The Power of Subtraction 🫥

Sometimes, a snap is all it takes. Not to destroy — but to clarify, simplify, and persuade.

Jul 03, 2025

Do you know about the dilution effect?

It’s a concept every entrepreneur should know, because it’s one of the keys to persuasion.

Whether you’re pitching, negotiating, or selling your product or service, this principle applies. Professor Niro Sivanathan demonstrated it clearly:

Adding weak or irrelevant arguments to strong ones
dilutes the overall impact of your message.

Even if piling on arguments feels reassuring, it often backfires.
Our brain tends to average everything out, so your strongest points get pulled down by the weaker ones.

In short, and as the great architect Mies van der Rohe once said: less is more.

To illustrate this concept, an experiment was conducted.
Participants were shown two dinnerware sets and asked how much they’d be willing to pay for each:

Set A: 24 pieces of dinnerware.
Students were willing to pay €390.
Set B: 40 pieces of dinnerware. The same 24 items as Set A, plus 6 cups and 1 intact saucer… but also a few broken pieces.
Students were only willing to pay €192.

Even though Set B included everything from Set A and more, the presence of a few broken items significantly lowered its perceived value. A few weak elements are enough to sabotage the value of the whole. 👉 Hear Niro Sivanathan explain the dilution effect in his 10 min talk.

Moral of the story:
stick to your core message. Illustrate it. Cut the rest.

And if you want to see HEC-founded startups that likely mastered this principle — and now feature in the 2025 French Tech Next40/FT120 — scroll to the end of this newsletter.

🏡 Building the Future of Real Estate

Urban Odyssey launches "Un été avec Urban": a fast-track co-discovery program for early-stage urban innovation projects.

Backed by Icade, Urban Odyssey is a startup studio that’s been investing in high-impact ventures since 2019, tackling urban challenges like environmental transition, decarbonization, new urban uses, and AI applied to real estate.

Their 2025 summer program offers a hands-on journey of up to 3 months to validate ideas and grow projects from scratch.

What’s in it for founders:
• Real-world field access with Icade and partners
• Direct market validation with key stakeholders
• Pre-seed investment up to €400K

👉 Apply until end of July 2025

🎙️ “There’s a constant tension between going fast and doing things right.”

That’s one of the key insights Maïa Delcourt, shares in this new episode of the podcast “Ça commence comme ça” by Mathilde Vandon.

As a Program Manager at the Incubateur HEC Paris, she has supported impact-driven founders through the HECTAR Program. She dives into what it really means to work in the impact space, from navigating moral grey areas to decoding the hopes (and hype) around agritech. 🌾

🎧 Listen to the podcast now!

🏆 SecureBlink wins AWS Gameday Secure Legends!

Cybersecurity has its legends, and SecureBlink is now one of them. 🛡️

Currently taking part in the INDIA AI program supported by the Incubateur HEC Paris, SecureBlink just claimed first place at the AWS Gameday Secure Legends hackathon, a global competition where top teams tackle real-world cloud security challenges. Huge congratulations to the entire team 👏

🎬 Vikit.ai: Orchestrating the Generative Video Revolution

🎧 In this podcast, discover Clément Moutet co-founded Vikit.ai, a startup transforming how generative AI is used in video production.
Their focus? Product ads, e-commerce, and real estate, with a dual business model: tailor-made video creation services and an open-source platform supported by a premium offer.

Vikit.ai also drew high-level attention at VivaTech 2025 with a visit from France’s Minister of the Economy, Eric Lombard, to their booth.
🎧 Listen to the podcast now!

A Startup That Lit Up the Stage ⚡

Last Thursday, our 5 finalist teams brought everything they had to the Viva Technology Pitch Contest. A special congratulations to Uncap, this year’s winner!
Youssef El Arjoun, Hugues Moreau & Anne-Charlotte Treppoz are building a battery tech company that makes safe, affordable energy storage accessible for industrial SMEs. 🔋

Cuvée Privée: 7 Years, €15M, and Still Rooted

Seven years ago, three founders launched Cuvée Privée with a simple idea: reshape the way we consume wine. Not a “tech-first” startup, but one built on agricultural roots, a clear mission, and long-term vision.

