Elina Berrebi

Soooo pretty much how French VC has always been. VC firms suing each other. LPs firing GPs. LPs taking funds back. VCs suing entrepreneurs. It's always been a dramatic scene. 🇫🇷 🐓🍷🥖 https://lnkd.in/eK8JbgDA #vc #venrurecapital #startups #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #tech #technology #innovation #money #business

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The Venture market is very weird right now and it sometimes feels like we are in the hottest and coldest fundraising market ever at the same time. Time to invest or time to wait? I’ve tried to summarize my understanding of what’s happening in a blogpost. 

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I’m pleased to have contributed to Arianee’s position paper, "From A Production-Based to A Service-Based Economy: The Role of Tokenization in Decoupling Growth." This insightful paper tackles a topic close to my heart. This paper outlines numerous practical strategies for companies to progress on tackling overproduction while creating new economic opportunities. Thank you Arianee, Pierre-Nicolas Hurstel and of course my friend Francois Souchet for the opportunity to collaborate. #circulareconomy #technology #circularbusinessmodels #sustainability

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Cool convo with Naza Metghalchi last week when we discussed what are the types of automation that could be opportunities for challengers 🦸‍♀️🦸‍♂️ ( 👋 Qevlar AI | We're Hiring! Parloa ) vs incumbents 🐘 The key for me was to really think around what agents can actually do that was not possible in the past (and not just make easier something that we could somewhat do with effort already). Agents are changing the game if you think about a non sequence-friendly automation: like with potentially « infinite » branches and loops. This unlocks goal oriented automation when in the past we had « steps/actions flow » oriented automation. Exciting 🚀

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What do you need to be top quartile as a SaaS company in Europe? Sébastien Le Roy started to share the results of the Serena European SaaS benchmark during #Saastr Europa this week. Great way to quickly check whether you’re on track for a next VC round or simply what you have to improve. More results coming soon with the whole report.

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🚀 For the last 6 months, we've been working on a new programme to accelerate VCs raising their next fund... 🎙️ I am delighted to announce we are now live! Applications are now open to participate in the first programme for emerging VC managers based in Europe, providing fundraising workshops from fundraising experts, LP connections and world-class mentoring. We kick off the first cohort of 15 - 20 VCs in Q1 2025. 🧐 Fundraising is hard. Hard for founders. Even harder for VCs. There is a vacuum of fundraising support for funds, and there's never been a more difficult time to get one off the ground... So what do participating funds receive? 1️⃣ Warm introductions to Limited Partners and Family Offices 2️⃣ Fundraising templates 3️⃣ 10+ hours of world-class mentoring 4️⃣ Content delivered through workshops with a focus on fundraising 5️⃣ Strong peer community 6️⃣ Opportunity of an LP commit from our network Who are the mentors? 👥 VC mentors include founding partners from some of the most successful VCs in Europe such as LocalGlobe, Dawn Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Partech, Heartcore, Speedinvest, and many more. Collectively, they have raised over $11bn across 80 funds 🤯 👥 LP mentors include investors from some of the most active Limited Partners such as the BBB, KfW, Isomer and many more. Who is the programme for? 🚀 Emerging VCs (broadly those raising Funds I - III) based in Europe 💰 We expect applicants to already be exceptional investors, we will focus on making them exceptional fundraisers. How much does it cost? 💰 👉 It's completely free! With no hidden costs. We want to avoid selection bias and level the playing field for under-represented managers What is the time commitment? ⏲️ 👉 Designed to fit a General Partner's busy schedule, participants will attend at least 3 LP networking events, 6 days of high-impact workshops over a 3-month period and receive 10 hours of mentoring. How to apply? 🎯 👉 You can learn more & apply directly from our website 👉 All those applying will receive access to LP investor lists, fundraising templates and exclusive benefits from our partners. How will we select the funds? ⚖️ With the help of Blue Future Partners, our fund selection partner, we will select VCs with a differentiated strategy, a partner team with deep domain experience, and those that we believe will most likely become the next generation of top-tier funds. 🎗️ I researched and dilligenced all the VC service providers I was recommended, to select partners with a track record of supporting the Emerging Manager community. This programme would not have been possible without the support of: HFL as our fund admin partner 📕 Osborne Clarke as our legal partner 📃 Sage as our technology partner 🧑‍💻 Ballou as our PR partner 🎤 Leela Capital Regulatory Solutions as our regulatory partner 𝍍 Johnston Carmichael Chartered Accountants and Business Advisers as our accounting partner 🧾

