My 24 angel investments of 2022 (and a new hobby project).

What's this?

A follow-up to my 2021 list.

My investment thesis.

I made 24 new investments this year—up +60% from last year's 15.

Feels like a lot.

I'm often asked: how do I decide?

Of course, every investor should have a strong thesis so I've been pondering mine for a while and finally found this tweet that sums it up perfectly:

What’s new this year? 

Alongside investing, I’ve started a hobby newsletter* that goes out once or twice per quarter to a select group of early stage investors.

I present companies that:

1. Are raising a pre-Seed/Seed round,
2. That I am investing in myself (this one is important),
3. To people with a proven track record of backing and helping young startups.

(Ping me if you'd like to be on that list—or if you'd like to be removed from it! 😂).

Why?

Like Thibaud Elzière eloquently puts it angel investing is paradoxical in the sense that it can be very individualistic sometimes — for example, when you're fighting to get into a highly competitive cap table — and at the same time very collaborative — like when you know the founders well, have early access to the cap table and are asked to help convince more smart money to join in and/or help with allocation math.

This newsletter is for those latter deals, and collectively this year we’ve been able to raise a cumulated 1,6 M€+ for companies like MerciApp (raised a 850 K€ Seed; currently raising Series A), Reflect (2 M€ Seed), Le Fourgon (4,5 M€ Seed) and Green Got (large Seed about to close) 🎉

* The word newsletter might be slightly exaggerated since I simply email a bunch of people from my Gmail account.

News from the front line.

Despite the economic downturn, most startups from my 2021 list seem to be doing well.

And by that I mean: no one has dead-pooled yet 😅

• Both Reveal ($50M) and Resilience Care ($45M) raised large Series A — No surprises here with super-experienced repeat entrepreneurs at the helm.
• Maki People (11M€), Figures (6,8 M€), Le Fourgon (4,5 M€), Finnt ($3,5M) and fka-Numary Formance ($3,1M) announced their Seed or Seed extension round.
• Tikino, Mediflash, MerciApp, Quartz, Pyxo, Midnight Trains, Omena and DNTRO are currently either raising or finalising new rounds, with at least 3 of them undergoing due diligence as I write these words.

New 2022 investments.

In retrospect (and despite the numbers), 2022 left me little time again to focus on my angel investments as it’s been another tough, 8th year, of building Batch.

What happened, you may ask?

TL;DR: It's been brutal 😂

• Like others, we were lured by the irresistible gleam of free money and grew the team unnaturally rapidly following our 20M€ raise in 2021, from 50-ish to more than 120 people in less than 12 months — Needless to say, HR chaos ensued and we subsequently wrangled through people & org challenges pretty much all year long. Luckily, the inevitable lowlights were balanced by some extraordinary strong hires that I couldn't be more proud of.
• Counterintuitively, we also spent most of our year feverishly monitoring the seemingly unprecedentedly rapid market shift which resulted in a schizophrenic year of executing on those 2021 growth plans, while simultaneously having to come to terms with the fact that they were getting irrelevant by the day.
• Business-wise, we expanded in the DACH and UK regions where we were met by fierce competition and had to operate from the uncomfortable position of not being the market leader this time. As a testimony to the efforts of the team, impressive progresses were made, but if there was any doubt left, large enterprise-focused B2B SaaS international expansion is hard + takes times.
• Lats but not least, the team shipped massively transformative features that took the extraordinary wit, will-power and courage of an entire village, but we now see that it will require time and efforts for clients to become comfortable with our expanded value proposition as we grow into the next generation cloud marketing platform.

Conclusion: Batch does enter 2023 in great position but it wouldn't be an accurate statement of 2022 not to say we did « lose a few feathers » this year as the french expression goes 😂

Still, on the angel investment front, I've probably benefited both from the proverbial compounding effects + the influence of yearly digests like this one, and kept seeing strong in-bound and referral deal flow which helped me get into the cap tables of 23 highly promising companies and 1 seed fund that you’ll want to keep an eye on in the years to come 👊

Without further delay and in alphabetical order:

My 24 angel investments of 2022

#1 Alvo 🇫🇷

The brainchild of super-star podcast host Matthieu Stefani, Alvo is a marketplace for small & mid-sized companies buyout deals — To Mathieu’s credit, he’s been bothering me with this idea for over a decade so I’m sure he’ll find a way to make it super successful (and running France’s most influential podcast, GDIY, probably won’t hurt).

Founders: Matthieu Stefani, Germain Michou-Tonning, Thomas Colin.

Funding status: 1 M€ Seed round (Financiere Saint-James, business angels).

#2 Campsider 🇫🇷

With strong secular tailwinds towards a more circular economy and the french government passing strong bills on that front, Campsider comes as a new vertical marketplace connecting buyer & sellers of outdoor sports equipments (skiing, hiking, mountain biking etc.). Think Back Market for sports gear. The company is off to a strong start with two super-energetic founders and many well-known sport figures endorsing the business.

Founders: Thomas Gounot, Arthur Rocle.

