Gaia Capital Partners’ Touch: Discover Our Why, How, What, When, Who
The world seems to have ground to a halt but we are still very active and, above all, we are confident that our responsible investment strategy goes in the right direction. News websites are all coronavirus related - we’re guessing you’re up to speed. So, we figured now was a good time to flash back on Gaia Capital Partners’ first steps, starting with the beginning of our journey.
The “Why” behind Gaia Capital Partners
A couple of years ago, we decided to embark on an adventurous journey, just like the entrepreneurs we had been backing from the beginning of our careers. We decided to start our own thing. The only thing is… our own thing happened to be a fund.
Why in the world would you do that? You’re in your early thirties, probably a better time to indulge in the comfort of this great private equity firm you’re working for and start enjoying the fruits of your hard work.
Why are you launching a fund?
Because investing is what we know and really like.
“Really? be honest, it’s a question of big money, isn’t it?” Tell us the real why.
Because we believe there’s a massive opportunity now in Europe to build a new brand in the technology investment space, as we believe there’s a whole new breed of tech Titans to be built out of Europe.
Come on, you can do better…
OK, deep inside, we think being an investor is a very noble job, which comes with important responsibilities. The capacity to deviate capital towards convictions you believe in is definitely vertiginous. Up to the point where you can contribute to making the world you dream of actually exist.
So yes, we started Gaia Capital Partners, because we’re passionate about investing, we believe we can create value out there and most of all, we believe we can be a modest contributor to slightly improving our lives and environment. That’s precisely what is behind our name: in Greek mythology, Gaia is Earth personified and the mother of Titans.
Time and again, technological innovation has proven to eventually deliver greater progress, if approached in a thoughtful and constructive way. Europe deserves its place on the global technology map, otherwise we’re gonna miss out on much profound progress.
This is why, at Gaia Capital Partners, we back the next generation of responsible entrepreneurs in Europe, those we like to call tech Titans. They, and the talents assembled around them, are the key to building the world of tomorrow in a sustainable way.
So we provide capital of course, but add a pinch of salt to it.
The “How”
[To those of you more interested in the non-spiritual part, please skip and head to « the what »]
In our entrepreneurial journey, we have had, and are going to have, all of the following: luck, storms, hard work. And above all, a lot of people believing in us, sometimes more than we do: our « bonnes fées » (good fairies) as we say in French, a term first coined for us by Christine Kolb, an immensely inspiring woman whom we are lucky to have as a shareholder, sponsor, business partner and LP (yeah all of that).
The entrepreneurs and teams we back know all of that too!
Luck: We do the best we can to provoke luck and have the planets aligned for you. By making the right connections, hopefully at the right time, to customers, business opportunities and people that know way better than we do how to solve your challenges. And we will strive to develop our networks and seek inspirations in the most uncommon (you’d be surprised) places, to come up with great business ideas.
Storms: There will be blood. No, just kidding, only storms and disappointments. And for sure, in the darkness, there is some light to be found. We will work alongside you to find it and be patient, because we’re all in, for better or worse. And we will do whatever it takes to save your asses, and ours by the way. Because we have tremendous respect for what you do and big promises to live up to.
Hard work: A lot of it. We’re gonna work our asses off, because we’re on the same boat. And hard work goes a long way. This is our life, this is fun and doesn’t feel like working. Our beloved LPs, you haven’t heard that.
“Bonnes fées”: It sounds a bit like magic, but it is not. We aim to be a supportive shoulder, a good ear, an active hand and a lucky charm at the same time.
To be fair, we don’t have that much grasp on luck and storms but we do have control upon hard work and the « bonnes fées ».
All of what we do and what we are building goes down to being faithful to the promise we all made to ourselves as a kid. No one actually knows what they promised to themselves, but there was definitely a promise. A promise about being a good person, spread love, make people proud of you and most of all have fun.
We embarked on this journey to love what we do, deliver on the promises we made to our many counterparties and have a meaningful impact for them and beyond.
The “What”
We invest in growth-stage companies at the intersection of sustainability and tech. This is what we call in our jargon digital scale-ups i.e tech companies with proven product-market fit, high growth and about 100+ employees, and that have started their international expansion. Our ambition is to support them, not only from a financial standpoint but also from a broader standpoint. This means prioritizing in our sourcing businesses which, by nature, have a positive contribution to society and the environment or businesses which have a neutral impact and encouraging them to adopt best practices. Indeed we equally care about financial and extra-financial indicators.
