The Genesis of Cycle
Cycle began with a simple but relentless question: “why?” Mehdi Boudoukhane had asked it so often that he became a product manager - the dream role at the intersection of business, tech, and design. But frustration quickly followed. While designers had Figma and engineers had GitHub, PMs were left juggling countless tools and tabs just to move forward. Mehdi realized something fundamental was missing: a single source of truth for product teams.
In 2019, that reflection led him to Hexa (then eFounders). In our offices on Place Flagey, fueled by coffees at Belga, Mehdi met Thibaud Elzière. Whiteboard sessions multiplied, and soon a bold ambition emerged, almost like a challenge: “Let’s go after Atlassian.” The project was born, code-named ProductX, with a clear intuition: to give PMs the reference tool they had never had.
First Steps in Silicon Valley
To test this conviction, Mehdi took the most direct route: San Francisco, home to the most advanced product teams. With the support of Thibaud Elzière and Quentin Nickmans, he conducted over fifty interviews with PMs from Dropbox, Figma, Superhuman, and more. Each reinforced the same belief: if Cycle wanted to be world-class, it needed to work with world-class clients.
On his second trip, Mehdi went public. From the streets of San Francisco, he recorded a short video presenting Cycle. At the same time, together with Hexa, he published a manifesto, “Superhuman of X”, setting out Cycle’s ambition: to create a reference product tool, both powerful and elegant. Investor and customer meetings filled the days; evenings were spent debriefing and refining the vision around a kitchen table in a Mission District Airbnb.
Meanwhile, the product was taking shape. Within a month, Benoît and Julien shipped a working prototype. Cyril, from Folk, tested it despite its many early bugs. Cycle was alive. Soon after, a defining milestone arrived: on a flight from San Francisco to Paris, Mehdi received a term sheet from Ed Sim (Boldstart). That investment, alongside Hexa, led to Cycle’s $6M seed round.
A Story of Resilience
Cycle began to find its rhythm with its first users, some of whom became more than customers, like Aurélien Georget, CPO of Strapi, who went on to invest. The team built its base in San Francisco at Zeitgeist, their unofficial HQ. Mornings started at Philz Coffee at 6:02 a.m. with croissants and taxonomy debates; in Paris, six-hour workshops redrew the product’s architecture, while evenings ended with “#9s” at Les Petites Écuries. Thibaut Nyssens moved to the U.S. to drive growth, and the community blossomed through garden parties, conferences, and intense conversations with tech leaders.
Creativity fueled the product too. With Vlad, Adrien, and Romain from Hervé Studio, Cycle experimented with bold branding (3D websites, animated agents) setting it apart. But behind the breakthroughs were moments of real struggle. More than once, the journey almost stopped. The team persevered, adopting what they called “cockroach mode”: a refusal to die. One investor captured Mehdi’s spirit in three words: “PhD: poor, hungry, determined.”
That determination paid off. Cycle grew into the platform of choice for PMs across Europe and the U.S., serving clients like Brex, Alan, and Qonto—and eventually catching the attention of Atlassian, the public company that had long been the benchmark in product collaboration with more than 300,000 customers worldwide.
Closing the Loop
Six years after those first sketches in Flagey, the story came full circle: Atlassian acquired Cycle. For Mehdi and the whole team, it felt like closing the loop that began with a whiteboard challenge: “Let’s go after Atlassian.”
Today, Cycle continues its journey as part of Jira Product Discovery, led by Tanguy Crusson and the Atlassian team. The mission is clear: to integrate Cycle’s AI capabilities and bring product decisions even closer to customer reality. The full team joined Atlassian, ensuring a smooth transition for every client.
For Mehdi, the date of the acquisition carries an even deeper meaning—it’s also the day he welcomed his daughter, Emna. A fitting symbol: the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.