What is the story behind Daphni?
Our founders worked for a long time in the VC ecosystem  and they saw that the model of venture capital funds still was the same and lacked innovation. So they set out and talked to plenty of entrepreneurs and investors about what they expect from a VC fund. The entrepreneurs told them that if they send a pitch deck to a VC, they don’t want to wait 3 months until they hear back from an intern. And they said they want VCs to be active and help them grow the company. Investors, on the other hand, wanted to have more transparency and influence. Based on that information, our founders set up Daphni. In September 2016 we raised our first fund of EUR 170 million. Since then, we have already invested in 26 companies from different sectors.

But unlike Verve, which has opted for a pure platform model since 2010, Daphni still has a traditional fund setup. How does Daphni actually differ from a traditional VC?
We created a digital platform where startups can enter the company information themselves. Our Daphni community of around 300 investors and experts have access to this platform and help to source deals. Because they work and invest in startups, they send us great projects. Then, they qualify the projects in the deal flow. We connect the best experts with the entrepreneurs to qualify the deal on our side and for the entrepreneur to gain something from our process of investment, even if we do not invest at the end. The most important point is that our community is here to support our startups. Once we invest in a company, the entrepreneurs become members of our community and can reach the community directly within our proprietary app.

In this respect, we try to do very much the same as Daphni, and we can also point to several key hires through our community. Now let’s turn to the other side of your platform, the large institutional investors such as Société Générale, Nokia, or Fnac, which are among your limited partners in the fund. How do you give them more influence?
Daphni allows its LPs to co-invest alongside the fund in the deals they see the most potential in, up to the same amount they put into the fund. This gives entrepreneurs the possibility to raise larger sums and the investor are much more implicated in the thought process than they would be with a traditional fund. Out of the 26 investments so far there was only 1 startup that didn’t opt for this possibility because it didn’t want to share information with the LPs.

What is Daphni’s investment thesis?
We invest in European consumer-facing startups with global ambitions that have the potential to reach valuations of more than half a billion Euros. We invest in Series A and if there are clear technological barriers to entry, or we have serial entrepreneur before us, also in seed rounds. We’re active in many different sectors, except biotech.

investiere is also sector-agnostic, however, we favor B2B business models. But let’s talk about Trusk, the delivery service for heavy goods which is the first co-investment of our two communities. What are the arguments for Trusk?
Trusk is active in an incredibly large market without any digital competition and a huge demand from the customer side. These are the reasons why Trusk has a very good starting point. People have become accustomed to rapid service by Amazon, and neither traditional trucking companies nor the big retailers like Ikea or Conforama are able to provide this kind of service. Europe is a completely open field for Trusk. Two of Trusk’s global competitors are based in Hong Kong and both of them have already become unicorns with a valuation of over 1 billion dollars.

How can Daphni help Trusk develop?
We help them principally by opening doors and introduce them to potential business partners. We have people in our network who are well connected in Trusk’s target markets.

Trusk is yet another Paris-based startup investiere presents to its international network of private investor. It seems like “La French Tech” is really on a roll. What are the reasons for this?
It is true that we’re very happy in France because the startup ecosystem is just exploding right now. It has become much more mature and professional and has created very solid startups. There are several reasons behind that. Our new President has certainly helped to promote French Tech. And there is a large amount of foreign capital flowing into the French startup ecosystem, from the US and from elsewhere. For many professionals, London isn’t the first place to go to in Europe anymore, they’re looking at Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam. What we will hopefully see in the following years is the establishment of more growth funds in France that will permit successful startups to grow even further and become International successes.