They Raised $100M+ and Built a 220-Person Remote Company

Filigran is a French-founded, remote-first cybersecurity company that scaled from 15 to over 220 employees across 18 countries in under three years. Founded in October 2022 by Samuel Hassine and Julien Richard, the business combines experienced leadership, rapid hiring, and over $100 million in funding to expand globally. With more than 6,500 organisations using its platform, Filigran operates without a central headquarters, instead building distributed teams close to customers. Its model highlights how remote-first structures can support fast growth, international expansion, and coordinated work across regions without relying on a physical office.

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Transcript

A Company That Scales Without Offices\n

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Some companies scale by adding to bums on seats in the office, not removing them. But I recently discovered a company that grew from 15 people in October 2022 to more than 220 employees across 18 countries in under three years. That growth happened without building a traditional headquarters. Hey, if we haven't met, I'm Alex Wilson Campbell's AI twin. Alex is the creator and host of the Remote Work Life Podcast, where we spotlight the remote companies and location-independent founders and leaders shaping the future of business and work. Alex personally researches, writes, and edits every episode you hear here. And I'm his AI voice, so you don't miss the updates, even if you can't get to the studio. This episode focuses on how Filigran built a fast-scaling remote first company from Europe without relying on a central office. It centers on how hiring, funding, and operating decisions come together when location is not the organizing principle. Filigran was founded in October 2022 by Samuel Hassine and Julian Richard, both coming from long careers inside cybersecurity organizations and data-led teams. Hassine had spent around 15 years working in cyber threat intelligence and crisis management at France's national cybersecurity agency, while Richard brought more than 20 years leading engineering and data teams across various companies. The starting point was not a blank slate. Both founders had already worked inside complex organizations where teams were dealing with fragmented information, slow processes, and distributed stakeholders. That experience shaped how they approached building a company from day one. Instead of setting up around a single office in Paris or another European hub, they chose a remote first structure immediately. That meant hiring across borders from the beginning rather than expanding internationally later. By the time the company passed 220 employees, the team represented more than 30 nationalities across 18 countries. The geographic spread covers Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific, with specific commercial pushes into markets like Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. That hiring model usually changes how teams are formed. Instead of relocating talent or clustering around a headquarters, roles are filled based on proximity to customers, regulatory environments, and local market knowledge. The company effectively builds regional understanding into the team itself rather than layering it on later. There is no daily reliance on a physical office as a coordination point. Instead, work is organized across distributed teams that need to collaborate across time zones and contexts as a default condition, not an exception. Growth has been supported by external capital. In its first three years, Filigran raised over$100 million from investors, including Eurasio, Axel, Insight Partners, and Deutsche Telekom's T-Capital. That level of funding places it among the more heavily backed cybersecurity companies coming out of France in this period. Funding at that scale usually comes with expectations around speed, hiring, and market expansion. In this case, the remote first structure appears to be part of how those expectations are met rather than a constraint on them. The customer base has also expanded quickly. More than 6,500 organisations are using filigrants platforms, including public sector and enterprise names such as the FBI, the European Commission, and Rivian. One operational detail that stands out is how the company uses global hiring to stay close to those customers. By placing team members in different regions, it can align more directly with local requirements and expectations without building separate offices in each location. At the same time, remote work does not remove the need for shared culture. Filigran runs an annual in-person gathering described as a global get-together where the full team meets physically. The purpose is not day-to-day execution, but reinforcing trust, relationships, and ownership across a distributed workforce. That creates a different rhythm compared to office-based companies. Instead of continuous physical proximity, there are periodic moments of in-person connection, with the majority of collaboration happening remotely in between. For employees, this changes what being at work looks like. Day-to-day activity is shaped by asynchronous communication, coordination across time zones, and working with colleagues who may never share the same physical space. It also affects hiring expectations. Candidates are not being selected based on willingness to relocate or commute, but on their ability to operate effectively in a distributed environment and contribute within globally spread teams. From a company building perspective, the model ties together three elements: founders with prior operational experience, access to significant funding early on, and a hiring strategy that treats geography as an advantage rather than a limitation. The result is a company that scaled headcount customers and capital within three years while keeping the office out of the center of how it works. For remote knowledge workers, the practical change is subtle but important. Instead of joining a company anchored to a place, they are joining a system that is already designed to function without one. That shifts how teams are built, how opportunities are distributed, and how work moves across borders on a daily basis. That's it for today on the Remote Work Life Podcast. Before you head off alongside the podcast, Alex is building a small beta platform that pulls together senior level, growth-focused remote roles directly from employers' websites, not job boards. It's designed for experienced operators in sales, marketing, strategy, and finance. If you want early access as a founding member, you'll find the link in the show notes or via Alex's LinkedIn profile. You'll also get bonus content featuring founders, leaders, and CEOs from location independent and remote businesses.