For over 10 years, Lifen has been working every day to fulfill its mission: improve patient care pathways and clinical research.

To achieve this, we develop various products, all based on artificial intelligence that analyses medical documents, classifies them, and structures them. Every month we process millions of documents. Documents we send with Lifen Documents, integrate into patient records with Lifen Integration, or add to cohorts for scientific studies with Lifen Research.

A decade of selling AI. It was time to embrace it ourselves.

It’s very easy for me to remember the public release of ChatGPT—November 2022. That’s the month I became a father for the first time. My child transformed my personal life - OpenAI took care of my professional one…

Since then (especially in 2025), I’ve stopped Googling and the terminal has become my tool of choice (I’m not from the vim generation…). My knowledge, my experience (my failures), and my critical thinking are more valuable than ever. I feel like I’m having more impact every day.

Claude Code was released in February 2025. In that impossibly short time, it achieved 80% daily adoption across our entire R&D team. We chose to deploy it via the LiteLLM gateway to maintain fine control over our data.

The full story of how we rolled out SmartOps and drove AI adoption across Lifen could fill another article—maybe next time.

For now, I wanted to share what this transformation means for us as developers.

The message I shared with our R&D team:

2025 marked a turning point in the developer profession. Our profession has never evolved so much in such a short time.

The last few months (especially December), the release of the latest models (Opus 4.5, Gemini 3 Pro…) have shifted AI-powered development into high gear.

Some skeptics from a few months ago (👋 DHH) are now believers.

Manual coding is becoming rarer (some Lifeners say they write less and less code themselves), and some even say that what once fulfilled them—the fluency of mastering a language—has now become a source of frustration!

What’s next?

The technical barrier is lowering. Perfectly mastering a framework or technology is still valuable but no longer enough.
We need to develop new skills and master new tools: context management, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP...
We need to understand why the LLM gets things wrong—and how to guide it better.
We need to make our best practices and quality standards explicit—and stay critical of its output.

Iterate daily on the context (especially the Claude.MD that needs constant updating).
Write crystal-clear design notes, meticulously crafted JIRA cards, and plan (in the sense of actually making plans) what we want to build before building it.
If we want to move faster, we need to stay in control of our safety nets: tests, linters, SAST, sandboxed environments…

We need to optimise the LLM’s flow so these guardrails activate automatically and very quickly (via hooks, for example).

Soft skills become more important: communication, understanding our domain, adjacent disciplines, and of course our end users.
Gradually, everyone shifts from a ‘producer’ role to an architect role with a product/business/end-user vision.
The technical barrier is decreasing—but everyone’s level and impact is increasing.

Impact on Lifen?

We’re even better equipped to fulfill our mission.
We’ll be able to develop more use cases, get our ideas into our users’ hands faster.

We can do more with less friction: we’ll be able to fix our vulnerabilities faster, spend more time thinking together about architectural choices...
We’re launching major projects in parallel—focused on increasing our sovereignty, strengthening our control, and improving efficiency—things that would have been unthinkable for our team just a few months ago.
Today we’re launching them, and we’re confident.

Impact for us developers

The Jevons paradox should hold true: When progress increases the efficiency of a resource, consumption of that resource increases.
An engineer who’s burned their fingers pushing a change to production at 6 PM, who’s worked in the trenches (not the glitter of vibe coding), and who masters the business context can now produce much more value for the company.

If companies want to grow their value (to stay competitive)—demand for engineers will also grow.
We have great days ahead!

2026 promises to be just as impactful for our profession.

Let’s stay curious, critical, talk to each other as humans, open our eyes, and enjoy the moment!

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Celebrating big

Franck and I usually work behind the scenes, deep down in technology and product development. We're way more comfortable behind our computer screen or talking to our clients than standing in front of a cinema screen.

But for Lifen's 10th anniversary, I wanted to address everyone who matters to us in a meaningful setting: A cinema for real. To premiere a documentary we had produced. In front of everyone who has taken part in our journey.

It was our way of thinking big, literally.

And yes, it felt like a risk.

From Day 1 to Year 10

Preparing for that evening, I reflected on how this all began.

Lifen, Day 1: Franck alone in his kitchen, armed with nothing but his catching smile and a crazy drive to innovate in healthcare (that is still burning to this day).

