Launching a company is far from being easy. It requires relentless work, a lot of resources, and crazy amounts of energy. Back in the early days, the eFounders core team barely existed, we were a team of 3 trying to get one company off the ground per year (if we were lucky!).
Little did we know that 10 years later we would have launched 30 companies, with a few on track to becoming unicorns. That our core team would be 15 people strong. That our portfolio valuation would reach the symbolic milestone of $2 billion and that we would have generated 1500 jobs in countries across the world. While we did have huge ambitions from the start, we canât help but feel incredibly proud of what weâve achieved and so grateful for all the people thatâs contributed to what eFounders is now.
Building one company is hard. Building thirty is a feat we didnât know was possible.
A new model of entrepreneurship
At eFounders, we couldnât be further away from the clichĂ© of the entrepreneur building all alone in his/her garage. In 10 years, weâve managed to create a new model of entrepreneurship, one that involves building companies in parallel (launching multiple startups at once) and doing so as a team (with the eFounders core team supporting our early-stage startups).
Weâve proven that building companies as a team will always win against individual performances.
Central to our startup studio is also our focus on launching companies that are truly innovative with the goal of making them independent 12â18 months after we launch them.
And crucially, we have always aimed our attention at entrepreneurs. Weâve managed to build a strong brand that now allows us to attract top talent. Hundreds of entrepreneurs come knocking at our door to join us, in a given year. And when we choose to cofound a company with a founder, we make a point of giving them the majority of equity. We want to attract the best and brightest.
Behind the numbers
Today, as we celebrate the 10 years since we came into existence, we cross a symbolic milestone. The total valuation of the companies in our portfolio has now reached $2 billion, only 18 months after it surpassed $1 billion, which highlights the fast pace of growth of our mighty community of companies.
This coincides with us having launched a total of 30 companies since our inception. Theyâve raised a total of more than $400 million with leading VCs in the US and Europe (Sequoia, Accel, Index Ventures, CreandumâŠ) with combined revenue of over $130 million ARR. And while our end goal isnât exits, five companies have been acquired with TextMaster, Mention, Mailjet, Hivy, and Briq.
More importantly, weâve generated over 1500 jobs in offices in Paris, San Francisco, New York, Sydney, Berlin, Madrid and in remote locations across the world. And we currently have over 170 job openings.
But beyond funding and valuations numbers, what weâre most proud of over the past decade is to have partnered with tens of entrepreneurs and to have created products that have helped millions of teams around the world collaborate better together. We believe that this is what truly validates our model
Scaling eFounders
Itâs difficult to build more than six companies a year without losing whatâs made our success so far: acting as the co-founders of the companies we build. And so to scale the eFounders model, weâre exploring different opportunities, such as backing more mature companies like we did with Yousign or replicating the eFounders model across other verticals as we did with Camille Tyan for Logic Founders.
Weâre planning on partnering with more successful entrepreneurs and launch other startup studios in health, AI, blockchain, and more. And weâre still bubbling with new ideas and have huge ambitions to create game-changing products that inspire and adapt to our ever-changing new ways of working.
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So thank you to everyone. Weâve said it before, and weâll say it again, a startup studio is all about the people: the ones that cofound companies with us, the ones who join our early-stage companies, the ones who join the Core Team to help us give unfair advantages, the ones we meet along the way. Without all of them, we wouldnât be able to celebrate such a milestone. Our 10 years is for all of you. For you to celebrate what weâve achieved, and everything else thatâs ahead of us. The best is on the way.