Frequently Asked Questions

Which stage do you invest at? What’s the typical investment ticket that you first put?

We usually invest in pre-seed or seed companies at ticket ranges of a few hundreds €k to €1.5m.
We love pre-seed rounds between €0.2m to €1m and we are experts on classical seed rounds between €0.5m to €3m.
For us Seed is not a hobby or among a broader early-stage strategy, it’s our speciality from  day one.

What’s the difference between Axeleo and Axeleo Capital?

From an accelerator (Axeleo) to a Emerging European VC, Axeleo Capital (AXC)


Axeleo Capital is Emerging European Seed VC founded in January 2017 by Eric Burdier & Mathieu Viallard and a large pool of LPs Entrepreneurs. Your management company was born from a carve-out of a B2B Tech startup accelerator launched in Lyon (France) in 2013. Axeleo Capital (AXC) is fully independant.

Axeleo (the former accelerator) switches as a startup studio in Q4 2021 dedicated to the cybersecurity industry. The program is called Cyber Booster.
Our roots are in the VC industry (where Mathieu comes from), the startup acceleration market (where Eric comes from) and the Software market (where our LPs entrepreneurs come from).
By leveraging our common expertise, experience and network, it allows us to support our portfolio founders side-by-side every day from day 1 to growth stages.
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Our motto relies on being more than just another VC and mostly being as helpful as possible from the very beginning.

You talk about a large community of tech entrepreneurs. Who are they ?

Axeleo Capital was born from a carve-out of an accelerator backed by tech entrepreneurs like Christophe Dumoulin (chairman of Axeleo and co-founder of Business & Decision acquired by Orange Group), Laurent Fiard (co-founder & CEO of Visiativ Group), Thierry Rouquet (Arkoon acquired by Cassidian, Sentryo acquired by Cisco), Romain Niccoli (co-founder of Criteo, co-CEO at Pigment), Eric Mahé (Cloudskiff acquired by Snyck, RunMyProcess acquired Fujitsu) & many more.
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Now, +100 entrepreneurs & C-level are involved in our funds and our networks and mostly based in Europe and in the US.
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Some of their actual and previous companies : Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Cisco, Dassault Systèmes, Ledger, Blablacar, Collibra, Salesforce, Snowflake, Alibaba, Talend, Workday, Tidemark, Outlook Soft, Neolane, Iliad, Ogury, Lexsi, Alsid, Avnet, Cap Gemini, Atos, Younited Credit, Eventbrite.

How do you support the companies once you have invested?

Our roots are in VC & Startup Acceleration. Born and raised in the tech B2B ecosystem, we have developed our own acceleration framework to take Seed SaaS startups to the next level. Our teams help founders turn their organizations into Serie A-ready startups by reshaping their value propositions and go-to-markets.
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Apart from sitting at the board of the company to help it take relevant strategic decisions, we help on different pillars by using our experience, our own networks and the ones from our investors:
- business development
- go-to-market and product marketing
- recruiting
- finance structuration

Do you lead the rounds? Do you co-invest?

We aim to lead the rounds where we have other co-investors most of the time (business angels or other funds). To a lesser extent, we can also invest as a follower even though that’s not the goal nor our main strategy.
Due to our large networks of entrepreneurs, business angels & seed investors, we could help founders to invite some value-added investors.

Do you do follow-ons (series A / B & later) ?

Yes ! In our funds, we always have 50% of dry powder for the best performers.

Do you invest in equity or also in debt instruments?

We are quite open to the financial instruments used to finance the companies even though equity is the privileged one. Apart from equity, we are also able to use convertible notes, BSA AIR, SAFE, KISS, etc.

Do you invest in B2C businesses?

It depends on the vehicle. If it is about Proptech, yes we can invest in B2C companies (ex Prello, Beanstock, etc). Whereas, if it is something different from Proptech, we do not invest in B2C. We focus our efforts on supporting B2B or B2B2C (like Joko for example) companies because this is where we are relevant.

Where do you invest geographically speaking?

We invest in Europe and we are able to invest also outside of Europe to a lesser extent.

Who are your investors?

We count +60 LPs with a large number of seasoned entrepreneurs and c-level executives.
We have build strong relationships with french institutions (Bpifrance, Banque des Territoires, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region), banks and corporates and top Family offices involved in the VC scene like Hi Inov / Dentressangle Initiatives or Evolem for example.

What’s the age of the funds? 

Our funds are funds of 10-years age divided into 5 years of investment period and 5 years of disinvestment period.

Do you help to make business introductions ?

Yes.

Do you help to hire talents ?

Yes.

Do you help to make VC introductions for future Series A / B ?

Yes.

Do you […] ?

(Again) Yes. And if you need any testimony, feel free to take a look right  here  and ask our portfolio companies!