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Thibaud Elzière

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Thibaud Elzière
Born (1979-09-13) September 13, 1979 (age 45)
Aix-en-Provence, France
NationalityFrench
EducationÉcole centrale de Lyon
Occupation(s)entrepreneur, business executive, angel investor
Years active2004–present
Known forFotolia, Hexa

Thibaud Elzière, born on September 13, 1979 in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône, in France), is a French entrepreneur and founder of several startups. In 2004, he co-founded the stock photography company Fotolia, which was sold to Adobe in 2014 for 800 million euros. In 2011, he co-founded eFounders, a startup studio that became Hexa in 2022, which he still manages today.

He has launched several other companies, including Gama Space, a solar sail project, Iconic House, which rents out prestige real estate, and Kate, a microcar manufacturer. He has been at the helm of Folk, an xRM project created within Hexa, since 2019. Also an angel investor, he has personally invested in around a hundred startups since 2009, including Algolia, Notion and Hugging Face. Since 2020, Thibaud Elzière has been included in Challenges magazine's ranking of France's 500 richest people.

Biography

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Early career with Fotolia

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Thibaud Elzière founded Fotolia in 2004, during his studies at the École centrale de Lyon, with his partner Oleg Tscheltzoff.[1] Fotolia is an online marketplace that enables professional photographers to sell their digital photographs directly to customers.[2] It was also at this time that he moved to Brussels, where his future wife lived, having met her during an Erasmus Programme exchange in Berlin.[3] In 2014, Fotolia was sold to Adobe, which renamed it Adobe Stock, for 800 million euros.[2]

eFounders then Hexa

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Thibaud Elzière founded the eFounders startup studio with Quentin Nickmans in 2011.[4] Originally focused on the software as a service (SaaS) sector, the studio specializes in the creation of startups by recruiting founders, usually a chief executive officer and chief technology officer, to whom it provides an idea, initial funding and strategic advice to launch their project.[5] eFounders concluded the sale of its first company, TextMaster, in 2018.[6]

In 2022, eFounders initiated 3founders, a new studio specialized in Web3, and carried out a global restructuring.[7] The company adopted the name Hexa, while retaining the eFounders name for the original SaaS-focused studio.[7] This restructuring led to the organization of the studios into verticals, each specialized in a specific field, such as Hexa AI, devoted to artificial intelligence, or Hexa Health, dedicated to improving the health system.[8]

Hexa has been behind the creation of some forty startups since 2011, including three unicorns valued at over a billion dollars: Front, Spendesk and Aircall.[9] Aircall has also become a centaur, a term used to describe startups with annual recurring revenues in excess of one hundred million dollars. The startups launched by Hexa have reached a total valuation of five billion dollars, created around 2,800 jobs and raised 700 million euros in funds.[5]

Other companies

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In total, Thibaud Elzière is the creator of around ten startups.[10] While he generally delegates the day-to-day management of all these companies, still being head of Hexa, in 2019 he decided to become CEO of Folk, a xRM or "extended relationship management" application, created within the startup studio.[11] This choice was motivated by the fact that he had great ambitions for this project, without however managing to properly pitch it to potential candidates.[12] It was also an opportunity for him to directly apply the advice he used to give to business executives.[12]

In 2020, he teamed up with Louis de Gouyon Matignon, then a space law student, and invested 500,000 euros to launch Gama Space, a startup aimed at producing solar sails.[13] This propulsion device uses the radiation pressure emitted by stars to move through space like a sailboat, whereas current systems only have electric or thermal propulsion.[13] In 2022, Gama Space raised two million euros, notably from the French National Centre for Space Studies and Bpifrance.[13] The sail, which measures 74 square meters and is fifty times thinner than a human hair, is made from ultra-thin plastic aluminized.[13]

The following year, he launched Iconic House with his brother Robin Michel.[10] The idea was born when the two founders owned a loft too large for the two of them to live in.[14] They decided to turn it into a place where friends and business acquaintances would stay, before turning it into the headquarters of Iconic House.[14] The company's concept is based on the purchase of luxury houses and villas, which are renovated before being made available for seasonal rental, with the services of a palace.[10] The first houses are located in Hossegor, Courchevel and Gordes.[10]

