Founders Future, a Paris-based VC firm with €300 million in assets under management (around $324 million at current exchange rates), is opening up the capital of the holding company that manages Founders Future’s funds and Sowefund. The company has sold a 25% stake in the holding company to MACSF, the Dassault family, CMA CGM Group, and others.
Since 2018, Founders Future has had an interesting track record with some early-stage bets in Lydia, Alma, Taster, La Fourche, Riot, Swan, Yuka, and many other startups we’ve covered here at TechCrunch. Overall, the firm has invested in 110 companies across two early-stage funds and a growth fund.
Founders Future has set an ambitious goal for 2030. The firm wants to reach €1 billion in assets under management, which means raising new funds at a rapid pace.
“In a world where you’ve got a lot of personal initiatives in VC firms — because you’ve got a lot of solo GPs starting up, you’ve got a lot of super angels — we’re creating a company,” founding partner Marc Menasé told me. “And so we wrote our roadmap for 2030. As we were writing this roadmap, we used that opportunity to reopen our capital in a slightly more structured way to give us the means to achieve our ambitions.”
With this influx of cash, Founders Future plans to expand to the U.S., hire a team, and open two offices — one on the East Coast and another one on the West Coast.
“I made a simple observation. You look at the companies that are started in Europe and that eventually have found a very good product-market fit and generate significant revenue in their country of origin,” Menasé said.
“What happens is that when they arrive in the U.S. … they multiply their ARR by two or three times after 36 months operating in the United States. They generally have a much better capacity to raise money from American investors, and at much higher valuations — generally twice as much as in Europe,” he added.
He believes startups based in the U.S. reach higher valuations because they have more exit opportunities, especially when it comes to acquisitions by larger companies.
“So when you put all this together, we want to become a global company and make sure we have one European arm and one American arm, and create a transatlantic bridge,” Menasé said. “We’re doing this first for our portfolio companies that were born in Europe so that they can expand over there.”
But Founders Future doesn’t just want to open a business development outpost. It is going to raise a growth fund focused on American investments. The idea here is to help its European limited partners invest in American tech companies through Funders Future.
Conversely, the firm believes it can help American companies expand to Europe. Having a European VC firm on its cap table can be helpful when it comes to navigating the European tech and policy landscape.
“We’ll start with humble goals, with investment tickets ranging between $5 and $10 million in growth rounds of at least $50, $60 or $70 million,” Menasé said.
Fundraising hasn’t started for this fund just yet, but Founders Future hopes it can raise as much as $250 million. And I wouldn’t be surprised if MACSF, the Dassault family and CMA CGM Group end up investing in this U.S.-focused growth fund in addition to Founders Future’s holding company.
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