Fast-forward to today: 160 team members united by the will to thrive in AI-powered data for care providers. Our growth stems from the trust of 800 hospitals and 20,000 independent healthcare professionals who rely on our solutions daily across France.

Earlier this year, we hit a game-changing milestone: our core business turned profitable while surpassing €20 million in revenue.

This financial success isn't the endgame though. It's validation. It proves our solutions create lasting value for thousands of healthcare providers, and gives us solid ground to build the next decade of innovation.

Gratitude where it's due

That evening was our chance to honor the people who believed in us from the start.

Our pioneering team members deserve the spotlight. Some joined at times when we could barely offer more than big dreams and no formal job descriptions. They are still here, still pushing boundaries, still inspiring me with their commitment. Marc, Etienne, Kelvin, Pierre, Maria Camila, Victor, Thibault, Charles, Anna, Hélène, and countless others.

Our clients : hospitals, practitioners have been equally incredible. We owe them so much. Special recognition goes to our first believers: Strasbourg University Hospitals & Ramsay Santé trusted us from the start with Lifen Documents, Nancy University Hospital Center with Lifen Integration, and Gustave Roussy (Europe's first cancer center) with Lifen Datalab.

I still remember the very first Lifen user: Marjorie, Dr. Cadot's secretary, who courageously sent our very first 10 medical reports through the platform. In June 2017, we celebrated 249 documents sent. Today, 4.5 million of those are sent monthly with Lifen.

We’re also deeply thankful to our investors. They support us consistently and challenge us (equally consistently) : daphni, Serena, Partech, Creadev, Lauxera...

One of them once told us, quite bluntly: "What you're building at Lifen is brilliant. Too bad nobody knows about it."

Fair point. We're engineers at heart—obsessed with data, impact, adoption, and solutions that actually work. We operate in a technically demanding space that doesn't exactly embrace flashy marketing.

So that evening, we decided to take a new step.

But instead of talking about ourselves, we screened...

A documentary about everyone else.

We produced "Nouvelle Donn(é)e" (roughly translating to "New Data, New Deal") to amplify the voices that matter most in healthcare. Alongside Franck and I, physicians, legal experts, researchers, and hospital leaders shared insights about the complex world of healthcare data and AI.

The core message? AI is the new deal in healthcare data.

This mini-series calls for unity across the healthcare ecosystem—caregivers, institutions, innovators, patients—to tackle tomorrow's challenges together.

Because our healthcare system is facing a crisis. And innovation isn't optional anymore.

A moment in time for us at Lifen

Watching everyone who shaped our journey fill that cinema, share our vision and dreams was deeply moving.

A decade in, and Lifen's story is far from over.

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🇫🇷 Version française

Lifen a dix ans.

Il y a quelques semaines, nous avons célébré les 10 ans de Lifen d'une manière un peu particulière. Je voulais partager à l’écrit ce moment et ce qu'il représente pour nous.

Une soirée sur grand écran

Franck et moi avons l’habitude de travailler en coulisses, sur la tech et le produit.

Derrière un écran. Pas devant celui d’un cinéma…

Mais pour les 10 ans de Lifen, nous avons voulu prendre la parole dans un cadre symbolique :

Un cinéma, donc. Pour projeter un documentaire. Que nous avions produit. Devant tous ceux qui comptent le plus pour nous.

Une façon de voir les choses en grand au sens littéral.

Une petite prise de risque, aussi.

“From Day 1 to Year 10”

En préparant cette soirée, j'ai repensé aux débuts de cette aventure.

Lifen jour 1, c'était Franck, tout seul dans sa cuisine, avec son grand sourire et sa folle envie d’innover.

Aujourd'hui, nous sommes 160 collaborateurs animés par une mission commune : mettre l'intelligence de la donnée au service du soin.

Cette croissance s'appuie sur la confiance de 800 hôpitaux et 20 000 professionnels libéraux qui utilisent quotidiennement nos solutions.

En début d’année, nous avons franchi une étape importante : notre activité historique est devenue rentable et nous avons dépassé les 20 millions d'euros de chiffre d'affaires.

Cette réussite financière n'est pas une fin en soi. Elle représente deux choses essentielles : la preuve que nos solutions sont pérennes pour les milliers de soignants qui les utilisent, et un socle solide pour les 10 prochaines années d'innovation.