Funding status: 2 M€ Seed round (Founders Future, business angels).

#3 Delta Business School 🇫🇷 

Fresh on the heels of selling Adotmob to e-commerce giant Veepee, my good friend Yannis Yahiaoui has started a promising startup studio called Madia Founders and launched 3 new companies this year (I’ve invested in all three). The first one is Delta Business School, a new, 4-years curriculum « post-bac » school with an awesome campus in the heart of Paris to train the next generation of tech workers. 

Founders: Simon Dusart, Christophe Decker, Yannis Yahiaoui.

Funding status: 1,1 M€ Seed round (Business angels).

#4 DinMo 🇫🇷 

Historically, Customer Data Platforms have been a difficult category, but DinMo is building on top of data warehousing platforms such as Snowflakes et al. and gives non-technical teams an easy way to connect their data to all their activation tools using a no-code interface. The founder, Oussama, is a seasoned consultant and former Chief Data Officer at Ornikar.

Founders: Oussama Ghanmi, Kevin Tran. 

Funding status: 1,6 M€ Seed round (Seedcamp, Kima Ventures, Motier Ventures, Financière Saint James, business angels).

#5 Folk 🇫🇷

Folk is an old dream of being able to centralize and leverage our fragmented digital contacts, but the underlying product is so hard to build that it's never been truly cracked — When I heard one of France’s smartest entrepreneur, Thibaud Elzière (him again), was onto it, I signed up immediately despite the elzieresque valuation.

Founders: Thibaud Elzière, Simo Lemhandez, Jean-Yves Poilleux.

Funding status: $3.3M seed round (Accel, business angels).

#6 Galion.EXE 🇫🇷

EXE is my first time investing into an early stage seed fund—obviously, the dynamics are slightly different here. This new 60-80M€ vehicle is the venture arm of The Galion, one of France’s most influential tech founders community, where I am a board member. Our bet is that the collective deal flow of 400+ tech CEOs should help us spot, back and accelerate the winners of tomorrow. Early EXE deals include Husprey, Bump.sh and Lettria.

Founders: JB Rudelle, Agathe Wautier, Kevin Kuipers, Willy Braun.

Funding status: First 30 M€ closing done.

#7 Genesis 🇫🇷 

Genesis is a fascinating project by Devialet’s founder and friend Quentin Sannié: think Standard & Poor's, but for agricultural soils. Genesis empowers governments and bio-based companies that use nature (food, luxury goods, cosmetics, textiles) with the tools for credible and enforceable environmental reporting.

Founders: Quentin Sannié, Adrienne De Malleray.

Funding status: undisclosed Seed round.

#8 Giskard 🇫🇷 

With its ambitious open-source approach, Giskard wants to provide AI developers with tools to ensure the quality and integrity of their AI models — Two of the three founders spend significant time at Dataiku were they gathered first-hand experience of the problems they’re trying to solve.

Founders: Alex Combessie, Andrey Avtomonov, Jean-Marie John-Mathews.

Funding status: 1,5 m€ Seed round (Elaia, Bessemer Venture Partners, business angels).

#9 Green Got 🦊

Green Got is my favourite underdog as this green neobank has been accused of all the sins that I can think of. Despite the heat, the company is growing at rapid pace thanks to a 360° finance platform catering to the needs of eco-anxious Millennials, an ultra-charismatic cofounder and most of its growth coming organically from its huge community — Pumped to see what this one will do next to keep delighting its users and trumping the naysayers (Juliette I see you 😘).

Founders: Maud Caillaux, Andréa Ganovelli, Fabien Huet.

Funding status: undisclosed pre-Seed + currently finalising a large Seed round.

#10 JEEN 🇫🇷 

JEEN is a new kind of vertically integrated healthcare center for women. The first location is due to open in heart of Paris in Q2 next year and the two founders, Valentine (a certified nurse-midwife) and Isabelle combine medical and tech operation experiences, with stunts at FaberNovel and Nabla.

Founders: Valentine Burucoa, Isabelle Verguin. 

Funding status: 1 M€ Seed round (Business angels).

#11 Jitter 🇫🇷

Think « Figma for motion design », Jitter is an impressive creator tool that runs in the browser and let’s anyone produce high-quality animations in minutes — One of the two cofounder Etienne the CTO was a cofounder at Stupeflix (acquired by GoPro) and the other founder’s last name is almost as unpronounceable as mine so everyone calls him « Robi » 😂

Founder: Sébastien Robaszkiewicz, Etienne Albert.

Funding status: undisclosed pre-Seed and Seed rounds.

#12 Kard 🇫🇷

Another vertical neobank for teens founded by my two friends Moroccan-American entrepreneur Scott Gordon and Goldman Sachs alum Amine Bounjou, Kard provides parents with kids 13-18 years old with a smart and secured way for their teens to learn about money and manage their finances.

Founders: Scott Gordon, Amine Bounjou.

Funding status: 3M€ Seed round; undisclosed Seed extension.

