#150 - Quentin Nickmans (Hexa/Roundtable) - Challenges and projects of a booming start-up studio 😎
Co-founder of Hexa (eFounders, Logic Founders, 3founders) and Roundtable
I’ve been wanting to invite Quentin to talk to us about the numerous projects he has launched for over a decade, and we finally succeeded.
There are many things to discover in this exchange: the launch of the start-up studio eFounders, the expansion of the model and the creation of new verticals in Web 3.0, FinTech and climate, as well as the challenges and obstacles encountered along the way.
Quentin also speaks about their funding, the team and his personal investment in all these projects.
Although it was difficult, I had to choose a project that we could delve into thoroughly, and eventually settled on discussing Roundtable, which allows founders to gather its community of angel investors around their projects to raise funds.
We discuss the inspiration behind Angel-X, the very first draft of the project, its distinction from crowdfunding, coming together with the co-founders and the aspirations and projects of the start-up.
Hexa
How it works
Start-up studios are a relatively new concept in the innovation ecosystem. They are becoming more and more popular, but many people do not yet understand what they are and what they contribute in concrete terms.
A start-up studio is a company that creates and launches start-ups. Instead of starting a single company, a studio creates a portfolio of multiple start-ups. The latter provides each company with the necessary resources to get started, such as business premises, a development team and financing. The ultimate goal is to create a portfolio of start-ups that can subsequently grow and ideally be listed on the stock exchange.
During my discussion with Camille Tyan, co-founder of Logic Founders (Episode #56), we went into detail about the different stages that accompany the creation of start-ups:
Ideation
Validation
Launch
Spin-out
One of the advantages of start-up studios is their collaborative approach and creative capacity. I come back with Quentin on what differentiates eFounders from Rocket Internet :-)
Studio founders like Quentin and his early partner, Thibaud Elzière, have very specific skills in business creation and are able to attract the best talents around them to carry out their project. It is also interesting to see, in the eFounders constellation, that there are resources, knowledge and projects shared within the different start-ups in their portfolio, which promote innovation and creativity.
What the founders of eFounders have also achieved is to create a strong and unified culture. However, the “scaling” of a start-up studio can be very difficult. Studios need to be able to maintain a strong and consistent culture as they add new startups to their portfolio. They also need to be able to manage the rapid growth of their businesses and maintain a consistent organizational structure.
The constellation
Hexa is therefore several verticals of specialized start-up studios.
Source : Hexa.
Logic Founders
As discussed with Camille Tyan, this start-up studio focuses on the creation of start-ups in FinTech. You have already discovered one on Finscale: Numeral, with its CEO Edouard Mandon (Episode #131). There's also Marble.
eFounders
Here, they are more B2B SaaS platforms.
The best known: Aircall, Swan, Spendesk, Yousign, Upflow, Front but also Equify, Folk, or Roundtable...
I had some of the co-founders on Finscale. Do not hesitate to (re)listen to them!!
3founders
Already two start-ups launched in this studio dedicated to Web 3.0: Cohort and Dialog.
... And a climate vertical to be launched very soon!
Snapchot
Portfolio valuation of USD 5 billion
300 alumni
30 start-ups launched
Hexa recruits 👉 here
Roundtable
Angel-X, now Roundtable, was founded at the end of 2021 by Quentin, Evan Testa, Julien Fissette and Simon Ternoir to enable community investment in start-ups.
The start-up has developed a platform that allows individuals to create their own communities, invite members to join, share investment opportunities with one click and collectively pool their capital to invest in start-ups.
In the same vein as AngelList, communities on Roundtable can access a greater number of investment opportunities, while meeting regulatory investment requirements.
Roundtable recently announced that it has raised a first round of funding of EUR 3 million, using its own platform to consolidate hundreds of investments from angel investors across Europe, including Roxanne Varza (Station F), Nicolas Dessaigne (Algolia), David Apple (Notion), Andrew Nutter (Whisperers), Alexandre Berriche (Fleet), Paul Lê (La belle Vie) in France, Christopher Zemina (Airbank), Patrick Andrae (founder of HomeToGo), David Savasci (founder of Delinski and Zuper) in Germany, Pieterjan Bouten (Showpad), Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier (iBan First) in Belgium, Lorenzo Franzi (GFC) in Italy and Guillaume Rostand (Liligo) in Spain, among others.
Over the past six months, the team of about ten people has integrated more than 100 offers on its platform, representing EUR 50 million in assets under administration (AUA). It now plans to use the capital to expand its product offering and expand its presence in Europe.
💡Shares
📗 What my guests recommend this week:
A book: Hard things about hard things (Ben Horowitz)
A Newsletter: What's Hot in Enterprise IT/VC by Ed Sim
Another Newsletter: Lenny’s Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky
🧐 If you want to dive deeper:
eFounders morphs into Hexa, a portfolio company of startup studios 👉 Read
Building a Home for Operator Angels 👉 Read
🎧 The episode (in 🇫🇷)
Podcastics / Spotify / Google podcast / Deezer
👋 Contacts
Hexa / Quentin Nickmans
Sources: Hexa, Roundtable.