Un moment de gratitude intense

Cette soirée était aussi l’occasion de remercier ceux qui ont pris des risques à nos côtés depuis le début.

Je pense d’abord nos collaborateurs pionniers. Certains ont rejoint Lifen quand nous n'avions qu'une promesse vague à offrir et aucune fiche de poste claire. Ils sont encore là aujourd'hui et continuent de pousser les murs année après année. Leur détermination m'impressionne encore. Marc, Etienne, Kelvin, Pierre, Maria Camila, Victor, Thibault, Charles, Anna, Hélène, et tant d’autres...

Je pense aussi à nos nombreux et emblématiques hôpitaux et médecins partenaires. Notre gratitude à leur égard est immense.

Je dois une pensée particulière à ceux qui nous ont fait confiance en premier : les Hôpitaux Universitaires de Strasbourg & Ramsay Santé pour Lifen Documents, le CHRU de Nancy pour Lifen Intégration, et Gustave Roussy pour Lifen Datalab.

Je me souviens encore de la toute première utilisatrice de Lifen : Marjorie, la secrétaire du Dr Cadot, qui a eu le courage d'envoyer les 10 premiers comptes rendus via notre logiciel. En juin 2017, nous étions fiers de célébrer 249 envois… Aujourd'hui, nous en sommes à plus de 4,5 millions par mois.

Je pense enfin à nos investisseurs qui nous soutiennent (en continu) et nous challengent (de temps en temps) : daphni, Serena, Partech, Creadev, Lauxera…

D’ailleurs, l’un d'entre eux nous a un jour dit, avec candeur : "Lifen, c'est génial ce que vous faites, malheureusement, personne ne le sait".

Et c’est peut-être un peu vrai. Nous sommes fondamentalement une équipe d’ingénieurs passionnés de data, d’impact, d’adoption, d’usage, de solutions qui marchent vraiment.

Nous évoluons dans un environnement technique ardu, relativement antagoniste au marketing triomphant, aussi élémentaire soit-il.

Alors ce soir là nous avons voulu franchir une étape.

Mais au risque de les décevoir, nous avons projeté…

Un documentaire qui ne parle pas de nous.

Nous avons produit "Nouvelle Donn(é)e" pour donner la parole aux acteurs de la santé. Médecins, soignants, avocats, chercheurs et responsables hospitaliers nous ont prêté leurs voix pour démocratiser les enjeux systémiques pointus de la donnée et de l'IA en santé.

Le message principal ? L’IA change la donn(é)e en santé.

Cette mini-série est aussi un appel à rassembler toutes les forces de l’écosystème santé, soignants, institutions, innovateurs, patients, pour relever ensemble les défis de demain.

Car notre système de santé traverse une crise profonde.

Et il est urgent d'innover pour y répondre.

Une saveur particulière dans la trajectoire de Lifen

Voir réunis dans une salle tous ceux qui ont contribué à notre aventure, partager notre vision et nos ambitions, était à la fois intimidant et profondément émouvant.

Dix ans après ses débuts, Lifen continue d'écrire son histoire.

Aux côtés de tous ceux qui #ChangentLaDonn(é)e.

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The numbers were eye-opening: 1-2 minutes per ticket just for qualification, multiplied by hundreds of daily tickets. This meant hours of manual work that could have been spent solving actual customer problems and contributing to product improvement.

Our solution? AI Kits—workflows involving LLM assistants. Over the last few months, we've developed, amongst others, three major AI Kits that revolutionized our support operations, saving the team, in average, 3 days a month in manual qualification and delivering 20-30% efficiency gains per ticket.

The Hidden Cost of Manual Support Processes

Every support ticket at Lifen involved multiple manual challenges that consumed our agents' time: manual qualification required multiple steps and repetitive data entry, information hunting meant searching through scattered documentation systems, and macro selection involved guessing which response would fit best. Our agents spent significant time managing these manual operations rather than solving customer problems.

The biggest frustration was "context switching fatigue": constantly jumping between ticket queues, documentation systems, macro libraries, and various tools, losing focus and time with each transition.

Our agents were spending more time navigating our internal systems than actually helping customers—a reality that became impossible to ignore.

Building Smart AI Assistants: Three Kits That Changed Everything

TipKit: From Resource Hunting to Instant Context

Before TipKit, agents manually searched Notion databases, cross-referenced documentation, and reformulated technical notes. They'd spend valuable time hunting for information that sometimes they couldn't find at all.