Today, Cuvée Privée celebrates over €15M in cumulative revenue, 60,000 customers, 30 partner producers, a profitable model.
👉 Discover more here

🍷 Here’s to bold, grounded ventures! Congrats Aurélie, Marie and Morgane.

🏗️ Ninewatt expands with a major French partnership 🇫🇷

A big leap for Ninewatt, a Korean startup, supported through the KOSME program, which has just signed a key agreement with École des Ponts ParisTech to localize its WATTI platform in France.

🎯 Objective: to adapt and test its WATTI platform, which provides remote energy diagnostics and renovation recommendations without the need for on-site visits, to the French regulatory and technical environment.
👉 Discover more here

IOLOKIS x RocketSchool 🚀

Over the past three weeks, the team at IOLOKIS worked hand-in-hand with talents from Rocket School to tackle real go-to-market challenges, in the middle of a fast-moving sprint where both product and strategy were evolving daily.

This collaboration was part of a unique program between The Incubateur HEC Paris and Rocket School, where early-stage startups join forces with future growth professionals to test, learn, and execute on live business issues.

👏 Congrats to IOLOKIS and a big thanks to Rocket School for helping build the next generation of startup operators.
👉 See more here

🧠 When AI connects ecosystems

Last week, The Incubateur HEC Paris at STATION F had the honor of hosting Jitin Prasada (Union Minister), Abhishek Singh (CEO of IndiaAI), and Eenam Gambhir (Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of India in Paris).

Welcomed by Philippe Oster, Senior Executive Director of International Affairs at HEC Paris, and Mouna Guennouni, Head of Operations at STATION F, they met with 10 IndiaAI startups currently accelerating in Paris.

The Incubateur HEC Paris is looking for a communication intern to join our team and help us build the next chapter of our story.
👉 More details here

Creatant empowers creative teams with an AI-powered visual workspace to efficiently organize, collaborate on, and share digital assets.
👉 Discover intern offer

MonCab is a platform that connects healthcare professionals and simplifies the management of replacements, collaborations, and private practice setups.
👉 Sales SDR (alternance)
👉 Founder Associate Intern

Aldebaran is an innovative startup revolutionizing the healthcare sector through artificial intelligence. They are developing an intelligent medical copilot that helps doctors optimise their time and provide better care to their patients.
👉 Marketing / Communication (Internship, Alternance)

Harvy is a field data intelligence platform that helps brands collect and analyze on-site product data through a mobile app and web dashboard, enabling them to track retail performance and optimize operations.
👉 Sales / Bizdev (Internship)

🏆 From Campus to Unicorn: The HEC Impact

La French Tech created two national rankings to spotlight the fastest-growing tech champions in France:

Next40: showcasing the 40 most promising scale-ups often already unicorns or on the verge of becoming one.
FT120: expanding the list with 80 high-potential startups on a strong growth trajectory.

And this year, HEC-backed startups make up:

🥇 8 startups in the Next40 — that’s 20% of the entire ranking.
Including unicorns like Doctolib, Mirakl, Qonto, Pennylane, as well as Agryco, Descartes Underwriting, Worldia, and Zeplug.

🥇 17 startups in the FT120 — 21% of the total cohort.
From Alma (HEC Challenge+), Greenly, Foodles, and La Fourche to Moon Surgical, Seyna, SWAP Food (ex-Umiami), and MEDADOM, proudly supported by The Incubateur HEC Paris.

Collectively, these 25 ventures represent over €23B in estimated market value and more than 11,000 direct jobs. From health to fintech, energy, travel and AI, they are reshaping industries with scale, strategy, and purpose.

Behind these numbers lies a strong support system: the HEC Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute, a global alumni network, and committed corporate partners — all fueling a new wave of impactful entrepreneurship.

“It’s not about having the best ideas.
It’s about having the courage to focus on the best ones”
Sheryl Sandberg (ex-COO, Meta)