If you’re a French businessman, there’s a new venture capital firm in town. The capital city of Ovni is announcing the first close of 50 million euros ($54 million at today’s exchange rates) for its early-stage fund.
Two general partners of the company Arnaud Laurent And Augustin Sayer invested in several companies in their previous jobs. Laurent worked with Didier Soucheyre to create XLR Capital and invest in startups like MWM And toggle. He also invests in early stage startups through we sprintan accelerator starts.
Sayer grew up in America and began her career there. More recently, he was a partner at New capital where he has invested in 22 different startups, such as fair money And Umiami.
When it comes to corporate investment thesis, Omni Capital wants to support new startups with strong international ambitions from day one. According to the Ovni team, many French entrepreneurs still think about global expansion too late. That is why the number of unicorns per capita is higher in Berlin or Stockholm than in France.
“Statistically, we also find that French startups are three times more likely to raise Series B if they took this international approach from the start,” Augustin Sayer said in An announcement.
In addition to focusing on startups with foreign employees or startups that communicate internally in English, Ovni Capital will prioritize deep-tech startups over platforms, markets or vertical software services products. And the VC firm plans to support entrepreneurs by putting experts on the board of directors.
Ovni Capital tried to raise money from successful entrepreneurs as much as possible. Overall, the company managed to convince 50 French tech entrepreneurs to back the fund. If some of them want to get involved, they can represent Ovni Capital on the boards of investment companies.
The company plans to invest anything from 250,000 to 2 million euros in 30 different startups. In some cases, Ovni Capital will be able to invest in subsequent rounds up to 4 million Euro. The first investment company was Axeptioa user consent startup that recently raised 3.5 million euros from Isai, Evolem and Ovni Capital.