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💸 Our business angel cash-out guide is out! 💸 I put together these 4 rules, compiling years of experience advising the best VC investors in managing their portfolio and their exit strategies ( 👋 Romain Afflelou Jean-David BENICHOU Jeremie Attali Marc Menasé Patrice Giami Fanny MIARA) For early-stage investors, finding the right monetization path is a significant challenge. The best, and most complex, option is selling shares on the secondary market. I put together this guide to help early stage venture investors maximize their returns, structured around four major rules RULE 👍 : Prepare this transaction strategy ahead of time RULE 🤘 : Find the right timing to do so RULE 👌 : Price their shares on the secondary market RULE 👊 : Efficiently manage your secondary process You can access the full version of the guide on https://lnkd.in/eqY2XQ_M If you want advice on how to maximize your portfolio I am more than happy to seat with you and discuss your strategy - just book a timeslot in my agenda https://lnkd.in/eFCPXU_g #venturecapital #businessangel #ROI #secondary #portfoliomanagement

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Excited to share the new Gain.pro report on French PE market 🇫🇷🌟 What are the key takeaways? ✔️ PE-backed entries are on track to hit a new high this year, driven by a surge in activity in the Services, Industrials and TMT sectors. ✔️ PE exits are up, driven by a particularly strong Sponsor-to-Sponsor exit market, but multiples have dropped to 9.3x, and holding periods are now at 6.1 years. ✔️Ardian leads as the largest sponsor investing in France, managing a total estimated EV of €12.6bn in the region, followed by Bpifrance (€11.1bn) and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (€10.6bn). Download the full report here ➡️ https://okt.to/86JheY

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I’ve been anticipating more creative M&A stories ever since Swile acquired employee benefits platform Bimpli, a subsidiary of Groupe BPCE in 2023. At the time, I dubbed what Loïc Soubeyrand, Swile’s CEO and Founder, successfully executed a Private Reverse Merger (or PReM). It’s when a smaller, fast-growing but loss-making private tech company acquires a private incumbent that’s larger, slow-growing, but profitable. Sure enough, 2024 has already brought us three new PReM stories. Last week, sennder (Nine years old, Series D company) announced its acquisition of C.H. Robinson’s European Surface Transportation operations (109 years old, global logistics platform). It is set to double the company’s annual revenue from €700m to €1.4bn (so also qualifies as a Merger of Equals) and catapult it to the top five European companies in its industry. Back in February, Cohesity (11 years old, Series F) announced its merger with the data protection business at Veritas Technologies LLC (41 years old, international enterprise) in February to form a new company that will work with 96 of the Fortune 100 and 80% of the Global 500. And in May, computer vision company Metropolis Technologies (7 years old, Series C) announced its acquisition of parking network SP+ (SP Plus). The deal will make Metropolis, originally a software company, the biggest parking network operator in North America. Like Swile, Sennder, Cohesity and Metropolis have accelerated their path to greater scale and profitability with their PReMs, while offering to the incumbent a potential exposure to a growth story trading at higher multiples, creating a win-win scenario for both sides. This approach can also offer scale-ups… ✔️ A faster path to liquidity and a premium valuation as a larger company and possible category leader ✔️ A de-risked business with a reduction in future dilution ✔️ Better terms for raising debt with a profitable business in the future (And by the way, two years after the Swile / BPCE merger, the integration is still going incredibly smoothly. One added benefit that we hadn’t anticipated back then: having the agility of a startup while having the support of a large banking group.) We’re not fully in the clear with private markets and the IPO market is tight, but these companies are more proof that creative M&A should be high on scale-ups’ agendas.

