Partech Ventures strengthens its transatlantic seed strategy with €100 million for its Partech Entrepreneur II fund

The fund will finance around 80 seed stage European and US start-ups. It comes with a unique service offering that provides entrepreneurs with access to an excellent network of expertise and business contacts

Partech Ventures, a VC firm, has announced the closing of its latest seed fund Partech Entrepreneur II. At € 100 million, the fund was oversubscribed above the initial target of €80 million. This new fund will pursue the pan-European and transatlantic seed strategy that has been successfully implemented since the launch of Partech Entrepreneur I in 2013, a 30-million-euro fund.

Over the past eighteen months, the investment team, made up of former entrepreneurs located in the San Francisco, Paris and Berlin offices, has made more than fifty investments between the United States and seven European countries. This investment pace makes Partech Entrepreneur II the most active private seed fund in Europe.

The very broad sourcing (3,000 start-ups sourced every year in more than 15 countries) allows the team to identify the best talents in the most advanced technologies, as well as in highly innovative areas in which few VCs have started to invest globally. For example, Hyperloop (supersonic train) and Flirtey (drones) in the logistics of the future; Push Doctor (remote consultation) and Alan (first health insurance accredited in France in 30 years) in new generation healthcare; Resolution Games (from the creator of Candy Crush) and Sketchfab in virtual reality; Lima and Streamroot in the P2P infrastructure; Monax and Atlas in the Blockchain Revolution; Ascend Loan and Novicap in Fintech; Bugcrowd and Idecsi in cyber security; Influans and Madkudu in smart CRM; Plae and Lesara in new e-commerce models, etc.

The fund’s investors include 90 entrepreneurs and business angels, as well as senior executives from prominent tech groups (Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Dropbox, etc.) who bring their experience and networks to support portfolio companies. For example, Laurent Delaporte, CEO of NetMediaEurope and former VP Advertising EMEA at Microsoft, comments: "Joining Partech as an investor gave me the opportunity to finance some of the adtech companies in the portfolio, like AlephD".

The companies financed by the fund join a community of more than 130 start-ups in Partech’s portfolio across all continents. They also benefit from a unique business development program, drawing upon an exclusive network of more than 20 European and US multinationals in all industries, as well as numerous partners for operations and technology (Google, IBM, Amazon, etc.)

This network of entrepreneurs and partners enables Partech to foster international expansion, which is a key differentiator for both US and European start-ups: "Partech brings resources worldwide to help develop companies that they believe in," says Jonathan Spier, founder and CEO of PLAE, a children's online brand created in California. "Their European team allowed us to initiate a partnership with a distributor for German-speaking Europe."

The Partech Shaker, a start-up campus opened in Paris in 2014, is an additional advantage that French and non-French entrepreneurs can benefit from. "In addition to the funds and their expertise, Partech offered us an ideal environment in the heart of Paris to expand our team during our hypergrowth phase," says Arthur Waller, co-founder and CEO of PriceMatch.

Thanks to Partech’s seed platform, many start-ups have been able to go through new and substantial financing rounds (Alkemics, Plae, Bugcrowd, Zeel, Sketchfab, Tribe, etc.), whereas others have been acquired by world-renowned players (PriceMatch was bought by Booking.com, Pulse.io was bought by Google and AlephD was bought by AOL).