With over 55% repeat founders, STATION F Founders Program confirms trend

The Founders Program underwent a significant redesign in 2022. We now work with a maximum of 25 companies per batch, and selected startups can qualify for direct investment from STATION F. The program places a strong emphasis on the quality of its founders. All bring years of expertise in critical sectors, with the majority being repeat entrepreneurs. The Fall 2024 batch exemplifies this standard, continuing the trajectory of excellence seen in previous cohorts, notably the most recent one. This also explains why the Founders Program has been the most represented in the Future 40 since its launch in 2019 — with 13 startups from the Founders Program in the latest batch.

World-Class Backgrounds and Repeat Founders Leading the Way

We are truly impressed by the quality of this Founders Program batch, not only for the innovative projects but especially for the exceptional backgrounds of the founders. This cohort is composed of 18 startups, 10 of which were founded by repeat entrepreneurs, some of whom have already successfully exited previous ventures. A notable example is Timothée Emery (CEO of Moustache AI), co-founder of YouShould, which was acquired by Privateaser in 2020.

The batch also has a strong international presence, reflecting the global diversity of the campus, which represents over 65 nationalities. Some founders have come from the US, leaving California to build their startups at STATION F, like the team behind Chelle.ai. Many others have studied at some of the world’s top universities, such as Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Imperial College, and UCLA. For example, Daphne Pariser (CEO of HeronAI) – who is also from the US, has 15 years of experience in STEM and completed postdoctoral research at Harvard and MIT, focusing on bioinformatics and machine learning.

Moreover, the founders’ professional experience at leading global companies is remarkable. For instance, Claire Gouze (CEO Nao) served as Head of Data at Sunday and spent three years as a Data Scientist at BCG Gamma; Baptiste Grandclerc (CTO Dashery) was Lead Data Scientist at BCG X; and Ludovic Desgranges (CEO NewsCore) worked as a VC Investor at XAnge. Last but not least, Michael Elalouf (CEO Tranched) brings extensive financial expertise, having served as CFO at Iwoca, where he raised over €500M in European financing, following earlier roles as a sell-side banker at Barclays and a private equity investor at Hg. 

Finally, 40% of the startups in this batch were founded or co-founded by women. While this figure is higher than what we typically see elsewhere, we are committed to improving it further by attracting the best female founders to our campus—not just to the Founders Program, our flagship initiative, but across all our programs. As for the startups themselves, AI is a defining theme across the batch, with 14 of the 18 leveraging AI as a core element of their solutions. Most are building B2B SaaS platforms, with FinTech, Data, and E-commerce emerging as the dominant sectors.

Now, here is the list of the Founders Program Fall 2024: 

ARO: ARO is a preventive healthtech solution that empowers you to achieve your best self through personalized biomarker testing, AI-driven insights and coaching. The founders are Polytechnique and Imperial College alumni and ex-BackMarket team members.

Bloom Care: Bloom Care is a smart all-in-one software solution for homecare companies.

Chelle.ai: Chelle.ai helps new engineers become productive faster through AI-powered tools.

Dashery: Dashery is an e-commerce app using AI to personalize running shoe, apparel and gear recommendations for runners. The founders are ex-DeepMind, Harvard, BCG, and Polytechnique alumni.

Ewake.ai: Ewake.ai is an AI teammate, helping engineering teams resolve production issues faster and smarter—so they can focus on what truly matters.

Glowssary: Glowssary is a solution offering the best way to share and leverage your brand terminology with those who speak for the company.

HeronAI: HeronAI empowers accounting firms to streamline strategic growth and month-end advisory reporting. The startup has developed AI agents to help financial advisors to connect all their disparate data into one place, analyze it, create visual dashboards, and action plans to drive strategic decision-making. The founders are MIT alumni.

Humind: Humind builds AI Agents for e-commerce, increasing conversion rate and collecting unique data. For the first time, retailers can understand each visitor and bring ultra-personalized customer experience at scale.

Localista: Localista is an event marketing platform that helps businesses optimize their events for the purpose of acquisition and lead generation.

Memorality: Memorality lets you build, deploy and use custom AI & SaaS solutions in minutes.

Moustache AI: Moustache AI creates a custom AI for Shopify e-commerce and turns support tickets into sales opportunities.

Nao: Nao is an AI code editor for data work.

NewsCore: NewsCore is an AI-powered platform for strategic intelligence, designed to help companies collect, summarize, and analyze critical information in real time. By delivering actionable insights, it empowers organizations to make informed, data-driven decisions and stay ahead in competitive markets.

Procureezy: Procureezy is transforming procurement for space missions by connecting engineers to hardware suppliers through intelligent sourcing tools.

Pronto: Pronto builds digital sales assistants for finding new customers. The CEO previously founded Settlesweet within the Founders Program, which was exited to Nextories.

Repio: Repio is an AI-powered HR tool that identifies, analyzes, and engages candidates perfectly suited to your job requirements.

Tranched: Tranched is the first embedded asset-based financing platform directly connecting lenders to investors, allowing them to structure and manage a transaction in a fraction of the time and cost. The startup has raised $3.4M, led by SpeedInvest.

Uncia: Uncia helps organizations document and map their Information System. They provide a SaaS platform that visualizes technical architecture, highlights interdependencies, and monitors real-time compliance with security standards.

The deadline to apply for the next batch of the Founders Program is January 31st, 2025, 11:59PM (CET). The program will begin in March 2025. You can apply here.