Emblem, an emerging venture capital firm located in Paris, has successfully completed the final closure of its inaugural fund. After 18 months since the initial closing, the Emblem team has raised a total of €80 million (approximately $85 million at current exchange rates).
Achieving this milestone in the current fundraising landscape is noteworthy. As per Atomico’s recent State of European Tech report, venture funding has declined for the third consecutive year in 2024, primarily due to a lack of acquisitions and IPOs in the market.
Consequently, venture capital as a category seems less appealing than it has been previously. Many VC firms are encountering difficulties in raising follow-on funds, even amidst the burgeoning opportunities in artificial intelligence.
However, Emblem persevered and consistently achieved its hard cap—the predetermined maximum it aimed to raise. Co-founded by Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan and Guillaume Durao, who previously engaged in notable angel investments, Emblem has already ventured into various promising startups. Their investments include the crypto trading card game Sorare, pet insurance pioneer Dalma, and the cultivated meat startup Gourmey, among others.
With Emblem, they aimed to elevate their impact by creating a formal VC firm dedicated to making 25 to 30 investments from this initial fund. Their preference is to lead or co-lead seed rounds with investments ranging between €500,000 and €3 million, but they are also open to following other lead investors when attractive opportunities arise.
Since the first closing in March 2023, Emblem has already invested in 16 startups. A few of these have been highlighted by TechCrunch, including:
- Pivot, a procurement tool that competes with Coupa.
- The Mobile-First Company, a B2B mobile app studio inspired by Voodoo and other successful consumer app studios.
- Altrove, a new materials firm leveraging AI and lab automation to accelerate research.
- Volta, an e-commerce platform akin to Shopify, exclusively catering to B2B transactions.
This diverse portfolio reflects a variety of focus areas and geographical coverage. “We’ve initiated 16 investments so far. To illustrate, eight are based in France, six in the Nordics—Denmark and Sweden—and we have one each in the U.S. and Italy,” de Raphélis Soissan conveyed to TechCrunch.
Emblem is primarily focused on the French and Nordic tech ecosystems. The firm has garnered support from over 200 limited partners in its first fund, comprising family offices and technology entrepreneurs, including the founders of Unity, Pleo, Qonto, 3Shape, Spendesk, Voodoo, PennyLane, JobandTalent, Ledger, and Zendesk, collectively contributing more than half of the total amount raised.
The remaining funds have come from various funds of funds, supplemented by commitments from both EIFO (the Danish sovereign fund) and Bpifrance (the French sovereign fund). Emblem is already contemplating its next fund, aiming for a similar size as the current one.
“Now we have a bit of breathing room without the immediate need to fundraise. We plan to enjoy this time, but it’s crucial not to go off the grid,” de Raphélis Soissan noted. “Given that it typically takes around four years to deploy, and we’re about halfway there, we’ll need to begin preparations again within a year.”
Compiled by Techarena.au.
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