Startup studio's recipe to create SaaS unicorns

The startup studio’s recipe to create unicorns

eFounders startup-building thesis

Venture firms have their investment thesis, we have

our building thesis. At eFounders we are not investing

in companies, we are building them. As a startup

studio, we’ve chosen to develop our own thesis — a

series of rules that are truly part of our company

creation process.

Here is our “building thesis”, the one we think helps

us create unicorns.

What we like

 Targeting millions of businesses…

We like the network effect of consumer

businesses, and we like the general behavior

of business customers. It naturally comes with

a business model, it’s more predictable and

less risky.

Mention has more than 300 000 users, a big

part of them are SMEs, big companies,

agencies and a lot of institutions.

…Offering a service rather than purely a software…

We like to create services that are powered by amazing

software more than building software as such.

TextMaster is a translation service that relies on a

very powerful software, as are Mention — a media

monitoring service powered by a very strong web

crawler — and Mailjet - an email delivery service

with a reliable deliverability technology.

…At a small and recurring cost.

We are not selling big software to large accounts.

Instead, our products are offering recurring

services that can help increase revenues, reduce

cost or improve productivity for a few tens or

hundreds dollars a month.

Aircall is based on a subscription model. For $24

a month you can get one or more business phone

lines that can be shared across your teammates

to manage support call and increase

productivity.

We are eager to

Disrupt outdated industries…

Our ambition is to disrupt entire sectors. There are

still lots of opportunities in the enterprise world.

Disrupting industries is a great way to create large-

scale businesses.

TravelX (project still under cover) is going to be our

way to reinvent the corporate travel agency. This

sector is fossilised and thus offers a huge

opportunity for disruption. TravelX project will

definitely change the way agencies are currently

working.

…by cutting out the middlemen…

We like marketplaces because disintermediation

empowers the multitude, changes the established order,

creates market transparency and often improves service

quality while reducing cost.

illustrio disintermediates design agencies by

providing a customisable illustrations generator.

Therefore, it provides a better and cheaper services to

startups, SMEs, medias or other kinds of agencies and

lets them build their own illustrations and visuals in a

few clicks.

 …or by using new technologies…

We like leveraging new technologies and getting

inspired by the new perspective they offer.

Solved uses a brand new technology that enables

communication from browser to browser (Web RTC)

which makes it possible to put collaborators in touch

with software experts live very easily.

…in order to create scalable…

We’re using our infrastructure to make at least 30%

of our client acquisition completely automatic — and

we are very also happy to contact or call the other

70%!

Mention’s 300,000 users have been acquired

without spending a dollar in paid marketing.

 …and global models.

We like to avoid local constraints (HR, Accounting etc)

to focus on issues common to any companies

worldwide, and not limited to startups.

Front provides a tool to manage customers’ incoming

queries as a team. Front can be used by any type of

companies worldwide, it is just sufficient that the

companies have customers. Every company that has

customers needs Front.

TO SUM UP

eFounders’ building thesis

We like targeting millions of businesses, offering a service

rather than a software, at a minimum and recurring cost.

We are eager to disrupt outdated industries by cutting out the

middlemen or using new technologies in order to create

scalable and global business models.

efounders.co

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