TipKit delivers contextual resources instantly based on ticket content, finding the perfect documentation and reformulating it appropriately. It even suggests the right helpcenter article that may be provided to the customer when needed.

The real game-changer was how this transformed our agents' daily workflow. Instead of bouncing between Notion here, our helpcenter there — agents could now access everything directly within their ticketing tool. This centralization meant no more losing focus while hunting through different platforms.

Beyond time savings, we quickly discovered new team members could now get instant access to institutional knowledge.

MacroKit: From Manual Selection to Smart Suggestions

Choosing the right macro from dozens of options was guesswork. Agents scrolled through lists, assessed context manually, and sometimes applied wrong macros.

MacroKit analyzes ticket context and suggests the best response, eliminating the guesswork entirely. It gives agents flexible, on-demand assistance. Agents can choose when and how to use MacroKit based on their specific needs—whether they want a quick suggestion for a routine response or need help crafting a more complex customer communication. It automatically personalizes existing macros with specific ticket content—inserting customer names, account details, and contextual information to create responses that feel tailored rather than templated.

This approach eliminates the guesswork entirely while giving agents the flexibility to take benefits from the kit on their own terms.

Manual Qualification: Our Biggest Technical Bottleneck

Ticket qualification became our most significant bottleneck because it was unavoidable—every single incoming ticket demanded this 1-2 minute investment before any actual support work could begin. With hundreds of tickets flowing in daily, agents found themselves spending their first hour each morning just qualifying new arrivals, then returning throughout the day to process the constant stream of incoming requests. This created a never-ending cycle where qualification work competed directly with customer problem-solving time.

Here's what agents had to do manually for every ticket:

Manual Requester Research

For every ticket submitter, agents manually:

• Looked up account status in our internal application

• Cross-referenced Salesforce for client vs. prospect determination.

This analysis took 30-45 seconds per ticket.

Individual Ticket Analysis

• Opening each ticket in Zendesk and analyzing content manually

• Understanding context and customer situation

Manual Title Optimization

• Rewriting ticket titles for clarity

• Ensuring other agents could understand the issue quickly

Manual Categorization & Data entry

• Completing form fields and applying qualification macros

• Bucketing by subject type (technical, billing, feature request)

• Classifying by client type and cross-referencing multiple systems

In order to properly categorize the ticket, the Support agent has to find and apply the Macro that will place the ticket in the correct bucket

Then, Why We Kept This Manual Process?

The obvious question arises: if qualification was such a time drain, why didn't we automate it sooner?

The truth is, we were hesitant to change something that worked so well. Our manual qualification was delivering excellent results—accurate categorization, proper prioritization, and effective ticket routing. We had built a system that our team trusted, and the quality of our support remained consistently high.

But the deeper reason was simpler: we hadn't found how to do it properly. Previous attempts at automation felt too rigid, missing the nuanced decision-making that human agents brought to each ticket. We needed a solution that could match human judgment while eliminating human busywork.

The breakthrough came with QualiKit's confidence scoring system.

Instead of forcing automation on every ticket, we could now let QualiKit handle the clear-cut cases (those with >90% confidence) while preserving human expertise for complex situations requiring nuanced judgment. This hybrid approach finally gave us the automation we wanted without sacrificing the quality we needed.

QualiKit's Automated Solution

We broke qualification into two automated steps:

User Qualification Automation

• Automatic data retrieval from internal systems

• Seamless Salesforce integration

• Default value application for missing information

Ticket Qualification Automation

• AI-powered content analysis

• Automatic subject replacement with descriptive titles

• Automatic field assignment and automatic messaging when needed

Automatic Messaging for Missing Document Requirements

For certain types of tickets, we require a specific document identifier to process the request effectively. QualiKit automatically determines whether this identifier is present in the ticket content.

When the identifier is present: The ticket is immediately placed in the appropriate agent view for handling, ensuring no delays in processing qualified requests.

When the identifier is missing: QualiKit triggers an automatic response to the customer requesting the missing information, then sets up automatic follow-up reminders if the identifier isn't provided. During this waiting period, the ticket remains hidden from agent queues, allowing the team to focus exclusively on fully qualified tickets that can be resolved immediately.

This intelligent routing ensures agents never waste time on incomplete requests while maintaining seamless communication with customers about missing requirements.

