giant. Fourteen months later, the company was sold in court for €3M. In the first edition of his new newsletter Underdogs, Augustin unpacks how it all unraveled, from being “too nice” in negotiations to betting on the wrong bankers and trusting the wrong advice. It’s a raw, brutally honest post-mortem on what really kills exits, and how to avoid making the same mistakes.
🤸 How one pivot at Dotfile changed everything
Sometimes a single pivot rewrites the story. In this episode of Start Mode, Hexa partner Mat Vaxelaire sits down with Titouan Benoit, cofounder & CTO of Dotfile (HX21), to trace the unlikely path from a teenage coder drilling Ethernet holes in his bedroom wall to leading one of Europe’s fastest-growing KYB startups. Titouan shares how a bold pivot turned early struggles into 80+ paying clients, what he learned about resilience and timing, and why shared founder values matter just as much as product-market fit.
💡 How to validate your startup idea with AI
When anyone can generate 100 ideas in an afternoon, how do you know which ones are worth building? In the first episode of Build with AI, Hexa partners Florent Quinti and Ugo Vollmer share how they use AI to explore new markets, turn intuition into conviction, and prototype fast, even without a CTO. It’s a hands-on look at how AI is reshaping the earliest, most creative stage of company building, straight from the people doing it every day inside Hexa.
Portfolio news
🎉 Cohort (HX22) joins Brevo
Cohort, which started in our studio in 2022 with founders Séraphie de Tracy and Nathan Baraillé, has been acquired by European CRM giant Brevo. What began as a Web3 loyalty experiment evolved into a customer engagement platform used by brands like Etam across 10+ countries. With Hexa partner Florent Quinti supporting the team from day one, this acquisition marks the next chapter for a product built on clarity, resilience, and world-class execution. Find out more.
🔥 Front (HX14) hits $100M ARR
Front, the customer communication platform built around human connection, has passed $100M in annual recurring revenue - a milestone reached by fewer than 1% of SaaS companies. CEO Dan O’Connell credits the growth to a simple belief: software alone can’t build relationships, people do. With over 9,000 customers and new AI tools like Copilot and Smart QA, Front continues to blend automation with authenticity in customer experience. Read the full story from Front.
🎯 Roundtable (HX22) ranked #14 fastest-growing startup in Europe
Roundtable has been named the 14th fastest-growing startup in Europe in 2025 by Sifted. Co-founded by Evan Testa, Julien Fissette and Simon Ternoir, Roundtable is reshaping how private market investments are structured across Europe. A huge milestone for the team, and just the beginning of their expansion. See Sifted’s full list.
Hexa news
🚀 Hexa x Builders Factory launch “Nights & Weekends”
We’ve partnered with Builders Factory to create Nights & Weekends, a program for ambitious talents who want to launch a startup without quitting their job. Over three weeks, participants will explore an idea, test a market, and build their first prototype, with expert-led workshops and evening access to Builders Factory HQ. A new path for founders to take their first leap into entrepreneurship sustainably. Learn more and apply.
🎙️ Pivot CTO Estelle Giuly joins our next CTO Voices
For our second CTO Voices, Estelle Giuly (CTO at Pivot) joins Louis Pinsard (Dialog) to talk about leading tech in one of software’s slowest-moving sectors, and why speed, quality, and leadership all evolve as teams scale. From using AI responsibly to making yourself replaceable as a sign of great management, it’s a candid conversation about what it really takes to build in tough industries. Request your spot.
💥 DamageX looking for its CEO co-founder
Every year, millions face injury claims - car accidents, medical errors, workplace falls - and the compensation process remains long, uncertain, and painful for both victims and professionals. DamageX aims to change that by automating time-consuming tasks, improving calculation accuracy, and making the process fairer and more humane. With a €5B compensation market in France alone (€80B in Europe), it’s an opportunity with massive impact. Mat Vaxelaire is looking for a CEO co-founder to build it - reach out to him if that’s you.
🧠 ResearchX looking for its tech co-founder
Hexa partner Florent Quinti is looking for a technical co-founder to build ResearchX (code name), an AI-powered consumer research platform that helps brands test ideas, packaging, and more at scale, in just days. By replacing traditional interviews with AI-led conversations, ResearchX turns messy qualitative data into structured, actionable insights. The challenge: building real AI pipelines from scratch - multi-modal processing, LLM synthesis, clustering, and scalable infra - to transform raw human feedback into decision-ready intelligence. Reach out to Flo to learn more.
Jobs
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Cheers,
The Hexa Team