My Way to Eutopia
Back in April 2015, when I returned after spending my last semester at the Berlin campus of ESCP business school, I asked myself the same question many students in my situation ask: now what do I do? Perhaps you can relate? I have never had a well-defined career path, but did possess a good idea of what interested me and the skills I could bring to any business:
- A Cartesian mind: I like numbers, have a sense of detail, and I am (sometimes too) rigorous. “Done is better than perfect” has never been a moto to me and I have big issues with the 80/20 concept. That is why I did an internship at Ernst & Young and I actually liked it!
- Curiosity: I like learning, working on different subjects at the same time and discovering a variety of issues and sectors. Perhaps this is why I chose a business school involving studies in London and Berlin, as well as Paris. Perhaps this is also why I love to travel so much, trying new restaurants every other week or meeting new people.
- Passion for entrepreneurship and even more so, an admiration for entrepreneurs. In my view, they are visionaries who dare to take the risk of changing the status quo. I admire their energy, their drive, their motivation, their passion, their courage, the way they want to make a difference.This is why I performed two internships in startups and decided to specialize in entrepreneurship.
- A love for brands and brand universes. As far back as I can remember, I have always had a strong interest in products and consumer goods. Not because I am a heavy consumer who loves consumer society but because I am a big admirer of the know-how and creativity required to build beautiful brands (some of my favourites are chefs, nez, couturier, …) and I take pride in what I consider a particularly French expertise. Growing up, I became passionate about the psychological aspects of consumer behavior: how the way we eat, sleep, dress or exercise says a lot about who we are.
How then could I reconcile these varying aspirations, and more specifically, was it even possible?
Sometimes, opportunities in life come at us at the exact right time and appear made for us. I had the opportunity to join Otium Capital (a family office at the time) at a time of big changes within the team, and amongst a corporate culture where anything was possible. On paper, the job of investor allowed me the opportunity to cater for my first three interests. Antoine Fine (now founder and Managing Partner of Eutopia, previously Otium Brands) had just joined and had carte blanche on investment strategy, and although I was looking for a permanent contract and he had advertised an internship, I decided to take my chance to approach him. The worst case was a new experience, and the best, which is how it turned out, was the job of a lifetime.
Fast forward three years later, and by taking this chance I have been rewarded multiple times over. Since our first investment in Meme Cosmetics (a beauty brand for women affected by cancer) in January 2016, we have developed our blank page into our investment thesis, and now given birth to Eutopia, the first fund in Europe dedicated to the development of consumer startups. Starting with just the two of us, we are now a team of six, have an investment portfolio of 14 companies, and from nothing have created a unique positioning in the European VC Ecosystem. My four areas of skill and interest, outlined above, now form an integral part of my daily life: I analyze business plans and reports almost every day, I constantly move from one project to another, attending conferences and discovering new business concepts, keeping an eye on market trends, consumer shifts and new brands, travelling to see new concepts, I constantly and consistently encounter and work with brilliant and visionary entrepreneurs and discover brands trying to shake things up and improve our lives and our world.
Although I’m still aligned with my own expectations, and perhaps even more passionate about them today, this job has brought me even more than expected:
- Strong human relations: with our dear founders and their teams (now 14 startups) that we accompany with benevolence and ambition, with my team of six formidable people who inspire me every day, with all the entrepreneurs that we meet and with the amazing people in this ecosystem
- Meaning: through the projects in which we invest, through which we hope to build this Eutopia, but also through our approach and the values we wish to convey. We have a Slack channel to record all the great feedback and words of our founders and their clients which is always extremely rewarding to read
- An entrepreneurial adventure: Pierre Edouard (original Otium investor) always encouraged his teams to take risks and get started, and he knows what he’s doing — the founders of Doctolib, Mano Mano and Kerala all went through the Otium school.
- A passion for indoor cycling at 7:30 am — who could have imagined this three years ago? :) and more generally, a strong attraction for all our portfolio start-ups (be it in my bathroom, hand bag or bed-room, you will find a Eutopia brand everywhere !)
Eutopia for me is a great human and professional adventure, the alignment of my interests and hopes from yesterday and those of tomorrow, a genuine passion for my job but even more for the people who make it possible to live this communal mission which we all desire: to act every single day to create ‘the good place*’.
*From the book Utopia, a master work of socio-political satire by Sir (Saint) Thomas More, released in 1516 and written in Latin. Utopia means ‘no place’ in Greek, a place that does not exist. The world More created in his book was one of extreme idealism and in the process he made the case that perfection was impossible for a human world to attain. Aiming for the ideal therefore was a waste of time, and the goal for humanity should instead be something more realistic and tangible which was Eutopia, ‘good place’ in Greek, not an impossible world without frailty or fault.
