Simply a few weeks after asserting $22 million in fundraising, Paris-based startup studio Hexa is increasing past its studio mannequin to companion with later stage firms which have already discovered product-market match.
Referred to as Hexa Scale, with this program, the startup studio is searching for B2B firms that already generate some vital recurring income (ideally from €1 to €10 million yearly), however which can be dealing with some progress points.
These firms might have raised a seed spherical and even a Sequence A spherical, however they’re now rising at a linear tempo. That’s when Hexa plans to step in, inject capital and assist in terms of operations, worldwide growth, product and advertising and marketing.
In 2012, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham wrote an essay referred to as ’Startup = Growth’. In some ways, that essay has formed the narrative across the ideally suited progress trajectory for a startup. In response to him, as an alternative of rising income by a specific amount, startup founders ought to deal with a goal progress price and attain that focus on.
That’s as a result of you’ll be able to simply evaluate a progress price quarter over quater, 12 months over 12 months. Another excuse why specializing in a progress price might be useful is that an organization grows exponentially if it could possibly preserve the identical progress price over time.
And VCs like to again startups with an exponential trajectory. An organization that grows at a linear tempo may have a tough time elevating additional funding spherical (regardless that there’s nothing improper with linear progress by itself). On the identical time, that firm additionally probably has a giant crew with costly working prices.
As a substitute of letting these firms in that bizarre spot, Hexa needs to assist them turn into startups with exponential progress once more. Augustin Celier will probably be in command of this new exercise. He beforehand co-founded a number of startups — Uptime, Shuffle, Marc&Aurèle and CoursdePhilo.
“I’ve been building companies for the last 15 years. For my last venture, we ended up in a financing no-man’s land, which led us to a fire sale. Like many, we were confronted with very narrow support options: to stay on the VC track, you need continuous hypergrowth, while you need to settle for slow, linear growth to go down the self-financing or Private Equity route,” Celier mentioned in a press release. Hexa Scale represents a 3rd path.
Whereas Hexa is best generally known as the startup studio that spawned some profitable B2B SaaS startups like Entrance, Aircall and Spendesk, this isn’t the primary time Hexa is taking a look at later stage firms. It has already partnered with Yousign, which now processes greater than 5 million e-signatures monthly for 17,000 prospects.
