Newsletter #15 : Where Should We Begin… 🤔

Where should we begin? So much has happened in the last 3 months… Fundraisings, check. Awards, check. Y Combinator, check. And… our first exit! 🎉

TextMaster, created 7 years ago in our first batch of startups, was acquired. They had grown 100% year-on-year since their creation, reaching $8M in revenue in 2017, so a massive congrats to Thibault Lougnon and to the team is in order. 👏

And congrats to us for making our first dollar of revenue after 7 years of intense work. It seems like a lot is falling into place as of late, so in case you’re playing catch up: here’s a play-by-play of the major highlights of our action-packed first quarter! 🙌

January: Raising $80M 💸

We kicked off 2018 with a bang: a whirlwind of announcements saw our startups raise a total of $80M in fresh funding.

Forest Admin kicked things off with a $3M seed round led by Connect Ventures alongside prominent investors such as Xavier Niel. Since then, Sandro Munda and his team have accelerated the development of their universal back office, and taken residence in new offices in our neighborhood. 🌲

Spendesk, another eF16 graduate, raised a $10M Series A with partners from Index Ventures. Aiming to kill the hassle of company spend management, Rodolphe Ardant and his team have their eyes set on the UK and German market to drive further growth. 💳

Front, the shared inbox for teams launched by Mathilde Collin and Laurent Perrin at eFounders in 2014, is continuing its stratospheric growth. Their $66M Series B with Sequoia and DJF will help the team grow Front into a hub for collaboration across teams! 📥

February: Product of the Year 🏆

The momentum stayed strong in February, with a heart-warming award from the Product Hunt community. Station, the app to rule them all, launched in October and reached a staggering 6,700 upvotes, making it the 5th most upvoted product of all time. They logically went on to obtain the highest award for the year: a Golden Kitty in the Product of the Year category. 🥇

Those of you who follow us closely know how valuable Product Hunt is to us in terms of acquiring users, obtaining feedback, and symbolically moving our products out of beta. We appreciate your support when those launches come through, and we were delighted to bring back a shiny trophy from Ryan Hoover and his team! 😻

March: YC Demo Day 🎤

Last month came with its fair share of announcements… The highlight of which was the participation of not one, but two eF17 startups in Y Combinator’s W18 batch, bringing our all-time total to 4 startups from eFounders to have joined the ranks of YC. 🎉

Slite, the note app for teams, was in Mountain View with their team of 9 for the duration of the program. As was Station and their team of 6. All-in-all, 15 eFounders’ alumn were in attendance at their latest Demo Day with 2 founders pitching. A huge congrats to both teams, we simply couldn’t be prouder of the incredible journey for these teams since their launch a little over a year ago… 🙏

In Case You Missed It 👀

It’s hard to keep track of everything going on, here’s the breakdown of other news that may have gone under your radar:

Folk, the last app you’ll ever need to manage your network, went live last month. 🤝

Upflow, the smart solution to get paid faster, is now in public beta. 💰

We also launched eFounders Start: a new way for entrepreneurs to partner up with us and build the next big thing! 💪

More To Come… 😎

Yep, I can’t say anything else. 🙊 But let’s just say: you’re in for a few surprises next quarter!

And — as always — you’ll be the first to know. 😉

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