🇫🇷 H1-2021 French Funding Rounds
Overlooked #75
Hi, it’s Alexandre from Eurazeo (ex. Idinvest). I’m investing in seed & series A consumer and consumer enablers startups all over Europe. Overlooked is a weekly newsletter about venture capital and underrated consumer trends. Today, I’m sharing some learning on French funding rounds during the first semester of 2021.
I updated my Airtable containing all the French funding rounds since 2017 with H1-2021 data. I won’t do a full report like I did at the beginning of the year, but you can access the Airtable on the below link and here are some learnings on this super busy semester for the French tech ecosystem!
H1-2021 was an outstanding semester for the French tech ecosystem. In the past 6 months, French startups have already raised €5.1bn which is more than the total amount raised in 2020.
9 new startups have reached a €1bn+ valuation (Aircall, Alan, Backmarket, Believe, Made, Ledger, Jellysmack, Shift, Vestiaire Collective). France has now 21 unicorns.
The 3 best U.S. venture firms have invested into a French startup this past semester: a16z into BeReal, Sequoia into Pennylane and Benchmark into Sorare. These are not exceptions. It has become mainstream to see U.S. investors backing French startups and they do it at all stages from seed to growth rounds.
The French tech ecosystem flyweheel is spinning faster than ever. We see an acceleration of experienced entrepreneurs and operators starting new ventures.
French venture funds raised €1.5bn in H1-2021 with a mix of new GPs (Quantonation, Singular), experienced GPs (Serena, Elaia, Eurazeo Smart Cities) and corporates (La Poste, Orange, Axa). It’s 2x the amount raised in 2020 by French funds.
New French GPs (Singular, New Wave and 2050) have been able to make strong bets in less than a year in activity.
Exits are finally coming with both exciting IPOs (Believe, Made) and M&A operations (Tenable acquiring Alsid, Datadog acquiring Sqreen, Eurazeo Brands acquiring Ultra Premium Direct, Salsify acquiring Alkemics).
Nonetheless, don’t forget that most European countries are experiencing a strong acceleration in capital deployed into their local startups with H1-21 amount raised superior to the total amount raised in 2020. France is neither alone nor the European country with the steepest acceleration.
Thanks to Julia for the feedback! 🦒 Thanks for reading! See you next week for another issue! 👋