Smart Confidence Scoring

QualiKit uses confidence scores to determine when human review is needed:

• >90% confidence: Fully automated

• <90% confidence: Manual review required

This maintains quality while eliminating 90% of manual work.

The Results: Manual Hours Become Customer-Focused Time

We implemented the rollout over approximately 30 days to ensure a smooth transition. This gradual approach allowed us to iterate on the assistant when needed, quickly address any bugs that emerged, and most importantly, gather continuous feedback from our agents to refine the system based on real-world usage.

The transformation didn't happen overnight, but the results have been remarkable. What started as an experiment in automation became a fundamental shift in how our support team operates. Agents who once began each day with qualification backlogs now dive straight into solving customer problems.

The mental energy previously spent on repetitive categorization is now channeled into creative problem-solving and proactive customer engagement. This newfound time allocation allows our agents to go the extra mile on each ticket, bringing enhanced focus and availability to every customer interaction.

Quantified Impact

• 24 hours per month freed from manual qualification per agent

• 20-30% efficiency gain per ticket

• Zero manual resource hunting with contextual delivery

• 66% of tickets achieve

• 95%+ confidence scores

30-Day Rollout Results:

• 100% ticket coverage by QualiKit

• 66% of tickets achieved

• 95%+ confidence scores

• 70% correctly qualified without manual intervention

Conclusion

The 1-2 minutes per ticket previously spent on manual qualification now happen automatically, freeing cognitive capacity for creative problem-solving and deeper customer engagement.

For teams drowning in manual processes: identify friction-creating work, build targeted AI systems, implement quality controls, and transition gradually while preserving human expertise.

Our AI Kits gave us time—time to think, care, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. At Lifen, that time makes all the difference in how we help our users succeed. Sometimes the most valuable technology is the one that simply gets out of the way.

Join the Lifen journey

Our tech culture continuously evolves. We're redefining remote collaboration through structured knowledge management. We're looking for professionals who value writing, thrive in remote environments, and are passionate about healthcare innovation.

If you enjoy building systems that scale, appreciate clear documentation, and want to help shape the future of healthcare technology, we'd love to hear from you.

Lesson #3: Be Intentional About Cultural Implementation

Once we presented this framework to the company, we encouraged each department to further specify how these values would manifested within their unique operational contexts. While "Embrace Complexity" served as common ground across the organization, its practical application could vary significantly between our Tech team and our HR team.

Our objective was to make culture as concrete and actionable as possible, recognizing that it would serve as the operational backbone for how we would function as a scaling organization.

Culture-Centric Recruitment Process

Our recruitment process evolved into a comprehensive cultural assessment system. Technical competency and healthcare industry knowledge remained essential criteria, but we developed structured scenarios that revealed candidates' natural alignment with our three core values.

To ensure consistency across all hiring managers and recruiters, we built a comprehensive database of targeted questions designed for each value.

For "Embrace Complexity," our question database included scenarios about navigating ambiguous requirements, handling competing priorities, and approaching problems without clear solutions. For "Real Impact," we developed questions that required candidates to demonstrate concrete outcomes from previous work and explain their decision-making process when measuring success. For "Bienveillance," our questions explored how candidates approached honest and open feedback, collaboration challenges, and situations requiring true collaboration with colleagues.

Managers learned to identify candidates who demonstrated genuine comfort with complexity rather than those who oversimplified challenging problems. They evaluated evidence of real impact in previous roles, looking for concrete examples rather than abstract claims. They assessed bienveillance through candidates' approach to collaboration, feedback, and conflict resolution.

More significantly, we transformed recruitment into a bidirectional cultural evaluation. Candidates experienced our culture in action through structured interactions with multiple team members, participation in actual problem-solving sessions, and exposure to our decision-making processes. This wasn't merely about our assessment of them—it was about their informed evaluation of whether our cultural environment aligned with their professional values and working style.

Lesson #4: Mutual Accountability For Maintaining Culture Is Needed

We understood early on that keeping our culture coherent and alive was everyone's responsibility. This wasn't just an aspiration—we built concrete systems to make mutual accountability real.

The key was integrating cultural evaluation into our performance review process. Since we had clearly defined what "Embrace Complexity," "Real Impact," and "Bienveillance" looked like in practice, we could systematically assess and discuss these behaviors during performance evaluations alongside technical performance.