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💟 This is the kind of news that makes you love Venture Capital! 🦄🇫🇷 Some will only remember the €1.5 billion exit for a French company. It's not a UNICORN valuation, it's a real EXIT! 3️⃣ 6️⃣ Some will only remember the x36 multiple on investment. 💥 Some will only remember the €175 million proceeds returned to the funds with a single operation. 👑What I'll remember, is Denis Ladegaillerie's passion, vision, and ambition. These are the keys to success. Excited to share this fantastic news for Believe, for Ventech, but also for the entire Tech ecosystem! 🚀 #VentureCapital #SuccessStory cc France Digitale

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From missing payroll 27 times to making over 500 investments! Meet Fabrice Grinda, named No. 1 Angel Investor by Forbes, who has made over $300 million in exits from over 700 investments! Fabrice began his entrepreneurial journey in 1998 by co-founding Aucland in France. In 1999, he raised $18M from Bernard Arnault, a venture fund luxury-goods magnate in exchange for 51% of the company. Later in 2000, Fabrice sold the rest to his fund. Fabrice founded Zingy in 2001, a mobile media startup. Despite facing early struggles and missing payroll 27 times, he finally succeeded when the company’s revenue scaled to $200M in 2004. Later, he sold Zingy for $80M to a Japanese media conglomerate ForSide. In 2006, Fabrice co-founded OLX with Alec Oxenford, which became one of the largest classified sites in the world with over 200 million monthly unique visitors. In 2010, the South African group Naspers Limited acquired it. Soon, Fabrice found a yearning for angel investing and building startups. He partnered with Jose Marin to jointly evaluate angel investment opportunities, and launched FJ Labs, a VC firm, to further pool the startup investment activities. Earlier, when they made around 178 investments, they received a 5.5x average return on 31 profitable exits. Among his angel investments are: Airbnb Alibaba Group Dropbox Palantir Technologies viagogo Wikimarket Uber Parking Panda To date, Fabrice, through FJ Labs, has made over 1000 startup investments and over 300 exits with an impressive realized 39-40% IRR. Fabrice’s portfolio allocation is 20% cash, 70% early-stage tech startups, and 10% real estate. As a serial angel investor, Fabrice and his team analyze over 100 companies weekly and make new investments every 15 days. His investment ticket size remains around $10k to $300k. He decides whether to invest or not based on four criteria: -The team -The pitch (market size & business model) -The product -The commercials Would you allocate 70% of your assets to startups? TDV Partners #angelinvesting #finance #investing #wealthcreation #ujwalsutaria #tdvpartners

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Tomorrow I’m lucky to be hosting a panel with three exceptional founders: - Gilles Gaillard - Co-founder of Animaj, raised 100m EUR (in equity and debt) in 2023 to build an AI-powered animation studio that counts 𝗮 stunning 15 billion (!) YouTube views per year. Animaj acquires animation and cartoon franchises to turn them into digital-first content and amplifies their distribution using AI. - Baptiste Jamin - Co-founder of Crisp IM, 42 alumni, also can be called the “King of Bootstrap”. He started building chatbots in 2015, 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗼𝗹. Crisp centralises all customer interactions through live chat, chatbots, and a shared inbox. Today Crisp serves over 600,000 companies without raising any funds. - Vincent SIMON - Co-founder of Relationchips and founder of Simundia. Vincent is a serial entrepreneur & investor who founded a coaching platform that raised over 15m EUR & is currently working on a no-code sales workflow platform. What do they have in common? They started their career as freelancers and worked their way up to become highly successful entrepreneurs. 👉 Join us at Le Wagon tomorrow at 7pm to hear their story. We’ll also host a networking session for you to meet people from our community who are working on projects that might interest you. 🔗Link to register in the comments.