#13 Lyv Healthcare 🇫🇷

Lyv is a vertical health app focusing on endometriosis, an affliction that remains quite unknown and a curse for millions of women worldwide.

Founders: Chloé Bonnet, Hélène Antier.

Funding status: undisclosed Seed round.

#14 Meterly 🇫🇷

Operating in complete stealth with not even a decent logo to show for, codename: Meterly is Spendesk's former Head of Engineering Lucas Bédout new project.

Founders: Lucas Bédout.

Funding status: undisclosed pre-Seed and Seed rounds.

#15 Mobile Club 🇫🇷

I’ve always sympathised with Damien Morin’s former company SAVE's tale of rise and fall for being somewhat similar to my AppGratis x Apple horror story. Mobile Club, a fast-growing smartphone rental service, is his come back project and even though I missed the initial Seed round I was glad to participate in his yet-to-be-announced Series A this year.

Founders: Damien Morin, Grégoire Segretain.

Funding status: undisclosed Seed round and Series A.

#16 Numias 🇫🇷

A crypto-to-fiat-and-back infrastructure play by a team of former iBanFirst employees, Numias is a promising new payment platform tackling some incredibly complex regulatory and security challenges to enable large established brands into the crypto world.

Founders: Patrick Mollard, Bertrand Godin, Gregoire Andrieu-Guitrancourt.

Funding status: undisclosed pre-Seed and Seed rounds.

#17 Ottho 🇫🇷

Ottho is an online school focusing on the democratization of No-Code technologies. It’s been bootstrapped for a while and raised a Seed round this year to grow its community and expand its learning program.

Founders: Thibault Marty, Géraldine Martinez, Pascal Levy-Garboua.

Funding status: 750 K€ Seed round (business angels).

#18 Pimster 🇫🇷

Pimster is tackling the digitization of consumer goods’ user manuals while giving retail brand a smart way to reconnect with their customers.

Founders: Baptiste Gamblin, Aubry d'Andoque de Sériège, Grégoire Galichon.

Funding status: 2 M€ seed round (Kima Ventures, Lefonds By Frenchfounders, business angels).

#19 Reflect 🇫🇷

Reflect is an ultra-neat people analytics solution that connects to all your existing HR tool (ATS, HRIS, Payroll, Performance & Engagement tracking, etc.) to create a single source of truth for your workforce that replaces the old painful excel. The two founders, Léopold and Baptiste, worked together at the fascinating web development studio and incubator M33.

Founders: Léopold Adam, Baptiste Jan.

Funding status: 2 M€ seed round (XAnge, Evolem, Kima Ventures, business angels).

#20 Socium Job 🇫🇷🇸🇳

My first-ever investment in Africa, Socium Job is a video-powered job board helping large african companies recruit at scale. The founder, Samba, has an impressive data scientist background with stunts at Deloitte, Goldman Sachs and Rothschild & Co.

Founder: Samba Lo.

Funding status: 1 M€ Seed round (Breega, Kima Ventures, Evolem, TechMind, Teranga Capital and business angels).

#21 Spyne 🇫🇷

Another project from Yannis Yahiaoui’s startup studio Madia Founders, Spyne is a collaborative work platform aiming at streamlining all tasks related to running marketing and media-buying activities at scale and unifying workflows across advertisers, networks and agencies.

Founders: Laurent Duverney-Guichard, Patrice Navarre, Yannis Yahiaoui.

Funding status: undisclosed Seed round.

#22 Ulysse 🇫🇷

An ultra-slick travel search engine, Ulysse is currently undergoing an interesting pivot in a post-Covid world where air travel needs to reinvent itself. While the company’s been around for almost 5 years, I was forcibly brought into the cap table by long-time Batcher and former Head of Engineering Nicolas Douillet, who’s left us earlier this year to join Ulysse ;-)

Founders: Axel Guidicelli, Lancelot Hardel.

Funding status: 4 M€ Seed round (Frst, Kima Ventures, business angels). 

#23 Voggt 🇫🇷

An impressive live shopping startup that is finding great traction in the collectibles space. Can't say a lot since Voggt is keeping a very low profile, but do keep an eye on this one 🎯

Founders: Quentin Lopes, Kevin Loiseau, Lucas Scariot.

Funding status: undisclosed Seed round.

#24 Xpln.ai 🇫🇷

The third project of Yannis Yahiaoui’s Madia Founders, cofounded by adtech veteran Fabien Magalon and Aufeminin group former GM Christophe Decker, I have to confess that I'm not exactly sure what Xpln.ai will do, only that it will surely « sell inventory » somehow 😂 (after my AppGratis's years I lost interest in both AdTech and gaming and somewhat promised myself not to invest in this space again but twisted my rule for those three fine fellows).

Founders: Fabien Magalon, Christophe Decker, Yannis Yahiaoui.

Funding status: 1,6 M€ Seed round (Kima Ventures, business angels).

And that's a wrap!

Raising funds in 2023?

I'd love to hear from you (simon@batch.com 📩).

Also, keep an eye on my list of 50+ top business angels (I update it every now and then).

Happy new year everyone! 👊