The first thing you notice is the typography. It’s clean, confident, and slightly architectural, the kind of font you’d see on a museum placard explaining a sustainable material. It sits above a simple statement of purpose: developing products for startups and scale-ups with strong environmental and social impact [Matters.tech, retrieved 2024]. There is no screaming call-to-action button, no promise of 10x growth. The interface of Matters, a Paris-based product and startup studio, feels less like a sales page and more like the quiet lobby of a firm that has been doing this work for a while. You get the sense they are waiting for the right kind of founder to walk in, the one whose pitch deck is less about hockey sticks and more about carbon curves.
Founded in 2007 by Eric Raffin and Jean-Christophe Bohin, Matters operates in the background of the European impact ecosystem [Maddyness, April 2024]. It doesn’t launch its own brands or seek the spotlight of a unicorn narrative. Instead, it functions as a embedded partner, offering what it calls accompaniment across the full spectrum of product and innovation: strategy, design, and execution [YouTube, retrieved 2024]. In a landscape obsessed with solo founders and disruptive launches, Matters represents a different, more patient model. It is a bet on the power of institutional knowledge, applied repeatedly to missions that matter.
The studio model as a strategic wedge
Matters is not an accelerator, a venture fund, or a consultancy in the traditional sense. Its wedge is the studio model itself, a structure that allows it to engage deeply and repeatedly with a curated portfolio of companies. The studio provides the strategic scaffolding and product expertise, while the founders bring the domain knowledge and mission. This division of labor is the core of the bet. By focusing exclusively on impact-driven ventures, Matters builds a proprietary playbook for what works,and what doesn’t,when trying to build a business that is measured in more than just revenue.
The model appears designed for resilience over rapid scale. Without the pressure of fund-limited timelines, Matters can engage with companies at various stages, from inception to scale-up. The studio’s reported track record of assisting over 150 startups speaks to this repeatable process [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024]. For a founder wrestling with how to translate a social mission into a viable product roadmap, Matters offers a team that has ostensibly seen that movie before.
A leadership team built for the long term
The stability of the 17-year-old studio is reflected in its leadership structure, which extends well beyond the founding duo. The company has assembled a full C-suite and operational team, suggesting an organization that has matured beyond a scrappy partnership.
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| Co-Founder | Eric Raffin |
| Co-Founder | Jean-Christophe Bohin |
| CTO | David Level |
| CPO | Harold Cunningham |
| Director of Operations | Philippe Cedelle |
| General Manager | Baptiste Fradin |
| Head of Communication | Marine Girard |
| Source: Company website [Matters.tech, retrieved 2026] |
This depth is notable. Eric Raffin, the manager of the company, has engaged publicly on topics like using tokens for social good, indicating a founder looking at novel mechanisms for impact [Apple Podcasts, March 2022]. His co-founder, Jean-Christophe Bohin, is described as an entrepreneur, advisor, and investor who helped build a Tech4Good accelerator and actively mentors in incubators [Cardashift, retrieved 2026]. Their backgrounds suggest a blend of operational pragmatism and ecosystem connectivity, which is precisely the mix a studio needs to be effective.
The traction of accompaniment
Matters does not trumpet customer logos or revenue figures. Its primary traction metric is the one it cites: over 150 startups assisted [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024]. In the context of a studio, this number is less about vanity and more about proof of process. Each company represents a cycle of strategy, design, and build, refining the studio’s methodology. The longevity of the firm itself,operating since 2007,is another form of traction, a signal that this model can sustain itself in the often-grueling world of startup building.
The studio is currently hiring, listing an open role on its careers page, which indicates ongoing activity and growth [Matter.studio, retrieved 2026]. For a company of its age, this is a sign of vitality, a suggestion that the pipeline of impact-driven projects remains robust.
The counterfactual: scale versus depth
The most credible risk for Matters is the inherent tension in the studio model: it is a service-intensive, hands-on business that does not obviously scale in the way a software product does. Its influence is deep but narrow, measured in the success of individual portfolio companies rather than market domination. The model depends on a continuous inflow of high-quality, mission-aligned founders who are willing to partner deeply rather than just hire a vendor.
- Capacity constraints. The studio’s impact is limited by the number of teams its experts can personally accompany. This contrasts with a SaaS tool or an open-source framework that can reach thousands simultaneously.
- Market specificity. By focusing on environmental and social impact, Matters operates in a niche. While growing, this sector may not provide the sheer volume of venture-backable projects that a generalist studio would see.
- Definition of success. The studio’s "success" metric is tied to the outcomes of its partners, which are multifaceted and often long-term. This can be harder to communicate and quantify than simple financial returns.
The company’s plausible answer is that depth is the strategy. In a noisy market, being the definitive product partner for European impact ventures is a defensible position. The repeat business and referrals from over 150 startups suggest the model creates its own gravity, attracting founders for whom generic advice is insufficient.
The next phase for a seasoned studio
After nearly two decades, the question for Matters is not about survival but about evolution. The next twelve months will likely test how the studio leverages its accumulated knowledge. The potential paths forward include formalizing a fund to invest in the companies it builds, productizing some of its strategic frameworks into tools, or expanding its geographic reach within Europe. The existing team structure, with dedicated roles for technology, product, and operations, is already the foundation of a more institutional player.
The cultural question Matters is implicitly answering is a profound one for the tech industry: what does success look like when growth is not the only metric? In a field littered with the wreckage of startups that moved fast and broke things, Matters proposes a different tempo. It suggests that building companies that last,and that are worth lasting,might require a partner who isn’t in a hurry, who values the architecture of a product as much as its launch, and who believes that the most important thing to scale isn’t always the company itself, but the impact it was built to create.
Sources
- [Matters.tech, retrieved 2024] Matters Product & Startup Studio website | https://matters.tech/
- [Maddyness, April 2024] Qui sont les startups studios? Le portrait de Matters | https://www.maddyness.com/2024/04/18/qui-sont-les-startups-studios-le-portrait-de-matters/
- [Crunchbase, retrieved 2024] Matters - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/matters
- [YouTube, retrieved 2024] Matters - Startup Studio - YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/c/matterstech/videos
- [Matters.tech, retrieved 2026] Matters Product & Startup Studio - Qui sommes-nous | https://matters.tech/a-propos
- [Apple Podcasts, March 2022] #248 - Éric Raffin - Matters - Utiliser des tokens pour sauver le monde | https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/248-%C3%A9ric-raffin-cardashift-utiliser-des-tokens-pour/id1209142994?i=1000553826404
- [Cardashift, retrieved 2026] Jean-Christophe Bohin profile | https://cardashift.com/team/jean-christophe-bohin
- [Matter.studio, retrieved 2026] Matter, careers | https://matter.studio/careers/