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🌟 Binary Stars is Back! 🌟 For those who missed the first edition with Harm de Vries, Paul Lasserre and Léo Dreyfus-Schmidt, Binary Stars is Fly Ventures's virtual conference dedicated to the latest advancements of Software Engineering and AI in Europe. For this second edition, we're super happy to partner with the awesome Antoine Moyroud (Lightspeed), Roosh Circle and AI HOUSE to deep dive into AI reasoning. 🧠 AI REASONING ? ! ? 🧠 With Zachary Gleicher (Deepmind), Rolf Pfister (Lab42, supporting the ARC Prize), and a yet-to-be-revealed third speaker, we'll ask the big questions : - What’s objectively achievable by the best AI models in terms of reasoning? - Are we stuck with LLMs making basic errors (how many Rs in Strawberry?), or are there breakthroughs on the horizon? - While benchmark performances have improved, has reasoning *genuinely* advanced, or it is all tricks still? - What did the Transformer architecture contribute to reasoning problems, and have we reached its limits? - What are the main research avenues pushing reasoning forward today? ... Join us on Nov 8th => register on binarystars.org!

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I couldn’t be prouder to be a Venture Partner at Isomer Capital (aka the best European FoF - at least for me) as we just announced the launch of our pioneering £100m secondaries fund. This fund is dedicated to acquiring stakes from LPs in various VC funds, tapping into a massive and largely unexplored market. 🌟 Key Highlights: - Focused Investment: Primarily targeting stakes in VC funds, with selective investments in private companies. - Robust Funding: Already over 20% funded, thanks to strong support from Nordic family offices and a German foundation. - Market Potential: With a growing number of private tech companies and a VC liquidity crunch, Europe's VC secondaries market is poised for rapid growth. - Track Record: This isn’t Isomer’s first foray into the secondaries market. As a firm we’ve done several secondaries deals with portfolio companies and VC firms, including early-stage VC Seedcamp (in 2021) and mobility giant Bolt (in 2023). - Expert Team: Welcoming the amazing Omolade (Rachel) A., formerly of Coller Capital, as a principal to lead this initiative. 💡 Investment Strategy: - 65-75% of the fund will buy "LP interest" stakes in VC funds. - 15-25% will be directed towards stakes in companies. - Up to 15% reserved for flexible investment opportunities. 📈 Looking Ahead: We're targeting returns of 2-3x, with significant distributions expected in the next 4-7 years. As one of the few players in this space, we're not just participating in the market—we're driving it forward. Read all about it here: https://lnkd.in/dc7sbC3G #VentureCapital #SecondariesFund #EuropeanVC

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🤨 What do I look for in co-founders ? 🤨 This is the question I get asked the most often, and I (finally) have a good answer! At Hexa, I partner with entrepreneurs ~3x/year, a CEO and CTO for each project— essentially “marrying” 6x/year to build the best partnerships. I look for 4 key traits in my co-founders ⤵️ ⚡️ Energy booster Building and growing a company is about convincing people to follow you—investors, clients, team members—and the person’s natural energy is a key factor in achieving this. I call these people exothermic: they move things around them simply by the energy they exude. How do I test this? I need to feel more energized at the end of a meeting with them than I did at the start. ⏰ Sense of urgency The higher the velocity in a startup, the faster it will grow. Having a deep need to act and get things done sets the fast-paced tempo I’m looking for. 🧑‍🏫 Thirst for self-improvement Founders who are constantly looking to improve by proactively seeking feedback and showing vulnerability have an endless strength to overcome the (inevitable) challenges of entrepreneurship. 🏋️‍♀️ Commitment Being a founder means making your company part of your top priorities, it’s a journey that’s all-consuming. If you believe you embody these traits and are ready to build a transformative company, let’s connect!

