Operating Team

Market trends

Fundraising trends of French startups in Q3 2023: The VC market saved by deeptech

Following the studies on the financing of French startups for the two quarters of 2023, Newfund now reveals the trends observed at the end of the third quarter. The downward gap compared to the third quarter of 2022 is now only 21%, compared to 48% when comparing the first three

Road to the USA

Red Luxury - International growth from founders with a global strategy

Founded in 2012 by Romain Bénichou and David-Emmanuel Cohen, Red Luxury is a Paris-based French-American jewelry and watch brand accelerator. Its mission is to challenge the norms of the traditional watch and jewelry industry by partnering with exceptional talent to expand up-and-coming luxury brands globally. In an interview with Newfund’

Analysis

Empowering women entrepreneurs

Newfund 2023 Action Plan Every year, Newfund analyzes the gender diversity in our dealflow at each stage of the investment process. This serves the purpose to ensure that there is no bias in our selection method. As the Newfund report shows, startups co-founded by at least one woman saw almost

Road to the USA

The US Market Expansion Quiz: Your Startup's Roadmap to Success

Expanding to the US market can be a significant milestone for any startup. The sooner the US expansion, the better the outcome, as the data points out (see the Data-Driven Approach to an Early US Expansion). 'Am I ready' is the question that everyone is asking because the challenge seems

Fundraising Advice

Ultimate 2023 VC Guide for your fundraising in France!

Fundraising is a crucial part of developing one’s startup. It is often a lengthy process that involves countless hours researching and reaching out to funds. In order to help entrepreneurs target the right funds and avoid wasting time reaching out to the wrong funds, we are relaunching a 2023

Road to the USA

The benefits and lessons learned from visiting the Bay Area as a founder

A conversation with DataGalaxy co-founder Sébastien Thomas Created in 2015 by Lazhar Sellami and Sébastien Thomas,  DataGalaxy is an innovative data governance solution that offers the first agile data mapping platform, enabling teams to share a common knowledge of the company's data to stay focused on the essential: creating value

Road to the USA

A French founder’s perception of the Bay Area’s startup culture

As shared by Mehdi E. Hafed Pocard (co-founder of Touch Sensity) Created in December 2019 by Anna Pugach and Mehdi E. Hafed Pocard, Touch Sensity offers a revolutionary technology that makes objects and materials sensitive to physical interactions without using sensors, which are always difficult to integrate. The entire surface,

Entrepreneur

The Super Interview

Olivier Pailhès, co-founder and ex-CEO of Aircall September 2022 Olivier Pailhès, co-founder of Aircall, stepped down from his position of CEO in August 2022 after a 9-year tenure at the head of the new phone cloud powerhouse, and the satifaction to have brought the company from zero to $100M+ ARR.

Road to the USA

A data-driven approach to an early US expansion

Newfund Capital invests and supports early stage France-based startups in their US expansion. We strongly believe that such an early international expansion comes with great benefits for the product, the team, the future financings, and finally the liquidity for all. Recently two of our landmark investments have made headlines, Aircall

Entrepreneur

Meet the latest French founder who moved to the US and raised $100M

It has been a big month for Newfund portfolio startup Nfinite. With our support, among others, the company just closed a $100 million Series B with New York City-based Insight Partners. This comes after the company closed a $15 million round of Series A funding in February when our US

Newfund Featured

Is Newfund useful?

With a massive slowdown of our inbound deal flow due to Covid-19, we decided to pause proactive investments for two months (apart from committed term sheets & hand shakes) and ask ourselves how we could be more useful to our founders? Although this strategic evolution of being more than just a

Fundraising Advice

Ultimate 2021 VC Guide for your fundraising in France!

[If you came for the maps of the French ecosystem, just scroll below — last updated May. 25th, 2021 ⚙️ NEW: Excel download here] In order to help entrepreneurs target the right funds and avoid wasting time reaching out to the wrong funds, we have worked hard these past few weeks to

Fundraising Advice

Your Series A check sheet ✔️

If you prefer to download directly the check sheet, download is here. Newfund recently announced its 3rd series A refinancing in a row over the last three months. First came FairMoney with Flourish Ventures & DST partners. Then Fairmarkit with Insight Partners. And a few weeks ago, came Young Alfred with

Fundraising Advice

Raising money from German and Nordic seed funds

We've been hammering the going global recently. Why? Because it's the future. It's easier than ever, more vital than ever, but also as simple as a visio/call. So if you're a 1. France-based startup, 2. you have a multicultural/multilingual team, 3. your processes in english, and 4. maybe

Fundraising Advice

How to raise your Seed round in San Francisco (via Zoom) ?

Ever since Newfund Capital landed in the US in 2013 via a “flip” of one of its portfolio companies, its american-ess has progressively increased : 1/3 of our investments are state-side, 15% of our LPs live in the US, 25% of the Newfund team has an american training and we

Startup Tips

Predictive Churn Indicator

Not all revenue is equal. Figuring out how strong yours is remains key for the future of your business, especially in a post-covid world and the likely crisis. When facing troubles, most entrepreneurs (me included) have a tendency to apply a macro risk and global hypotheses to their business. For

Newfund

Portfolio analysis in trying times

With the Covid-19 crisis hitting all data points at full speed, valuations as of Dec 31st, 2019 became obsolete. We needed a new tool to assess the health of our portfolio for internal prioritization as well as LP reporting. In this article, we share our methodology as implemented at the

Fundraising Advice

Business Angels or Seed Funds?

I must hear it every day. Should you raise your seed round with a few Business Angels (BAs) or should you raise with a Venture Capital Seed fund? I am obviously biased since I work for a VC fund, but I once raised money from Business Angels as an entrepreneur,

Startup Tips

The Don’ts of Starting a Start-Up

Do, do, do, but how about a dose of don’t, don’t, don’t? Don’t partner with associates without a shareholders’ agreement! You might be best friends now, but don’t tomorrow decide on something you could put in writing today. Don’t give equity to someone working

Startup Tips

Should you ask for equity 📈?

You just got that job at the startup you’ve always dreamt of and you’re wondering if you should ask for equity as part of compensation? Drawing from my time as an entrepreneur, my discussions with the 70+ hires then, and most recently as VC @ Newfund Capital helping our

Startup Tips

Cohorts, cohorts, cohorts!

Why cohorts are your single most important assets when fundraising, and how you should showcase them to venture capital funds! There I said it! You could have the best pitch deck in the world, but your cohorts’ slide alone could do the job to convince an investor (🔥). In this article,

Fundraising Advice

Understand your Venture Capital Term Sheet! 📜

Key term sheet definitions you need to know before you start negotiating with a VC fund! Make sure you understand these terms before you get too excited about your next term sheet 😉! 1. Money Raised 💰 Just like the term says, it is the size of the round, not necessarily how

Fundraising Advice

When to refuse money from a VC?

Venture Capital firms can be adored and reviled. They are behind some of the companies that have become a fabric of our daily lives. If it weren’t for Uber and Spotify, we would still be listening to the same iTunes playlist in a regular taxi that doesn’t accept

Fundraising

Why We Invested in Agora Place?

This was written in January 2018. This is very pre-covid but we thought we would keep it online to show you what an investor's life was. Below is the start to finish story on how we invested in Agora Place: It all started with a simple message from François (Véron

Fundraising Advice

8 Habits for a Successful Pre-Seed Fundraising

In my short career as an entrepreneur, I have done several fundraising rounds, for my different startups, and for their different stages. I have done a few pre-seed rounds, one seed round, and one Series A. I have also raised money for my Search Fund. I am now on the