2021 marked the end of a phe-nomenal year at eFounders. You'd be forgiven for thinking, then, that last year was our peak, that surely, such ridiculous results cannot be sustained. But oh no, this is just the beginning. 2022 is already off to a roaring start, with the welcoming of yet another unicorn, Spendesk (that makes 2 unicorns- keep count!), and the acquisition of Canyon (eF20) by Yousign (eF19). In 2022, thanks to our fantastic team of talents, we're reaching the tipping point ⚖️

With the entire year sprawling ahead of us like a vast old football pitch, we have never been so ferociously hungry to solve problems, take on new challenges, start new projects, meet new people, work long hours, climb new mountains, refactor complex code, tackle web3, welcome new users and, last but not least, augment mind and body. Phew, that was a mouthful 😅. And, building on what we achieved last year, we'd say we're in a fantastic position to score some goals!

Now that's cleared up, let's have a look at what exactly the tipping point looks like for us at eFounders, and how it came to be since our last newsletter ⬇️

🌱 Planting the Seeds

Two of our startups- Collective and Numeral- received an early Christmas present as they raised huge seed rounds in December. Collective, from our 2020 batch, secured $8 million to reinvent the future of work for freelancers. Numeral, the first company born out of our fintech studio Logic Founders, landed €13 million in a first funding round to automate payment operations. The deal represented the largest first VC round ever raised by a fintech in France - no biggie. These rounds are testament to the hard work of our startups, and sow the seeds for an exciting stage of accelerated growth over the coming year: Collective is looking to recruit 30+ people by the end of 2022, and Numeral has ambitious plans to grow its team from 10 to 40 people in the next few months 🧑‍🤝‍🧑. Onwards and upwards! 🚀

📸 Baring it all

Behind everything we do at eFounders, there are a dozen of Founders and an expert Core team of 18 people that put their blood, sweat and mostly time spent in front of a little screen into making eFounders what it is today. These past few months, more than ever before, we've bared it all for our community, pulling back the curtain on the inner-workings of our startup studio. At the start of December, we had the pleasure of featuring in Alexandre Delivet's Inside eFounders podcast 🎙️, a five-part special delving into the day-to-day of everyone from our Talent Lead to the Founder of Kairn - here's a handy recap. The layers continued to shed as we published our first ever year in review, revealing what we were able to achieve in 2021 as a team. And most recently, since we thrive in the future, we revealed our predictions for 2022 🔮 - both for our own startup studio and for the tech ecosystem.

💪 Knowledge is power

We're firm believers that knowledge not shared is knowledge wasted. We feel so lucky to be part of the ever-growing tech and SaaS industry, and pride ourselves on communicating our learnings along the way. In the run-up to their seed round, the team at Collective published an in-depth study looking at the current state and future of freelancer teams. folk released a free no-code guide, while Fleex came through with a full-on ebook about the opportunities of remote work, and Equify gave us the ultimate guide to BSCPE. Better put on those reading glasses! 🤓

But that's not all. As the web3 makes waves throughout the world, our founder Thibaud published his thoughts and reflections on the tremendously topical matter. Who knows - you might even see something in the web3 space from our studio this year. Keep your eyes peeled 👀

As we wrap up this letter, we'd like to bid a bittersweet farewell to our batch of eF20 startups leaving our studio this year 👋. Kairn recently became the first eFounders startup to make the leap to Station F - well played. After their scintillating seed round, Collective is leaving for their own offices to accommodate their fast-growing team. Fleex recently unveiled a spanking new website (just look at that smooth transition), while Crew continues to put sourcing at the heart of an ever-growing number of companies' HR strategies. And of course, in a novel turn of events, our beloved Canyon was just last week acquired by fellow eFounders startup Yousign. We wish them all the very best!

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Want to join us? Apply to become a Founder, become a talent in our Core Team or at one of our startups, and if you're feeling extra daring, why not become a pilot to beta-test our products and take them to new heights.