Partech Doubles Down On Seed With New $65 Million Seed Fund

It feels like Partech Ventures announced its first seed fund (Partech Entrepreneur I) just yesterday — the Paris-based venture capital firm is already announcing a new $65 million (€60 million) seed fund called Partech Entrepreneur II.
“This is the biggest dedicated seed fund in Europe focused on digital startups,” Partech General Partner Romain Lavault told me. “We plan to invest in 70 startups, representing around one investment per month in the Silicon Valley, one per month in France, and one per month in other European countries,” he continued.
As a reminder, Partech Entrepreneur I was a $32 million seed fund (€30 million) with a bigger focus on French startups. 18 months and 30 investments later, Partech will only do follow-up rounds with this fund from now on. Investments include Sketchfab, Lima, Pleek, ISKN, Ornikar, PriceMatch, Evergig, Pricing Assistant, Kartable, and Klara.
For the next fund, the team is growing a bit. Boris Golden and Otto Birnbaum are joining as principals in Paris and Berlin, while Jai Choi will be a venture partner based in San Francisco. Partech will invest between €300,000 and €1 million at the seed stage.
Lavault told me a bit about the limited partners behind this new fund. 60 successful French entrepreneurs invested a bit of their own money, such as Eric Carreel, Marc Rougier and Olivier Goy — 10 of them already invested in Partech Entrepreneur I. But this time, a few corporate LPs also invested in the fund, such as Carrefour, Edenred, Groupama, Ingenico and Renault.

And it’s not only a financial investment for Partech’s individual backers. The VC firm will collaborate with these entrepreneurs as much as possible. They will advise Partech startups, meet them every three months and more. The VC firm doesn’t exclude to work with Partech’s corporate backers as well, creating business opportunities for its startups. I just hope that Partech won’t share any sensitive information about their startups with their corporate LPs as some of these startups might end up competing with these LPs.
The plan is to invest in 70 different startups over the next two- to two-and-a-half years and keep the rest of the fund for follow-up rounds for a couple of years after that.
“Partech wants to send a strong message — we are a very entrepreneur-friendly firm with a hands-on approach,” principal Boris Golden told me. “None of the partners on the seed fund has a financial background.” With this seed strategy, it will be interesting to see whether the VC firm can spot the best upcoming startups and carry them to new heights.