Interview

Anselm Roux on selling a studio he did not want to leave

Fourteen years, one acquisition, and the earn-out clause he now warns every founder about.

16 min · Paris

Roux is precise about the timeline in a way that suggests he has walked it many times since. The first approach came in the spring; the signature came fourteen months later; the regret, he says, arrived on a specific Tuesday.

The clause in question tied a third of the consideration to revenue retention across two years, measured by client rather than by account. It read as reasonable. It meant, in practice, that he could not decline work.

He is not bitter about the sale, and says so twice. He is emphatic about the reading: 'Take the smaller number and the shorter term. You are buying back your judgement.'

Reported by the CliqueTrees newsroom. Corrections run at the top of the following edition, set in the same size as the mistake.