This year, we launched our book 10x Method, and it turned into a real success. But “10x” is more than the title of a book. It’s the promise we now make to every entrepreneur who joins Hexa. A promise made possible by the platform we unveiled this year through our three complementary engines: Hexa Start, Hexa Scale, and the newly launched Hexa Sprint. Ten times more chances to succeed. It’s both a statement and a commitment.
From day one, the startup studio has been anchored in a simple belief: there is a new way to build companies. A way that moves away from the lonely journey, toward a collaborative path where teams have ten times more chances to win. That was the bet we made 14 years ago when I wrote the first Hexa Letter. It’s the same promise that still drives us today. With this collaborative form of entrepreneurship, we give ourselves ten times more chances to create the companies Europe, and the world, needs for tomorrow.
I like to say that Hexa builds an ecosystem within the ecosystem. A place where talent, expertise, energy, and ambition are concentrated in one single platform, increasing interactions, compounding synergies, and giving all of us more chances to succeed together.
New Chapter for Hexa
For fourteen years, Quentin and I have co-led Hexa, later joined by Amaury. Together, we shaped what the studio has become ; a collective, a way of thinking, a way of building.
2025 marks an important turning point for us: we’re welcoming Matthieu Gombeaud as Hexa’s first CEO.
It’s a big step. One that opens up new perspectives but also brings its share of challenges. How do we give Matthieu the space he needs to truly lead, without reducing him to an executor? How do we, as co-founders, reinvent our own role within Hexa? How do we preserve our DNA and culture while allowing room for change and renewal?
To understand this decision, we need to go back to 2024. We had just raised over €25 million to roll out our new vision, the one that turned eFounders into Hexa and set ambitious goals for 2030.
We wanted to go further. But to do that, the studio needed to evolve structurally. It had to become less dependent on us, and prove that the model could scale beyond its founders.
People have often described Hexa, sometimes kindly, as an artisanal model, deeply tied to our personal involvement. To prove that it could go beyond that, we put in place a new strategy based on two key components.
The first was organizational: we decided to build a Partner model, a team of experienced entrepreneurs responsible for launching new verticals and supporting founders day to day. Instead of being limited to a few startups per year, this system would allow us to launch dozens, by multiplying partners and opening up new fields of expertise.
We first tested the model with Camille Tyan (fintech), Matthieu Vaxelaire (productivity & B2B),followed by Florent Quinti (AI) and Julien Meraud (health) all with success.
The second was financial: until then, every project had been fully funded by the studio. It was costly and limiting. To scale, we needed a lighter model, one that would allow us to increase the number of projects without being restricted by our own balance sheet. We shifted to a fund-based structure, paving the way for the years ahead.
Finding the Right Leader
By early 2024, this new strategy was in place, yet something was missing. Hexa still revolved too much around us. Quentin oversaw legal, finance and admin; I led product and communications; Amaury managed operations and hiring.
It worked but it was starting to weigh on us.
The core team had grown, management was taking more and more of our time, and we struggled to take a step back to think strategically. We were spending energy on tasks that weren’t our strengths or our passions. And, maybe most tellingly, our teams were beginning to feel the effects: decisions were slow, consensus took too long, agility was fading.
We realized we needed someone to join us. At first, we thought of hiring a COO, someone to help us execute. But after spending a few days with a coach, aligning our views and clearing the air, we came back convinced we needed the opposite.
Not an operator, but a leader. Someone who could challenge us, take ownership, and think about Hexa’s future alongside us.
It took us a year to find that person. Finding someone with the skills and the spark to run a company like Hexa, a company that builds companies, isn’t easy. Then Quentin introduced me to Matthieu Gombeaud, a former BCG consultant who led partnerships at Aircall. I went into the meeting with preconceptions, and left with stars in my eyes.
Matthieu combines intelligence, humanity, and kindness in a way that immediately earned our trust.
He didn’t just take the seat, he made it his own. In a few months, he freed us from most of our operational duties and repositioned each of us where we can bring the most value.
Bringing in a CEO is always a leap of faith. On paper, it seems simple; in practice, it means letting go of habits built over more than a decade. Matthieu earned that space through tact and leadership.
He’s only been with us a few months, but the change is already visible. The next step is to formalize this evolution with a governance model that gives him the strategic space to lead Hexa into its next phase.
From Studio to Platform
Matthieu’s arrival has allowed us to lift our heads and see the bigger picture again.
More than ever, our mission remains the same: to help entrepreneurs build exceptional companies and increase their chances of success tenfold.
Over the years, we’ve expanded Hexa around this mission. Alongside our historic activity of building companies from scratch, now called Start, we’ve launched two new programs: Scale and Sprint.
Scale is our second life for startups, a way to give promising companies a new trajectory. With Augustin Celier, who leads this initiative, we identify businesses that have the right foundations, define a renewed vision with their founders, and help them execute on it.
We did it successfully with Yousign, which grew from €2 million in revenue in 2018 to more than €40 million in 2025. This year, we completed two new deals, Veevart and Filliz, laying the foundation for what we hope will become a core pillar of Hexa in the years to come.
Start, our original craft, remains at the heart of the studio. Building from scratch is a delicate art, finding original ideas, convincing great founders to join, and shaping products that matter.
This year, we’ve both launched and stopped more projects than ever. The arrival of AI has changed everything — not only the nature of what we build, but the way we build. We continue refining how we operate with our partners, how we share resources, how we select ideas and founders, and how we define our deals. This period of transition feels demanding, but necessary.
And now, a new initiative is emerging: Sprint. For years, early teams came to us seeking support, and we had to turn them away. Our model simply wasn’t designed to accelerate projects that already existed.
Sprint changes that. It’s our take on acceleration, inspired by Y Combinator but infused with Hexa’s culture. Each cohort will be led by a partner focused on a specific theme, welcoming startups into a six-month program where we invest €500,000 for about 10% equity, offering them not just funding but structure, rhythm, and ambition.
Our first cohort, focused on European defense and led by Guillaume Le Rouge, has already started with three companies.
With Start, Scale, and Sprint, Hexa is transforming into a true platform for entrepreneurship.
Our goal is to accompany founders at every stage, always early, always hands-on.
We don’t just make the introduction. We sit in the meeting with them.
We calibrate vision, raise ambition, and bring rhythm to execution.
That’s the essence of what we call the 10x Method, which we formalized this year in a book bearing the same name.
The Challenge of Raising Capital
We’ve also learned that collaboration is our greatest strength.
To remain hands-on, we need expertise and time. That’s why the Partner model is key to our future. Partners are entrepreneurs at heart: independent, ambitious, driven by equity and impact.
Building an organization where such profiles can thrive is one of the major challenges ahead, rethinking incentives, structures, and visibility to create a true collective of entrepreneurs within Hexa.
And, of course, all this growth requires capital. Launching a company is relatively affordable; investing in existing ones is not. Until now, we’ve financed each project through club deals with our investor network, more than 80 of them over the years. It worked, but it’s reached its limit.
To scale further, we’ll need to raise dedicated funds as we did two years ago with Hexa Build 1, which made our Start activity self-sustaining.
2026 will be a pivotal year as we work to raise institutional capital to fuel both Scale and Sprint.
With our new governance, Matthieu’s leadership, and a more mature model, we’re entering this next phase with confidence and a healthy sense of realism.
Raising money and earning trust is never easy, but it’s the price of ambition.
Fourteen years after we started, Hexa is entering a new era.
We’ve moved from a studio driven by its founders to a platform powered by partners and guided by a CEO.
The mission hasn’t changed: to give entrepreneurs ten times more chances to succeed.
And, as always, we’re just getting started.