This created a three-way accountability system:

• Employees saw that cultural alignment was valued and measured, not just proclaimed

• Managers gained tools and responsibility for coaching cultural development, not just technical skills

• The organization established structured ways to assess and discuss cultural behaviors

Performance reviews included detailed discussions about how employees demonstrated our values in their daily work, where they excelled in cultural alignment, and where they could strengthen their embodiment of our principles. Managers had concrete frameworks for providing cultural feedback, and employees understood exactly how their contributions were being evaluated.

Did we achieve perfect cultural alignment everywhere? Certainly not. However, our framework enabled us to rapidly identify misalignments and foster honest conversations about mutual fit. This shared responsibility often led to amicable separations before frustration could develop on either side.

The measurable outcome: successful team scaling while maintaining cultural cohesion through genuine mutual accountability.

Lesson #5: Stay True To Your Culture During Tough Decisions

The ultimate test of our culture came when economic headwinds forced us to make the most difficult decision any leader faces: reducing our team size. Economic layoffs challenge every aspect of company culture. How do you maintain trust when you're breaking the employment contract? How do you preserve values when making decisions that hurt people you care about?

We leaned into our culture of transparency and collaborative problem-solving.

First, we shared the complete economic context with our entire team—the market changes affecting our customers, the revenue implications, and our timeline constraints. We explained that while reducing team size was necessary, how we did it would be guided by our values.

Our approach reflected the core of our culture:

Collaborative problem-solving meant involving team leaders in understanding the implications and exploring alternatives.

Transparency meant honest conversations with everyone affected, sharing both the reasoning and the emotional difficulty of our choices.

Bienveillance guided how we treated departing team members. We didn't hide from difficult conversations or rush people out the door. Instead, we took time to acknowledge their contributions and ensured they left with dignity and comprehensive support.

For the remaining team, we maintained transparency about our path forward, the lessons learned, and how we would rebuild sustainably. We didn't pretend the layoffs weren't painful or try to spin them as purely positive "refocusing."

The outcome surprised us. Rather than undermining trust, this experience actually strengthened it. Our team saw that our cultural framework wasn't just nice-to-have rhetoric—it was an operational guide that helped us navigate. Having strong cultural foundations proved invaluable when everything else felt uncertain.

What We Learned About Resilient Culture

Through both rapid growth and economic contraction, we learned that resilient culture isn't built on inspiration alone—it's built on practical systems and daily practices.

Culture is a practice, not a poster. Values statements matter only if they translate into decision-making frameworks. Our culture lives in how we run meetings, how we give feedback, how we prioritize features, and how we handle conflicts. It's embedded in processes, not just proclaimed in presentations.

Stress-testing reveals truth. You don't really know your culture until it's challenged. Growth pressure and economic constraints strip away everything superficial and reveal what you actually prioritize when forced to choose. These moments don't destroy culture—they clarify it.

Transparency builds resilience. Sharing context, admitting uncertainty, and involving people in difficult decisions creates stronger bonds than trying to project false confidence. People can handle difficult realities; they can't handle being kept in the dark.

Values guide decisions, they don't make them easy. Having clear principles doesn't eliminate difficult choices, but it provides a framework for making them consistently and with integrity.

Culture evolves while staying true. Staying authentic doesn't mean staying static. Our culture has evolved as we've learned, but the core principles that define us have remained constant. We've gotten better at living our values, not changed them to fit circumstances.

My Final Thoughts

It took us five years to make this happen, from 2018 to 2022 —here are my final thoughts.

In an uncertain economic environment, culture becomes your most sustainable competitive advantage. Technical skills can be taught, strategies can be copied, but authentic culture—proven through real challenges—cannot be replicated.

For candidates evaluating opportunities: Look for companies that can tell you specific stories about how their values guided them through difficult decisions. Ask about times when culture and business pressures conflicted, and how they resolved those tensions. The best organizations don't just talk about their values—they can show you the scars and growth that come from living them.

For HR professionals building resilient organizations: Invest in defining culture before you need it. Create systems that embed values in daily operations, not just annual reviews. Design processes that stress-test cultural fit during hiring and cultural alignment during crises. Most importantly, remember that culture work is never finished—it's an ongoing practice that requires constant attention and intentional action.

