Emblem is the latest European seed fund in new wave of VC funds
If you are planning to create a new startup in France, Denmark or Sweden, there is a new seed fund looking for your pitch. Emblem announces today that it has raised nearly $54 million (€50 million) for a new European seed fund. And this is just the first deal — the company expects to raise up to $80 million by the end of the year.
Emblem was founded by Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan and Guillaume Durao. This isn’t the first time Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan’s name has appeared on TechCrunch, as she used to be an entrepreneur herself. In 2014, I reported on their startup Cluster for the first time.
Clustree was a talent management and HR platform acquired by Cornerstone OnDemand. Some business angels such as Frédéric Montagnon and Florian Douetteau were instrumental in the development of Clustree, so after Clustree was sold, she began investing in startups herself.
Guillaume Durao has been an investor for several years. He worked for Mangrove Capital Partners and Idinvest (the VC firm now part of Eurazeo). While both partners are French, Durao has worked in Denmark and been quite active in the Nordic tech ecosystem. He also invested part of his own money as a business angel.
Before starting Emblem, Durao and de Raphélis Soissan already built an interesting portfolio of angel investments. They invested in crypto trading card game Sorare, pet insurance startup Dalma, and cultured meat company Gourmey. In addition to these French startups, they also invested in Denmark’s Growblocks and All Gravy, Sweden’s Ark Kapital and Goals, and more.
The next logical step is a real seed fund with more capital. Emblem aims to lead or co-lead seed investments with a typical investment between €500,000 and €3 million. Overall, the company wants to invest in 25 to 30 technology companies with its start-up fund.
While Emblem lists some industries like AI, B2B SaaS, fintech, future of work, and digital health, the company doesn’t have a specific focus on some industries. It’s a generalist tech seed fund.
As for the company’s backers, Emblem managed to raise funds from Danish sovereign wealth fund Vaekstfonden, institutional investors like Edenred, several French and Nordic family offices, as well as technology entrepreneurs looking for investment opportunities. Some of the entrepreneurs who have invested in Emblem are the founders of 3shape, Dixa, Falcon, Kantox, Peakon, PeopleDoc, Planday, Pleo, Qonto, Silae, Spendesk, Swile and Zendesk.
There are two things that set Emblem apart from other French VC firms. Initially, it focuses on French startups, but also Swedish and Danish startups. “Paris, Copenhagen and Stockholm are the three most interesting startup hubs after London and Berlin,” Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan told me.
Second, Emblem doesn’t want to become an early-stage fund that also invests in Series A rounds or even later. Sure, the company will set aside some of its fund for follow-up investments in existing portfolio companies — but that’s about it.
“We will only focus on seeds. The idea is that we won’t raise a bigger fund and start investing in Series A rounds,” said de Raphélis Soissan.
A new wave of micro funds in Europe
It is difficult to describe what a micro fund is. As many VC firms start raising bigger and bigger funds, everything else looks like a micro fund.
Emblem is larger than a micro fund. But there are a handful of people raising new funds with $5 million, $10 million, or $15 million in assets under management. Just as many successful investors started VC investments with their own micro funds in the USA a few years ago, the same trend is now also emerging in Europe.
During my conversation with Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan, we talked about some of these new funds. For example, Anthony Danon and Carmen Alfonso Rico were quite active on Cocoa. Gloria Baeuerlein is behind a new fund called Beyond Capital. Pietro Invernizzi is currently raising his own fund.
I’ve also covered some of the larger funds that have popped up in the last year or so, like Resonance, Ovni Capital, and Galion.exe. And then there’s Teampact Ventures and Origins.
While we’re currently going through a technical downturn, it’s interesting to see that there is one more Early stage financing options in Europe. And each fund has its own investment thesis. These emerging partners can also develop their own network, which should create more opportunities for the tech ecosystem as a whole.