Irresistible to fund

People ^ Venture ^ Capital

Over the past few years, I have come to realize the inherent logic and intuition behind our decisions to back entrepreneurs who have revealed, over time, to be phenomenal founders and company builders.

Set of 5 anonymized companies from the past 3 years

Why did we invest more money than other investors would have dared to, at valuations that totally defied the consensus, at a point of high uncertainties that characterize the early days of a team? There are common patterns:

1. During the first minutes and hours of discussions with a founder, we make our mind about the opportunity, we provide information about what we’ve observed elsewhere, we share our views in order to guide the founders through their thinking process and choices. Then comes a time of enlightenment, a moment when we realize that the thinking, learning, execution velocity of the founders is transcending our interactions, as a result of their talent and hard work. This is the first aha moment.
2. We realize that minor interactions with the founding CEO compound into a major conviction in our mind. It’s all about perceiving the faintest signal and manage to amplify their potential looking forward. This is the second aha moment.
3. When after a couple of days, we can’t stop buzzing around the potential of this opportunity, about the quality of our interactions with the team, and that every discussion/opinion/argument we shared with people around us actually amplifies our convictions, there we reach the final aha moment that lead to our decision to invest.

This is exactly what happened with Zen.ly, Payfit.com, Side.co, Ibanfirst.com, Sourced.tech, Dice.fm, Doctrine.com, all our Series A deals.

And beyond the remarkable trajectory of each one of those companies in their own way, I am immensely proud of following closely the journey of each one of those entrepreneurs, and regardless of the outcomes of those investments, I would blindly back again every single one of them.

I know I will in the future.

Antoine Martin

is the most brilliant mobile consumer product person I know, each one of his product demos feels like traveling to the future.

Humble ambition, Demanding with care, Trusting with high accountability,

Firmin Zocchetto

is a fascinating, balanced, solid character.

Pierre Mugnier

is a master of strategy and clairvoyance, with an incredible ability to run complex operations with both attention to details and velocity.

Among the most knowledgeable, capable and bullshit-free entrepreneurs of the Fintech world,

Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier

is without a doubt at the top of the pyramid.

Eiso Kant

is the most intelligible tech founders I know, with impressive skills when it comes to explaining complex problems and turning as much as executing them into beautifully simple and robust solutions.

Phil Hutcheon

puts so much talent, hard work, and dedication into his mission that it is honestly hard to see him settle before he has transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

I have never met someone more obsessed with transparency and accountability than

Nicolas Bustamante

and it’s remarkable how it transpires through the execution and velocity of his team.

All those founders share common values and ambition. They have also managed to surround themselves with incredible supporters, investors and team members.

Capital has become a commodity in Venture, while people have always been and will always remain the heart and the function of every single effort and success in a company to transform the world, hopefully for the better.

Every once in a while, we bump into an incredible individual who is after a gigantic opportunity, and it’s just irresistible to fund and support :)

People are the matter, the mean and the purpose of any venture, which possibilities are unlocked through capital.