2022 a record year at STATION F despite economic downturn

I know, it’s really annoying to be positive and upbeat when everyone else is talking about how bad things are getting (and the fact that they are likely to get worse before they get better). But 2022 has been an unusual year on many fronts.

The year started off with the entire ecosystem witnessing record levels of funding, France hitting the 2025 unicorn target several years ahead of schedule, and then total madness with salaries going through the roof. A few months later, major funds were sharing massive losses and the rest of the ecosystem was bracing for what was yet to come. And I’m not even talking about the latter half of the year where Elon purchased Twitter, FTX crashed and SBF fled to the Bahamas, and Elisabeth Holmes was sentenced to prison. Still, despite these conditions, our campus and companies have still experienced a remarkable year on many levels (perhaps pointing to how insulated early-stage can be).

1 unicorn and nearly €1bn raised by STATION F companies in 2022

Our companies nearly doubled the average funding raised per year, totaling only slightly under €1bn raised collectively by all STATION F startups in 2022 (across approximately 150 rounds). We continue to see a growing interest in particular from international funds, who are continuing to put local teams in Europe and often dedicated teams in France. Some of the sizeable (€20m+) rounds from STATION F companies this year included:

• Vitality - the esports company raised €50m with Rewired and others

• Playplay - the video creation platform raised €47m with Insight Partners & Balderton

• LIZY - the long-term car rental platform raised €40m with New Alpha Asset Management, Groupe La Française & others

• Seyna - the neo insurer raised €33m with WhiteStar Capital & Elaia

• Incepto Medical - the AI solution for medical imagery raised €27m with Karista, AXA Venture Partners & others

• Fintecture - the B2B payments company (also part of the Future 40 2020 selection) raised €26 million with Eurazeo, RTP Global and others

• Boxy - the producer of autonomous stores raised €25m with LocalGlobe, CapHorn & Serena Capital

• Spacefill - the digital storage platform raised €25m with NGP Capital, La Famiglia and others

• Opendatasoft - the data experience platform raised €21 million with Demeter, Odyssée Ventures and others

• Stonly - the platform for interactive guides (also part of the Future 40 2019) raised €22m with Northzone & Accel

• Greenly - the B2B carbon footprint & accounting platform raised €21m with XAnge and Energy Impact Partners

…and of course we can’t forget Hugging Face who became the first STATION F unicorn and raised €100m with Lux Capital, Sequoia, Coatue and others.

Naturally, the majority of STATION F companies raise smaller rounds (being that we are in early-stage). Of all the 140+ deals we tracked, 92% were below the €20m mark.

As far as Future 40 is concerned, we had 28 companies (from all 4 editions) secure funding this year. Some of rounds include ImVitro ($2.5m, F40 2019), Bigblue ($15m, F40 2019), Dfns (€12m, F40 2021), Whitelab Genomix (€10m, F40 2019), Fygr (F40 2022) and more.

Now, we definitely know that there is a lot more to building a company then fundraising - but it’s a terrific milestone and we are super proud of all our companies that raised this year (especially given investor slowdown). I don’t know how much funding France-based companies will raise in total this year (in 2021 the figure was €11.6bn) but I like to think STATION F companies likely contribute a small amount.

New programs, investing & a really big birthday cake

In addition to unicorns and record fundraising, we are also proud of a few other milestones from this year.

First, we celebrated 5 years of STATION F (it went by so fast!) and shared some key figures (and learnings), including that we’ve worked with a whopping 5,015 companies from the start. There were a lot of numbers that we were pleased to reveal - but perhaps in particular that 41% of our companies are female-founded or co-founded (a number that has improved a lot since we first launched). But aside from all the data, we also held a huge birthday party that featured lots of people who have supported and contributed to STATION F as well as a 4-meter-high cake (over 13 feet high for our American friends)!

Yes, that is the Birthday cake in the middle :)

Some people asked me if Beyoncé was going to jump out of the cake but alas, we have to save some fun for future birthdays. You can also see the birthday video we released below - starring Daniel Ek (Spotify), Ilkka Pannanen (Supercell), Evan Spiegel (Snap), Sheryl Sandberg (ex Meta), Fidji Simo (Instacart), Jack Dorsey (ex Twitter, Square), CZ (Binance) and some of our up and coming entrepreneurs.

Now, in addition to our birthday, we were pleased to welcome a lot of new programs and partners to campus this year as well - for example Binance, who runs our web3 program, and Slack, who runs our Future of Work program, as well as a few others. We were also pleased to reveal a full redesign of our main in-house program, the Founders Program. You can read more details about the new program here.

And last but not least, we finally started investing in some of our companies. Up until now, STATION F has provided just about all other means of support, but not funding for companies (our sister company Kima does this extremely well). However, for some select top performers we want to build a long-term relationship that goes beyond their stay on campus. Therefore, we also started investing in our Future 40 companies this year.

The most suits we’ve ever seen at Station F at one time! With the CEOs of companies like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, General Catalyst, KKR, McDonalds, Michelin, Sodexo, Saint Gobin & more.

Tony Parker signing a basketball for Neoplants cofounder & CEO, Lionel Mora.

Our entrance got an upgrade! Thank you, Urs Fischer.

And it goes without saying that we also welcomed a ton of incredible people to campus - as always. For example, high-profile athletes like Tony Parker, Blaise Matuidi and Edouard Mendy; the President of Tanzania; artist Urs Fischer (yes, that’s his sculpture at the entrance of our building); pretty much all the French presidential candidates (that was fun); explorer Mike Horn; the Kind of Sweden; CEOs of a ton of big companies and many others as well. You can see all the photos on our Instagram.

So, where do we go next?

I get this question all the time, in fact, I don’t think I can have a conversation without discussing “what’s next” for STATION F. Well, there is a lot that we are working on, but I’m happy to highlight 3 main areas.

1) International

We don’t know exactly what it looks like yet, but we have been approached by literally every country on the planet, asking how they can replicate the model for their ecosystem. I didn’t want the team to lose focus so we didn’t pursue any of the discussions until recently. We have have done some small-scale consulting projects, notably for a campus in Asia. We also hosted several international campuses for a 2-day intensive program at STATION F so they could learn how we set-up and run everything. We will continue to grow these initiatives in the near future.

2) Hybrid

Even before Covid, hybrid and remote work was a reality of startup life. Our entrepreneurs actually come to STATION F a lot but not every day - and this has always been the case. However, STATION F was initially designed for an on-campus experience, meaning that if you are not physically on campus, you can miss out on a lot. Therefore, we are currently looking to redesign some of the experience to make it more hybrid friendly.

3) Impact

We’ve always been impact-minded at STATION F. For example, when it comes to diversity, we have encouraged and supported diversity on many levels from day one. However, we’d like to go further - a lot further. We know there is a gaining momentum in the ecosystem as well, and witnessed this shift clearly, especially in the second half of 2022. We recently announced that the next batch of the Founders Program will be 100% impact but we are looking to go a lot further in terms of impact next year. No spoilers, stay tuned.

Thank you, everyone.

Before I finish I’d just like to take a moment to thank everyone who contributes to making STATION F what it is. We take so much pride and pleasure in working with great entrepreneurs and teams that join us from around the world. We also know that STATION F would never be what it is without all of our incredible partners. Also, the greater ecosystem continues to support us in numerous different ways, and continues to help us drive things forward. And finally, to all the incredible people on the team and who work on making STATION F what it is, thank you.

Roxanne Varza, Director of STATION F