At Lifen, we're still learning, still growing, and still being tested. But we've proven to ourselves and our team that culture isn't just something nice to have when times are good—it's the foundation that makes everything else possible, especially when times are tough.

That's the kind of place we're building. That's the kind of place worth joining.

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Founded in 2015, Lifen revolutionizes healthcare communication through innovative technology solutions. Like many startups, we mastered our product faster than we mastered scaling our team while preserving what made us “us”.

We grew from 25 Lifeners to 220 in two years, then economic pressures brought us back to 130. Most companies would have lost their identity in this whirlwind, but each phase taught us what truly mattered : through explosive growth and tough decisions, our culture became our compass.

For candidates considering their next move and HR professionals building resilient organizations, this is my honest account of what works, what doesn't, and why culture might be your most valuable strategic asset.

The Foundation: Define Culture with Intent

Back in 2018, when our CEO, Franck, outlined the ambitious growth objectives for the upcoming years, the strategic question that immediately followed was clear: How do we ensure we recruit the right talent, and how do we guarantee these individuals will collaborate effectively?

His response was straightforward

“They need to align with our values”

The challenge? We had not yet defined our organizational values.

Rather than rushing to create a set of aspirational principles, we made a deliberate strategic decision: we would refrain from defining our culture for the next two years. Instead, we would allow our existing team to organically demonstrate and shape it through their actions.

Lesson #1: Authentic Culture Cannot Be Mandated

At approximately 25 employees, questions about our organizational culture were emerging just as we prepared to scale rapidly, hiring between 100 and 150 new team members over the following months. Attempting to codify cultural values at that moment and subsequently requiring 100+ new employees to adopt behaviors defined by our initial 25-person team would have been fundamentally flawed.

While this approach is common in many organizations, it contradicted our philosophy of authentic culture development.

Our approach began with our clear definition of culture itself

This definition became our guiding principle. Rather than manufacturing culture in executive meetings, we committed to observing and documenting it in practice. We systematically analyzed and documented how our team naturally responded to pressure, recognized achievements, and navigated complex decisions. We identified the behaviors that drove our effectiveness and therefore we wanted to reinforce while also identifying behaviors we wanted to avoid.

Through this observation process, we identified three core elements that had organically developed within Lifen :

• radical transparency in communication

• user-first innovation in product development, and

• collaborative problem-solving that leverages diverse perspectives.

The key distinction was that these were not aspirational values we hoped to achieve—they were proven behaviors we had already demonstrated consistently. Radical transparency reflected our established practice of open communication regarding organizational challenges and strategic uncertainties. User-first innovation captured our systematic approach to evaluating every feature and decision through the lens of our users. Collaborative problem-solving described our proven methodology for addressing complex challenges through collective expertise.

By deferring the formal definition of our culture until we could observe and validate authentic behaviors, we avoided the common pitfall of creating compelling value statements that lack practical application. Instead, we documented the behaviors that were demonstrably driving our success, making them scalable, teachable, and—most importantly—genuine.

The next step was how to make it inspirational ?

Scaling Without Losing Soul

Our first major test arrived with rapid growth. Market demand for our healthcare solutions accelerated, requiring us to scale our team significantly in a compressed timeframe. Every company faces this critical juncture—the tension between recruiting quickly to capture market opportunities and maintaining cultural integrity.

We recognized that if we were going to rapidly scale, every single manager needed to be actively involved in recruitment. Therefore, they all needed to be aligned and thoroughly briefed on the specific behaviors they should evaluate in candidates to ensure new hires would thrive in our culture and work environment. The next strategic step was to transform the behaviors we had identified through observation into a practical framework that our managers could operationalize.

Lesson #2: Translate Culture into Actionable Frameworks

We needed to make our culture inspirational without compromising authenticity—no corporate rhetoric that would ring hollow to our team. In 2021, our two co-founders and I engaged in brainstorming sessions to distill our cultural essence into actionable but inspirational principles. This process yielded three core values:

Embrace Complexity, Real Impact, and Bienveillance (oui oui in French)

However, articulating values was only the beginning. We made a deliberate effort to define not only what each value meant in principle, but more importantly, we provided clear examples of behaviors that exemplified each value—and equally important, behaviors that contradicted them.

For instance, our ‘Embrace Complexity’ value was presented as follows:

We explained why this was a company value in the first place, it’s key !