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The French government is spearheading a renewed push to integrate the European Union's fragmented capital markets to revive the bloc's flourishing startup ecosystem and reduce their dependence on U.S. venture capital funds. Complicated local regulations and oversight have prevented the EU from developing deep, unified capital markets on par with the U.S. This forces promising European startups to inevitably turn to U.S. VCs and IPO markets as they scale, representing a missed wealth creation opportunity for the bloc. French officials argue that reviving the long-stalled EU capital markets union must be a top priority. This would harmonize financial rules and oversight across the 27-nation bloc, providing startups access to larger pools of integrated risk capital. While the majority of the nations are on board, at least in principle, several governments remain reluctant to cede regulatory control of their financial markets. Another proposed solution involves getting public sector investors, such as the European Investment Bank (EIB), more involved in riskier startup bets.

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There was a lot of discussion about the #Draghi report last week. In my opinion, we are focusing too much on the amount of 800 billion euros that can be spent annually to stimulate development. The key issue for Europe right now is building technological autonomy, technological independence in key sectors of the future such as space, logistics, supply chains, cybersecurity. I hope that in #Poland & #Baltics we will manage to develop a program to stimulate the development of technologies that are now key for our region. I am not talking here only about funds for investments, but also about changing the public procurement law, for example. Civilian technologies that increase the resilience of the State in times of conducting operations on the border between war and peace should currently be a priority for #NATO's eastern flank. The question is how can entrepreneurs get involved in building the resilience of the State? Can dual-use investments become a new type of CSR today? Dual-use impact policy in companies? I talked a lot about this topic recently at a #balticvcasummit in Vilnius. I know that the best PEs from our region are already investing in dual-use technologies. Now VC should do that too! I would like to invite you to an event organized by Paweł Michalski. We as Balnord support this initiative. What is SHIELD? #SHIELD is an event that brings together stakeholders from public administration, enterprises, investors, and startups to discuss defense and dual-use technologies. What's in it for you? Meet defense investors, potential partners, industry experts, and startups. To learn more or get your ticket, visit the event website at https://lu.ma/shield

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💡 I was discussing with Julien Hobeika about agents the other day. We had a typical VC question. What is gonna be grabbed by incumbents and what could be opportunities for newcomers. This conversation is endless but we started slicing the problem with 2 axis: Where automation sits in the enterprise: 🅰️ -"Top-down" sponsored automation. These are high volume areas and if not met properly can have business critical risk 🅱️ - Long tail user productivity, often underserved and sponsored by individual users or small teams, requiring a more DIY approach. I have around 10 automation ideas daily, but as a non technical user, I find the barrier to entry for using Zapier effectively to be non-trivial The complexity of automation: 1️⃣ - Sequencing friendly workflows with straightforward chains and finite branches 2️⃣ - Complex, non-sequencing friendly workflows that require a goal-oriented approach with potentially infinite branch and loop combinations. ➡️ Our initial hypotheses point towards: 🐘 There is an opportunity for incumbents (Workato, UIPath) to use genAI to add even clever 'steps' in their tool AND potentially ease the creation of workflow using "prompt to workflow" mechanism. This is already happening. I've been impressed by how aggressively they have been implementing more capabilities into their offerings 🦸🏻‍♀️🦸 This is a new paradigm. Existing sequencing friendly automation tools are failing at this. A new agentic native approach can build those automations. We’re excited about founders building here and have already partnered with teams like Qevlar AI | We're Hiring! (in security operations), and Parloa (in customer service). Who’s next? 😉 🪄 There is an opportunity to bring automation to the masses. We believe that delivering prompt-to-sequence automation to every individual holds a lot of promise. We expect teams to create a magical product experience enabling anyone in the organization to become a software creator 🤖  This is the more futuristic box. Is that basically automating yourself? Get your digital twin to work for you and you earn the money on its behalf? We will keep ideating on this framework. What do you think? Doreen Huber Tom Mendoza Sai Sriramagiri Ted Persson EQT Ventures Kaushik Subramanian

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