Partech Ventures closes fundraising of €100 million for its new seed fund

Partech Ventures has just closed fundraising for its new seed fund Partech Entrepreneur II, which hit its €100 million hard cap. Read on to learn more about a seed model that is winning over investors and entrepreneurs alike.

€100 million to fund international game changers

Following on the heels of Partech Entrepreneur I, Partech Entrepreneur II was launched in April 2015 to fund startups in the seed phase. “With an initial hard cap of €80 million, the goal was to raise €60 million, or twice as much as the first fund”, explains Romain Lavault, General Partner at Partech Ventures. The target and the hard cap were both raised in response to investor interest, and Partech Entrepreneur II went on to hit its new hard cap of €100 million, closing the fundraising round with more than triple the assets of Partech Entrepreneur I. Investors include a community of over 90 entrepreneurs, business angels, senior managers of tech groups and public and private participants.

The new fund will continue the strategy pursued by its predecessor. Specifically, Partech Entrepreneur II is targeting startups with the capacity for major technological innovations and that are destined to become game changers on high-potential markets. These firms include Flirtey, a startup specialized in e-commerce and drone product delivery, Elon Musk’s Hyperloop One, which is developing a new method of transport that will move people and things faster with minimal environmental impact, Resolution Games, a virtual reality games studio designed by the creator of Candy Crush, and Alan, the first independent health insurer to be launched in France for three decades. “We only finance projects that we see as likely disrupters. We want to go where noone else is brave enough to venture”, says Romain.

While the rationale remains the same, the new fund differs from Partech Entrepreneur I in two big ways. First, the pace of investment: boasting triple the resources of the first fund, Partech Entrepreneur II will be in a position to finance about 80 startups, averaging three new investments per month. It will also have a more international feel, with two-thirds of investments in Europe (outside France) and the US. “In the last 18 months, Partech Entrepreneur II has invested in more than 50 projects across a dozen countries, making it the busiest seed fund in Europe”, adds Romain.

A tried and tested model

Romain believes that Partech Ventures has developed a seed model that works for entrepreneurs and investors alike. So, what are the secrets of the Partech touch?

Dedicated support is vital, with Partech helping and structuring startups as they grow. Every member of the investment team is a former entrepreneur; Romain was COO of Pertinence and VP Sales at Intercim, an industrial machine learning firm sold to Dassault Systems, Jai Choi created and sold two businesses in the US, Boris Golden founded Pealk, a startup bought by Viadeo, and Otto Birnbaum was Chief Marketing Officer at HelloFresh in Berlin.

Partech Ventures seeks to be an operational partner to investee firms, whether they are looking to expand internationally, build up sales & marketing or hire in key positions. “Partech helped us to craft our market conquest, sales and overseas recruitment strategy”, explains Patrick Hurenkamp, CEO of Bloomon. The fund, whose offices are in central Paris, boasts another advantage that is unique in the VC world: the Partech Shaker, which is a startup campus that offers a home to firms managing their hyper-growth phase. “Partech was the perfect environment for us, enabling us to triple our team in a matter of months, before we sold the company to Booking.com”, explains Arthur Waller, co-founder of PriceMatch.

Entrepreneurs also appreciate the quality of the network provided by Partech Ventures. The company currently has over 130 startups in its portfolio and has forged strategic partnerships with more than 20 global players from the worlds of industry, services and technology to grow the business of its entrepreneurs.