In 2023, Thibaud Elzière teamed up with Matthias Goldenberg and Pierre Escrieut, two former employees of the automotive equipment manufacturer Valeo, to launch Kate, a microcar manufacturer.[15] They believe they are the future of everyday mobility, rather than SUV or other energy-hungry vehicles, whether thermal or electric.[16] They therefore bet on a small, light, clean and financially accessible car.[16] To this end, in 2022 they acquired Nosmoke, a company founded in 2012 that was then generating four million euros in sales.[16] They announced an initial fundraising of seven million euros in 2023.[15] The launch of the K1, their first vehicle which should cost less than 15,000 euros to buy, is scheduled for 2026.[17]

Angel investor

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Thibaud Elzière has invested in around a hundred startups, as an angel investor.[4] For example, he took part in the initial fund-raising of Hugging Face, an open source artificial intelligence company,[18] Algolia, a search engine which became a unicorn in 2021 and Notion, a note-taking app claiming thirty million users.[19] In 2020, he joined the Challenges magazine's ranking of France's 500 biggest fortunes.[20] In 2023, his fortune, derived solely from his entrepreneurial projects, is estimated at 700 million euros.[20]

References

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  1. ^ Sedouramane, Hugo (12 December 2014). "Thibaud Elziere et Oleg Tscheltzoff, la «french touch» à 800 millions de dollars". L'Opinion (in French). Retrieved 25 May 2024.
  2. ^ a b Cassini, Sandrine (12 December 2014). "Adobe poursuit sa transformation à marche forcée". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 2 May 2024.
  3. ^ Charlot, Christophe (13 April 2022). "Thibaard Elzière (eFounders): « Je suis devenu résident belge avant ma première boîte »". Le Vif/L'Express (in French). Retrieved 6 May 2024.
  4. ^ a b Bregeras, Guillaume (1 July 2020). "Start-up studio : EFounders dopé par l'accélération de la digitalisation du travail". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 2 May 2024.
  5. ^ a b Lovens, Pierre-François (13 June 2023). "Hexa est à la recherche d'entrepreneurs pour créer de nouveaux start-up studios". La Libre Belgique (in French). Retrieved 30 March 2024.
  6. ^ Bregeras, Guillaume (6 April 2018). "TextMaster, le traducteur digital racheté par Technicis". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 19 March 2024.
  7. ^ a b Perreau, Charlie (30 November 2022). "Avec Hexa, Thibaud Elzière industrialise sa machine à créer des start-up". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 28 March 2024.
  8. ^ Lelièvre, Adrien (5 February 2024). "French Tech : le retour en force des start-up studio". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 16 April 2024.
  9. ^ Perreau, Charlie (20 July 2022). "3 licornes, 7 sorties, 2 échecs : le bilan d'eFounders en chiffres". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 19 March 2024.
  10. ^ a b c d Grasset, Loïc (11 June 2023). "Start-up : Thibaard Elzière le méta-entrepreneur". Paris Match (in French). Retrieved 6 May 2024.
  11. ^ Perreau, Charlie (15 September 2021). "Folk, le nouveau bébé de Thibaud Elzière". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2024.
  12. ^ a b "Pourquoi le boss d'eFounders devient (aussi) CEO d'une de ses start-up?". Le Vif/L'Express (in French). 6 August 2019. Retrieved 13 May 2024.
  13. ^ a b c d Perreau, Charlie (22 March 2022). "Gama, le projet spatial de Thibaud Elzière". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 7 May 2024.
  14. ^ a b Gendron, Stéphanie (3 December 2022). "Robin Michel et Thibaud Elzière : "Nous souhaitons proposer un luxe décomplexé"". L'Express (in French). Retrieved 13 May 2024.
  15. ^ a b Souris, Simon (20 April 2023). "Kate fait le plein pour sa microvoiture de demain". L'Echo (in French). Retrieved 7 May 2024.
  16. ^ a b c Lerivrain, Hélène (3 May 2023). "Comment Kate se place dans la course à la micro-voiture électrique". La Tribune (in French). Retrieved 3 May 2024.
  17. ^ Delpont, Léa (19 March 2024). "Automobile : Kate obtient 10 millions d'euros pour sa micro-voiture". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 7 May 2024.
  18. ^ Rauline, Nicolas (17 December 2019). "Hugging Face, l'intelligence artificielle en open source, lève 15 millions". Les Échos (in French). Retrieved 3 May 2024.
  19. ^ "Fiche auteur de Thibaud Elzière". TechCrunch. Retrieved 17 May 2024.
  20. ^ a b "Fiche biographique de Thibaud Elzière". Challenges (in French). 30 June 2023. Retrieved 13 May 2024.
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