Aircall
We launched Aircall in 2014 to tackle a new market: making company phone systems available with a fraction of a setup time of regular land line systems. Starting with sales and support teams, Aircall built a team and product to reach explosive growth.
Aircall, or PhoneX as it was known at the very beginning, joins the HX14 batch.
Aircall raises $800k with Business Angels.
Aircall raises $2.75M with Balderton Capital, FundersClub and business angels.
Aircall raises another $8M with Balderton Capital, FundersClub et FJLabs.
Aircall raises $29M Series B with Draper Esprit.
Aircall raises $65M Series C led by DTCP & Adam Street Partners.
Aircall raises $120M Series D round and becomes the first eFounders unicorn.
Aircall exceeds $100 million Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and becomes a "Centaur".
In 2013, the idea for Aircall was born at Rue du Sentier, then our HQ and the birthplace of Front. Back then, it was called PhoneX.
The concept came from real pain points Thibaud Elziere faced while building Fotolia: managing international calls meant buying local numbers and setting up clunky call systems in every country. Textmaster, one of the first Hexa ventures, ran into the same problem. Thibaud and Quentin pitched the idea to Olivier Pailhès, he joined immediately.
The original pitch:
PhoneX is a SaaS platform for telephony. It lets any company buy and manage local numbers easily (with features like call routing and mini IVR). But more importantly, we want to offer voice tech tools like click-to-call via WebRTC, and become the first phone API as a SaaS.
The road was anything but smooth: YC rejected them, big VCs said they’d get crushed by U.S. giants, the CTO left, and early traction was slow. But Olivier pushed through. Without his persistence, Aircall wouldn’t be here today.
He was joined by co-founders Jonathan Anguelov, Pierre-Baptiste Béchu, and Xavier Durant. Together, they tackled huge tech challenges and found product-market fit in a crowded space. In 2015, Aircall got into 500 Startups and landed top investors like Balderton.
Today, Aircall has raised $226M+, hit a $1B+ valuation, passed $100M in ARR (Centaur status in 2022), and grown to 700+ people across six offices: New York, Paris, Berlin, London, Madrid, and Sydney.
It’s one of Hexa’s biggest success stories and we owe it all to the founders.
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