I started this funding round just as I discovered Hyrox (I wrote an article which you can find here). Coincidence? Maybe. Fate? Probably.
I built my skills for this raise the same way I trained for Hyrox: with intensity and consistency. It has been a hectic and stressful time. I'd like to take a moment to thank Ader Finance (Romain Cottard, Pascal Mercier) and especially Deborah Merran who supported me with both efficiency and kindness.
For several months I've been working with Chris Bodman, a performance psychologist. He has helped me understand a fundamental principle: excellence depends on alternating between intensity and recovery. This article is largely inspired by what I've learned over the past few months.
Chris explains that excellence requires intensity followed by recovery. People who master this cycle are what he calls "corporate athletes.
The best athletes don't perform at 100% all year long. They create cycles of peak effort and rest. They prepare for deadlines, manage their energy, and alternate between effort and recovery.
This concept has become central to my approach to entrepreneurship. Our fundraising journey, like our broader adventure, hasn't been a linear marathon, but a series of intense sprints followed by moments of pause to refocus and start over stronger.
The key: manage your energy, not your time.
The people I've met over the past few months - both in sports and elsewhere - continue to shape me. As Winston Churchill said:
“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
The environments we create ultimately shape who we are.
I've always measured Reelevant's progress (and my own) against the ideal we want to reach, not where we started. This pushes us to go further, but it also leads to perpetual dissatisfaction. But through Hyrox and the high-performing people around me (I'm thinking of Alan Cao, Mévéna and Quentin Pingliez, Andy Magnusson, etc.), I learned an important lesson: If you only compare yourself to the ideal, you risk mental exhaustion. If you also compare yourself to where you started, you recognize your growth without losing your ambition.
Looking at the last 12 months, so much has happened at Reelevant:
Of course, compared to where we want to be, we're just getting started. But compared to 12 months ago, we're in a whole new league!
This Series A marks the beginning of a new chapter and gives us the means to fully embrace our ambitions.
Thank you to Seventure (Guillaume Echaudemaison, David Manjarres), Go Capital (Alexis Menard) and Nathalie Balla (who joins our board) for your trust. We're looking forward to writing the next chapter of our story with you.
I'm especially proud of our team and what we've started to build together - the dedication and perseverance of each and every one of us. I've rarely seen a more mission-driven team. They are the true architects of what Reelevant is today. We're not just building a product or a solution, we're creating a new way of thinking about personalization, marketing and customer relationships.
We live in a time of major upheaval—political, economic, and technological, especially with AI.
This is a unique opportunity to:
Thanks to our clients who trust us, who've helped us grow and evolve since day one. What we accomplish together every day feels less like a vendor relationship and more like a transformational partnership. Without them, Reelevant wouldn't exist.
The hardest part yet to come: learning, scaling, growing, and improving every day without losing sight of our core values. This funding will help us:
It won’t be easy. It will be hard. But adversity is where we grow.
Changing our industry isn’t easy—it requires radically different thinking. More than ambition, it requires a visceral obsession with innovation in everything we do: sales, product, customer success, communications.
As founder and CEO, my role is to:
We have to be obsessed with making a difference. It has to live in our gut and drive everything we do every day.
Think differently. Act differently. Be different.
Everything has to be different to become our DNA.
In this quest for change, long-term thinking is essential.
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I look forward to writing the next chapter,
Vincent