Slovenian investors having a great eye for game-changing startups

Fil Rouge Capital (FRC) is a private investment company run by its founders. FRC invests in early stage businesses from angel investment, seed, VC and Series A rounds through a combination of equity and debt structures. FRC’s approach is to target investments that complement the skills and experience of its Founders so that they can bring more than just capital to help a business grow. Both FRC’s Founders have a core knowledge of technology, services, and an entrepreneurial history that they can bring to the benefit of an investment. Fil Rouge Capital is financed by the Founders and a group of private individuals all of whom share the same entrepreneurial approach and a desire to help early stage businesses grow.

They invested among others in Eurosender, Invoice Exchange, App Ray, TV Beat and 45HC.com, some of the most aspiring startups in Slovenia!

We’ve talked to Julien Coustaury, founder Fil Rouge Capital.

“How did you become an investor? This is not exactly a job kids dream about in kindergarten”

I would not see why people would not dream about it, it is fun, challenging and rewarding. I became an investor when I thought about scaling what I learnt in my exec life and I did not want to be a consultant so I
decided to become a consultant that invests!

“What excites you the most about your work, and what is that single moment in your past that you are most proud of?”

Above all the most exciting part is definitely the relationship you develop with founders. I do immensely enjoy the exchange on strategy, operational matters, human resources etc… probably the proudest moment recently was when one founder called me late at night to talk to me about the dilemma he had when choosing how to devote his time between his girlfriend and his company and ask me what I would do!

That was an easy answer, since I did not invest in his girlfriend, I told him to focus on the company.

“…and fails? We all have them, but what were your most spectacular ones? Of course only the ones you wish to share”

There are too many to be listed here !

“How do you find the most prospecting investments?”

If there was a recipe, everybody would apply it! The most essential part if whether I can develop some interesting relationship with the founding team, if this hurdle is past, this is not always a guarantee for success, but you are on the right path!

“What do you anticipate the most for technology in the forthcoming 5 years? What are the things that knock your socks off?”

I hate to be confined to one trend or one technology. There are few domains I don’t like but I am pretty opened about anything provided I understand the problem being tackled and I trust the team I intend to invest on to tackle it.

At the moment , we are quite intrigued by self driving although the investment tickets are/going to be very high.

We always like deep tech in general, whatever can be scaled with processing power and anything related to security that can be linked to the blockchain technology.

“Who are you most excited about in your local startup ecosystem and why?” — this could be startups, coworking offices, accelerators, mentors…basically anyone who you think highly!

At the moment, I am really excited about our portfolio and the prospect we are developing for our next 3 investments — I cant wait to see it evolve and I have a real passion talking about the next steps with our founders, I believe they enjoy talking about it with us too !

“In your opinion what are the single best and the single worst things running a startup from Central Europe?”

The best thing is probably the pool of talent, from engineers to entrepreneurs, it is right here and plenty of it - the bad part is the venture scene, which for me is way too embryonic at the moment. Public authorities need to understand that these are the jobs of tomorrow and private investors that you can make (a lot) of money taking risks and investing

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We at CESAwards stand with our hats in our hands each year in front of all the amazing innovation, the incredible stories and brave startupper who strive for more, who are here to build and change the status quo in the CEE region.

In this interview series we introduce our National Winners of 2017.

Meet the best minds of the CEE region on the Grand Finale of CESAwards on the 23rd of November in Sofia, Bulgaria. Tickets available → http://bit.ly/GrandFinale2017