Then, we made it tangible by clearly outlining which behaviors aligned with it and which didn’t.

We took it a step further by specifying how this value was expressed in different contexts

This approach made culture tangible across all organizational levels: for leadership, for managers conducting interviews, for current employees in their daily work, and for prospective recruits evaluating our organization.

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The genesis: a reflection on our real needs

It all started with a simple observation: our teams were expressing two needs. On one hand, there was a thirst for learning and skills development on a variety of subjects: from our products, to soft skills, to best practice in our ecosystem. On the other hand, there was a need to share, meet and exchange ideas regarding specific subjects. Rather than dealing with these needs separately, we decided to combine them into one recurring event. That's how the Lifen Academies were born, and has gradually become part of the company's organic rituals.

Why this format? The winning equation

We firmly believe that learning is most effective when it takes place in a shared environment. By combining high-quality training with activities, we create an environment that is conducive to the assimilation of knowledge and the strengthening of bonds between Lifeners. It also allows us to highlight the work of certain teams and give us the same elements of understanding and language. This format also reflects our vision of an inclusive and caring company, where every Lifener has access to the same development opportunities, whatever their position or level of experience.

How is it organised?

A structured monthly meeting.

The rhythm: Once a month, all the Lifeners get together for a Lifen Academy day. This regularity helps to create a positive habit and ensure continuous skills development.

The structure: Each day is structured around two complementary highlights:

• Training sessions 👩‍🎓

  • Led by an internal or external speaker (guaranteed alternation)

  • Varied topics: product training, development of soft skills, health ecosystem, best practices, etc.

  • Content adapted to all levels and professions

  • 30 to 45 minutes in length

  

• Group activities 🌿

  • Creative workshop, sharing session, brainstorming, challenges, friendly breakfast, snack, relaxation activity, etc.

  • A moment to unwind and build team spirit

  • One hour duration

Practical organisation

• Venue: Our catering area, designed to encourage exchanges between people on the spot and remotely ;

• Accessibility: Sessions available by videoconference for our remote teams ;

• Traceability: Systematic registration to allow absentees to be made up ;

• Promoting internal learning.

The Lifen Academies are not disconnected from our corporate life. They tie in intelligently with our HR calendar and our strategic initiatives. For example, we schedule training on feedback during the annual appraisal period, we deep-dive into our products’ functioning before big events or a session on innovation before our internal hackathons. This synchronisation ensures that learning comes at the right time and is immediately put into practice.

Let’s zoom in

The Lifen Academy concept was created in February 2024 and we are now celebrating our 10th session. 🎂 We have a calendar announcing the next subjects and we encourage Lifeners to propose subjects for incoming sessions. As examples of Lifen Academies :

• Emilie Benayad Stevelink, founder of PALM association, came to make a state of play of how diversity is perceived within Lifen and animated workshops ;

• Our Product Managers talked about Lifen’s products, our revenue model based on those products and their added value ;

• Our HR team made a presentation and discussion around how to formulate and receive feedbacks and also about Nonviolent Communication (NVC) ;

• France Roussin, Procurement Cordinator at the Hôpital Saint-Louis and Mélanie Hardy, Customer Operation here at Lifen made a presentation about Organ Donation and its concerns.

We realised that this format is the best way of promoting Lifeners to their colleagues and to create awareness and attention regarding specific subjects. In other words, to highlight their passions, their former jobs, their community lives and to build bridges between them. Yesterday's Lifen Academies create tomorrow's Lifen Academies.

Our learnings and benefits

This innovative format has established itself as a recognized and eagerly anticipated event among all our Lifeners, we reach around 65% participation rate for each session. It provides a privileged framework for continuous and diversified skills development, while creating convivial moments that naturally strengthen team spirit. Its inclusive design ensures complete accessibility, regardless of participants' geographical location. This approach contributes to fostering a stronger learning culture within the organization, promoting enhanced team cohesion that directly translates into significantly improved collective performance. Plus, Lifeners now propose subjects spontaneously and we couldn’t be prouder!

Every month is a new opportunity to learn something new, to get closer to our colleagues' issues in a less formal setting, and to contribute to the collective dynamic that is Lifen's strength. This month, we celebrated our 10th Lifen Academy session and there is still a lot of sessions to come.

Ready to join our next Lifen Academy? 🚀

Written by Héloïse Rouanet