In response to @iergo, without any controversy. But just a need for precision and accuracy. 

In reference to the article: http://blocnotes.iergo.fr/articles/le-marche-de-lux-design-en-2016/

UX-Republic has been an independent company since day one . It was founded by Sébastien Berten (former President and Co-founder of Backelite – that's me), Romain Landsberg, Yann Cadoret, and Luc Legardeur, President of Xebia. The company was 100% self-funded by the founders in December 2013. No other group participated in the financing of UX-Republic. UX-Republic is 100% owned by its founders.

On the other hand, UX-Republic has been able to forge alliances whenever necessary to maximize its development. We have forged commercial alliances with 4 Parisian companies with which we had complementary activities. But also many sponsorship partnerships with Flupa for example and the newspaper of the net to name only two.

Collectively at UX-Republic, we claim loud and clear our autonomy, our independence and are proud of the work we do every day to develop this company.

Our model is not a governance model, but one of consulting and expertise. We are also an approved and recognized training center. We also deploy user testing, audits and coaching offers. We consider that the flat-rate model is no longer adapted to the needs of companies and corresponds to an outdated model that is not compatible with the agile methodologies that underlie UX-Design. 

Our model is an agile model, built on the emergence of “Feature Teams”. Our leitmotif is to provide support and expertise, based on a virtuous triptych: We do, we train, we coach.

We put expertise and quality at the center of everything we do and as such we reserve one full day per month for training and sharing with all our employees. These are our monthly UX-Days. We also train all of our Scrum Product Owner employees. Why ? To deliver maximum value and expertise to our customers.

We are far from 

“ UXrepublic , which was created 3 years ago and specializes in managing UX consultants for major clients, is experiencing strong growth with the support of the group that financed them. ”

It would be fair, from my point of view, to correct the original article in order to respect the work of our 50 UX-iens who put a lot of heart and energy into developing both UX-Republic but also the UX- Design in France, and who find it unfair to see their work reduced to two rough lines.

Unfair also for the founders, who did not count their evenings and weekends nor their family sacrifices in order to create and grow UX-Republic, to reduce this effort to financing a group that does not exist and which therefore did not fund us.

Beyond that, @iergo , we are convinced that this was not your intention. The article is otherwise very good, and I sincerely thank you for the enormous amount of work you do for and within the UX community. Hats off to you, @iergo!

Sebastien BERTEN

CEO Co-founder of UX-Republic