If you’re planning to launch a new startup in France, Denmark, or Sweden, there’s a new seed fund looking for your pitch. million euros) announced that it has raised close to And this is just the first closing. The company expects he will raise as much as $80 million (€75 million) by the end of the year.
EMBLEM was founded by Benedict de Laferis Soissin and Guillaume Durao. This isn’t the first time Bénédictede Raphélis Soissan’s name has appeared on his TechCrunch. Because she was an entrepreneur herself. It was in 2014 when I first covered her startup, her Clustree.
Clustree was a talent management and HR platform acquired by Cornerstone OnDemand. Several of her business angels, like Frédéric Montagnon and Florian Douetteau, contributed so much to Clustree’s trajectory that she began investing in startups after selling her Clustree.
Guillaume Durao has been an investor for several years. He worked at his Mangrove Capital Partners and Idinvest (now his VC firm, which is part of Eurazeo). Both partners are from France, but Durao has worked in Denmark and is very active in the Nordic tech ecosystem. He also invests some of his own money as a business angel.
Before launching Emblem, Durao and de Raphélis Soissan have already built an interesting portfolio of angel investments. He invested in the virtual currency trading card game Sorare, the pet insurance startup Daruma, and the cultured meat company Gourmet. In addition to these French startups, they also invested in Denmark’s Growblocks and All Gravy, Sweden’s Ark Kapital and Goals, among others.
The next logical step is a suitable seed fund with more capital. Emblem would like to lead or co-lead a seed investment with a typical investment size of his €500,000 to €3 million. Overall, the company wants to invest in 25-30 tech companies with the initial funding.
Emblem lists several verticals, including AI, B2B SaaS, Fintech, the future of work, and digital health, but does not specifically focus on some industries. It is a generalist tech seed fund.
As for the company’s backers, Emblem can raise money from Danish sovereign fund Vaekstfonden, institutional investors like Edenred, several French and Nordic family offices, and tech entrepreneurs looking for investment opportunities. I was. Entrepreneurs who have invested in Emblem include the founders of 3shape, Dixa, Falcon, Kantox, Peakon, PeopleDoc, Planday, Pleo, Qonto, Silae, Spendesk, Swile and Zendesk.
There are two things that distinguish Emblem from other French VC firms. Initially focused on French startups, but also Swedish and Danish startups. “Paris, Copenhagen and Stockholm are his three most interesting startup hubs after London and Berlin,” Bénédictede Raphélis Soissan told me.
Second, Emblem doesn’t want to be an early-stage fund that invests in series A rounds and beyond. Sure, the company will allocate a portion of the fund to additional investments in existing portfolio companies, but that’s about it.
“We’re going to focus on seeds. The idea is that we’re not going to raise more money and start investing in Series A rounds,” said de Raphélis Soissan.
A new wave of microfunds in Europe
It is difficult to explain what a microfund is. Everything else is starting to look like microfunds as more and more VC firms start raising bigger and bigger funds.
Emblems are bigger than microfunds. But there are a few individuals who have €5, 10, 15 million under their control and raising new funds. Just as many successful investors in the US started their VC investments with their own micro-funds a few years ago, we see a similar trend in Europe.
In my discussions with Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan, I spoke about some of these new funds. For example, Anthony Danon and Carmen Alfonso Rico are pretty active on Cocoa. Gloria Baeuerlein is behind a new fund called Beyond Capital. Pietro Invernizzi is now raising his own money.
We also covered several large funds that have emerged in the past year or so, including Resonance, Ovni Capital, and Galion.exe. And then there’s Teampact Ventures and Origins.
Interestingly, as we are currently experiencing a technological downturn, more There are options when it comes to early stage funding in Europe. And each fund has its own investment theme. These emerging partners can also leverage their own networks. This should create more opportunities across the tech ecosystem.
