This is good news in the somewhat dire landscape of the start-up ecosystem.
Administratively created a year ago but operating mainly under the radar since then, the Varsity investment fund comes to light at the beginning of February 2024. This new investor for start-ups with pan-European ambitions indicates this Wednesday that it has completed half of its fundraising operation of 150 million euros, or around 80 million euros, but also having already invested in five young start-ups.
To discover
PODCAST - Listen to the latest episode of our Tech Questions series
A challenge, given the drying up of liquidity that the markets are experiencing at the moment.
“The environment is less buoyant, but we carried out this fundraising with our partners rather quickly and well.
It is undoubtedly linked to the history of the founders, but also of the good fairies
,” smiles Didier Valet, one of the three co-founders.
After 18 years at Société Générale, as financial director or even head of the investment bank, the latter joined the world of investment six years ago.
Firstly, as an advisor for the CVC fund or Bain Consulting, but also as a business angel by supporting fintech projects such as Alma, the now unicorn Pennylane or Qonto.
Also read: The challenges of French Tech start-ups after the tremors of 2023
The two other co-founders, Florent Thomas and Kamel Zeroual, have also been working in the ecosystem for some time.
After several years within the Serena Capital fund in operational functions, the first worked in particular at the start-up Sunday which deploys a QR code payment system for restaurateurs.
Finally, Kamel Zeroual had a career as an entrepreneur for ten years, before also joining Serena Capital in 2017 where he led around thirty investments.
Thirty companies targeted
These 150 million euros will allow the fund to invest sums of between 2 and 3 million euros for early-stage start-ups.
Varsity is therefore targeting around thirty companies in which to invest at a rate of 10 companies per year.
The average ticket is rather high for a seed fund, compared to its peers in the market.
“We leave ourselves the possibility of taking a few larger tickets in series A if we see interesting valuations, and also as an opportunity in pre-seed for smaller tickets
,” indicates Florent Thomas.
The group has already invested in five start-ups although it only reveals the names of four of them: RockFi (networks of wealth management advisors), Sensinov (energy optimization of buildings in the tertiary sector), Kog ( Generative AI for developers), Pharaday (sea freight).
“We can see our verticals, namely fintech, climate, the world of software.
Our prism is more B2B
,” explains Didier Valet.
“We are also looking at deeptech, but the returns on investments are sometimes longer.
There will be room for one or two atypical companies
,” adds Florent Thomas.
Also read: French Tech is struggling to take its unicorns to the stock market
The other great characteristic is the pan-European character of Varsity.
“We had the ambition to immediately project ourselves as a European platform.
Hence the ambition of a fund of 150 million euros to play on equal terms with our competitors such as the French Partech, the Austrian Speedinvest, the German Picus or the British Index,”
indicates the former banker.