Vincent Maurin and Théo Sitjar co-founded swanbase. Alongside them, 18 visiting partners and speakers share their playbook with our startups: founders from Lucis, Waalaxy, Bricks.co and NanoCorp.
Vincent learned to code at 14 by making games in Python. At 19 he went freelance as a developer and worked for Schneider Electric, Afflelou and several startups, first on code, then on interface design.
He taught himself growth by opening his own Shopify store and putting his own money into Facebook ads. In 2018 he founded Panja with Théo in Montpellier, then Takema in 2022, a marketplace where more than 700 creators shoot UGC videos for brands. He ran growth for Morphée, Satisfix, Réuni and TennisnGo.
From 2019 to 2021 he trained entrepreneurs at Google's Atelier Numérique in Montpellier. At swanbase he works with founders on their product, their Meta and TikTok ads and on automating their marketing with AI agents.
Théo launched his first e-commerce stores in 2017, during his master's at IAE Montpellier. In early 2018 he left his engineering job at CGI to found Panja with Vincent, then Takema.
He builds go-to-market with founders: segmentation, messaging, B2B outbound, Google Ads, SEO, landing pages and conversion optimisation. He also designs the marketing AI agents swanbase startups use.
From 2019 to 2022 he taught sales prospecting to master's students at ISEG. He has spoken at Google's Atelier Numérique, the IONIS 361 incubator, Open Tourisme Lab, EPITECH and IAE. He also publishes independent research in combinatorics, AI and finance.
His talks at swanbase
Lean Startup in 48 hours
Sales landing pages
Psychology and persuasion
CRO
Growth models
Before swanbase: Panja and Takema, 2017 to 2025
With Panja, our growth agency, and Takema, our UGC content marketplace, we ran marketing and growth for 90+ startups. A few results for our clients:
+1,400%growth for Morphée in six months
+344%customers for Réuni
300 → 4,000bookings a month for Satisfix
922%of the crowdfunding goal for Balade en Provence
Visiting partners and speakers
Founders and operators come to share what they learned with our startups, in talks, in workshops or during The Nest.
Max Berthelot
Co-founder and CEO, Lucis
Lucis offers preventive blood tests.
The team went through Y Combinator's Spring 2025 batch.
Lucis raised $8.5M in December 2025, then a $20M Series A in May 2026.
Thomas Minassian
Co-founder and CEO, .Wave
.Wave builds an inference engine for streaming AI models.
The team went through Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch as Dollyglot.
Thomas left Société Générale's investment bank to start the company.
Pierre-Louis Biojout
Founder and CEO, NanoCorp
NanoCorp reached $1M ARR in 55 days with no paid acquisition.
Pierre-Louis previously worked at Phospho, from Y Combinator's W24 batch.
Cédric O'Neill
Co-founder, Bricks.co
Bricks.co lets anyone invest in real estate from €10.
Bricks.co has raised €13M.
Abhi
Venture scout, Pioneers
Pioneers is a venture fund based at Station F.
Abhi worked as a product manager at Ledger.
He introduced vibecoding and local LLMs to The Nest cohort.
Anthony Riera
Founder, Rankhog
Anthony showed The Nest cohort how to find first users on Reddit.
Rémy Faura
Director, Panja
Rémy has run media buying since 2019. He heads Social Ads at Panja, Vincent and Théo's growth agency, and trains professionals for Google's Ateliers Numériques.
Mélanie Batista
Director, Panja
Mélanie heads Google Ads at Panja, after seven years as SEA lead at an agency.
Anaïs Lacombe
Co-founder, Pimpup
Pimpup sells the ugly vegetables that supermarkets turn down.
Anaïs told how she raised funds for an impact startup from Montpellier.
Amandine Bart
Founder, SEO Sans Migraine
Amandine led acquisition at Waalaxy, which gets 3M visitors a year. She gave an SEO talk in Montpellier.
She has trained more than 1,000 people in SEO.
75,000 people follow her on LinkedIn.
Toinon Georget
Co-founder and CEO, Waalaxy
Toinon co-founded ProspectIn, which reached €1M ARR in 9 months.
Waalaxy, his LinkedIn prospecting tool, employs more than 60 people.
Thibault Brioland
Founder and CEO, Humanlinker
Humanlinker has raised more than $5M.
Thibault founded Addscale, a B2B sales consultancy, in 2019.
Hugues Trijasse
FrenchStartupper, content creator
Hugues co-founded and sold Foodr, which automates takeaway sales.
He also sold his LinkedIn communication agency.
2.8M people follow him on social media.
Marie Janoviez
Co-founder and CMO, Caravel
Caravel offers supplementary pensions to the self-employed and has more than 2,000 clients in France.
Caravel merged with Indexa Capital.
Jules Grammont
Co-founder and sales director, Unico
Unico equips the waste collectors who work for local authorities.
Unico has raised $1,479,398.
Chirihanne Kheder
Founder, IA-KUZA
Chirihanne has trained more than 500 people in generative AI, including employees of Decathlon, Amazon and Carrefour.
21,000 people follow her on LinkedIn.
Benjamin Beau
Founder and CEO, VANGART
VANGART embroiders original artworks with more than 30 international artists.
Galleries and museums across Europe have shown its textile collections.
Blas Calvelo
YouTube scriptwriter and strategist
Blas has worked with more than 30 entrepreneurs, including the Sans Permission podcast and its 37M views.
He worked with Yomi Denzel on videos totalling 32.8M views.
Speak at swanbase
Offer a talk or a workshop to our founders: write to us through the contact page.
