A recent VC player, Super Capital has quickly established itself in the French landscape with a very sustained pace of investment. This early stage specialist, who has structured a powerful network of business angels, invests very early in the lives of young tech startups. To get to know Super Capital better, Maddyness met Thibaut Gimenez, co-founder of Super Capital.
Initiated by Corentin Orsini, the story of Super Capital begins in 2018. At its beginnings, it was a newsletter sent to a community of business angels with the aim of helping entrepreneurs generate meetings with investors .
Structuring the business angel market
“In 2018, the seed investment market was completely unstructured. There was almost no access to private capital for entrepreneurs: very few club deals, few VCs in this segment, and not yet the wave of exit founders who, today, massively support the industry. Super Capital was created to allow entrepreneurs to navigate this chaos and investors to identify high-potential startups from their inbox,” says Thibaut Gimenez.
After two years and around a hundred entrepreneurs supported, Thibaut Gimenez, SaaS entrepreneur, who worked at VC, joined Corentin Orsini to set up a direct investment activity. The two partners first structured an investment holding company with their close network.
“We started this as a side project with the desire to raise a few hundred thousand euros with members of our close network to invest in the best startups. We were in the middle of Covid at the time, people had time and a little money, which allowed us to raise a lot more than we had imagined”, shares Thibaut Gimenez. Since then, Super Capital has made around fifty direct investments each year and an equivalent number via its community.
Super Capital, specialist in early-stage tech
On the model of a Kima, Super Capital positions itself on seed tickets from 50,000 euros to 100,000 euros with the possibility of going up to 500,000 euros to follow in series A. “We have a fairly unique positioning. As part of our venture capital companies (SCR), all our investors are invited to vote to validate investments. This helps engage our community and more easily open doors for portfolio companies,” adds Thibaut Gimenez.
Thanks to its investment dynamics, Super Capital offers its investors the possibility of following series A. “A large part of our model is based on anti-dilution rights, that is, our rights to reprorate in subsequent rounds. On average, 25% to 30% of our companies complete a new round of financing. Our SCRs take 50% of the pro rata and we allow our community to take the rest and thus co-invest from 2000 or 3000 euros in towers that are usually inaccessible”, confides Thibaut Gimenez.
Super Capital maintains a generalist tech positioning by following the major trends in early-stage investment. “The bulk of our portfolio is made up of B2B SaaS startups, fintechs and marketplaces. In 2023, AI has obviously been an important area of investment with around ten deals. This will remain so in 2024 with applications extended to many industries, particularly scientific and industrial, to address the challenges of climate adaptation. shares Thibaut Gimenez.
In addition to the VC part, the group has developed a support offer in non-dilutive financing and financial management. The objective is to support entrepreneurs on all financial issues.
