Startup Studio Insider: eFounders Opens Up About the Startup Studio Space
Startup studios are shaking up the world of startups. They build companies, offering shared resources and operational support through ideation, launch, and growth stages. Leading players of the startup studio industry, such as eFounders, are reshaping and transforming the startup space. To understand the journey and impact of this studio, Startup Studio Insider, a community of startup entrepreneurs and enthusiasts, got the chance to interview the eFounders staff and hear about their business and what makes them unique.
Founded in 2011 in Paris, France, by Quentin Nickmans and Thibaud Elziere, eFounders has dedicated its focus and innovation to developing B2B SaaS startups. With offices in Brussels, Belgium, eFounders has helped build 27 software solution startups to date!
The startup studio is also responsible for producing innovative business software solutions such as Front, Mention, and Aircall and most recently, their company portfolio generated $148M in revenue, with a consolidated valuation of $1.5B.
The eFounders team gave insight into their approach to building business and what makes their company unique. Check out their interview and insights below!
Q1: What sets you apart from the rest of the competition in the startup studio space?
The key difference with integrated studios lies in the fact we’re building independent ventures from both operational and financial standpoints. This means that eFounders does not provide shared resources in consulting mode to independent companies nor provides funding to independent companies. Instead, eFounders acts as a co-founder involved in every aspect of the company and covers all costs until the company becomes independent. Founders are in the driver’s seat, they build their own company, and eFounders is dedicated to providing as much help as it can along the way.
Q2: How would you describe your studio’s approach to developing new ideas?
The initial idea will in most cases come from the eFounders team. The numerous rich discussions we have through our deep exposure to entrepreneurs, companies, investors, and more generally the global SaaS ecosystem are the key source of inspiration for new pain points to solve.
An idea for us generally involves (1) a pain point we want to solve, and (2) a first mock-up of the initial MVP – a simple solution to start solving the pain point while providing enough value to users. It’s important to understand how the idea will evolve as we work together on translating our team’s experience and vision with the final founding team.
Q3: What services do you offer your startups?
It takes around 18 months to build a company starting from the initial idea. During this phase, the eFounders team is fully hands-on alongside the founding team, working on product, design, strategy, go-to-market, recruiting, funding, etc. Besides being extremely hands-on, our core objective is to build a team and help them become progressively autonomous on each of these dimensions.
Twelve people work in our core team. They support each project on recruiting, product, design, marketing, sales, finance, legal, and more strategic topics. Most importantly, the priority of each core team member is to help build a fully independent team for each project. It’s also worth noting that we don’t have software engineers in the core team working on new products. This is intentional as we find we generate the best results by working with y engineers who have been recruited specifically for each company based on their expertise.
Q4: What does the studio’s level of involvement look like after the business has launched? What unique benefits does the startup studio model provide entrepreneurs?
eFounders remains a key shareholder and continues to help the founders and the team on strategy and funding, as well as on operational issues (e.g., recruiting, team structuring, etc.). We generally stay very close to the company, as we maintain strong relationships with the founders and know the business very well.
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SOURCE: Startup Studio Insider