We are super proud to have recently completed a €100m closing for our first fund (Gaia Growth I) with 60+ top-notch LPs. Our goal is to increase the fund’s assets to €200m by the summer of 2020.
We are fortunate to be working on a daily basis with committed partners such as Sycomore AM, a firm that has a reputation for being an active, responsible and a conviction-driven investor. This partnership makes us uniquely connected across all stages of the innovation investment chain, from VC to public markets, enabling smarter sourcing, investing and exit.
We plan to invest in 10 to 15 companies. In terms of geography, we aim to build a balanced portfolio: half invested in France, the other half spread across Europe, covering the German, Nordics, UK and Southern European countries (Italy and Spain).
Our unique positioning — combining both unlisted and listed investments — enables us to open up investment horizons and help capture a great deal of value… Europe currently boasts around 120 unicorns (tech champions valued at over $1 billion), the majority of those which exited did so through an IPO. So if we want to increase the number of ambitious exits in the European tech, we have no choice but to create strong bridges with publics markets.
Our connection with public markets helps us better source, monitor and exit our companies. We focus on providing a variety of exit options for our portfolio companies (strategic takeovers, IPOs, etc.). We believe it is essential to build more bridges between mature and younger companies, as these are instrumental in helping the leaders of tomorrow grow in a sustainable and responsible way.
The “When”?
Time to market for Gaia Capital Partners is key, and luckily enough planets have aligned and the dots are being connected to launch our investment firm. The market for funding growth stage companies in Europe, and particularly in France, is enjoying a strong momentum, with a bold late-stage initiative led by our government to encourage late-stage funds in France.
Growth equity is an underserved market in France, mostly led by international funds, and where there is a relatively small number of local firms able to deploy the capital required for those types of round. Eurazeo, with Idinvest, and Partech are among the few names one can think when speaking about growth equity in France. Gaia Capital Partners is a up and coming changer in this space, with a one of its kind positioning as an ambitious first fund to back exceptional companies and unique capital market capabilities.
Our objective is to make between 2 to and 4 investments per year, in other words, we would like to be highly active during the first years of the fund. We’ve already made our first deal, Welcome to the Jungle, and are incredibly proud of it (this investment deserves a specific post — stay tuned).
The Who (not the British rock band but such a kick-ass team!)
Our partnership was natural and obvious: same engineering background (being two young ladies in this very male environment creates bonds), same military training, same basketball team there, same desire to discover the world with numerous travels around the globe for both of us and complementary careers in private equity (Bpifrance, Eurazeo, Verlinvest).
This journey is all about trust but also a mutual desire to have an impact in an entrepreneurial way. Shaping tomorrow’s world is a dream we can make come true as investors. That’s our conviction and that’s what bonds us at Gaia Capital Partners.
We aspire to become the next generation investors.
That’s where we meet Morgan and Bettina.
What we liked about Morgan is that he embodies all of it: entrepreneurship (talk to him about the beginnings of Wing, a logistics service for e-merchants he co-founded in 2016, you’ll see), finance (M&A holds no secret for him), sense of endeavour, passion for entrepreneurs and concern for environmental issues. He’s definitely an entrepreneur investor (or an investor entrepreneur, an investeur?).
As for Bettina, that’s a fortunate encounter. Coming from the financial auditing and transaction services world, she brings all the rigour and financial expertise needed when dealing with LP relationships while being an extremely sweet person.
Hadrien is the newest member in the team. His venture capital and private equity background and his experience of producing a podcast dedicated to venture capital and entrepreneurship make him an excellent addition to the team. We are so happy with this new recruitment and can’t wait to announce new arrivals.
We also have top-notch operating partners supporting us. We’ll talk about them later as they deserve it.
All of us aim for performance and impact. We care about the roles and missions of companies. We want to build sustainable growth with companies shaping tomorrow’s world, led by ambitious entrepreneurs who think globally from day one. And we’re pragmatic entrepreneurs, we roll up our sleeves and look for our stakeholders’ best interest.
