Your studies took you from medicine to engineering to entrepreneurship. What led you to embark on such a multifaceted journey?

I’ve always been interested in health, so it initially made sense to me to attend med school. I wanted to better understand how the human body functions and the relationship between its various systems. However, once I was there, I quickly realized that, while I was clearly interested in healthcare, being a doctor wasn’t necessarily the way forward for me. I then switched to engineering, with the same outlook of wanting to understand how systems and processes function and interact with each other. I discovered computer science in my first year of engineering. I hadn’t known anything about it until then. I really loved the logic of it, the way you could use very basic ideas and concepts to build more complex (and very cool) solutions that could solve just about anything. I then did my master’s in bioengineering, which focused on bringing engineering to healthcare and was a great way to combine these two interests. I really enjoyed it, we got the opportunity to learn directly from hospital staff, doctors and researchers. But it also made me realize that I was missing parts of the bigger picture. I now understood the tech aspects but I wanted to know more about the strategy and business facets. That’s why I decided to do a master’s in business. I focused on entrepreneurship as, at this point, I had done a few internships in startups and was very curious about this ecosystem.

What inspired you to go into venture capital?

When I did the X-HEC entrepreneurs masters, I knew about startups, but I didn’t know about the fundraising and VC sides of it. What appealed to me was the diversity of the work you do in a VC. When you work for a company, you tend to focus on developing a single product that you then just constantly improve. Going into VC allowed me to see a lot of different sectors, companies and ways to target a subject. It also gave me a bird’s eye view of the market and allowed me to compare how different companies address specific issues and therefore try to discover if one of them has cracked it and found an edge. The second part of this is you get to discuss a wide variety of topics with people who are not only passionate about what they do but also experts. As a VC, you should never be the expert in the room. And if you are, you shouldn’t invest in that company. 

You started your VC journey at Elaia, a French VC. What made you decide to join a Swiss VC in the end?

After my internship at Elaia, I was undecided about whether to join a VC or a startup, as I was interested in both. The first thing that appealed to me at Verve was its different setup: how its network of investors can choose to co-invest directly in startups. This means that for us in the investment team, we have to build conviction internally and transmit that conviction to our investors, which is an interesting challenge. Verve also allowed me to partly focus on health and this is a sector I wanted to dig into. It was a great way to combine my various interests. 

What do you look for in a startup? 

It depends on the startup. If it’s a deep tech company, I’m going to look for a really great team that has the capacity to develop its technology but also has the know-how to then execute its business plan. I also look at the problem the startup is trying to fix to make sure that it’s a real issue that has an addressable market and that the technology actually fixes it. It’s also essential to ensure that the product is unique and not easy for someone else to copy. 

When it comes to software companies, the team, as always, is very important because, ultimately, that’s who you bet on. However, you tend to look more deeply into the financials and markets of software companies because the expectations and milestones of this type of startup tend to be different than those in deep tech. This is mainly because you don’t expect deep tech seed stage startups to already have sales, as a lot of R&D is needed, but for most software companies, it’s a lot faster to build a minimum viable product (MVP). We therefore expect them to have sales already and have a plan for how to build on them. The ability of a team to collect the right metrics and follow the proper parameters is also crucial, because otherwise you can run into a wall and not even know it until it’s too late. 

What are the challenges of the French ecosystem for Verve as a Swiss VC?

Being a Swiss VC is not an issue and can sometimes be an advantage. A lot of companies are not specifically looking for French VCs as, very often, they are targeting a European expansion. In this context, Verve is very well positioned. We have a European footprint, with offices in Zurich, Berlin, Cambridge and Paris, and we also have a lot of contacts in the Netherlands, in the Nordics, and in eastern Europe. We therefore have the ability to help them with their goals for European expansion. In that sense, the startups are interested and see the value. Since Verve has entered the French ecosystem, we have been part of over 15 exciting deals, among them startups like C12 and Veesion that have already achieved significant milestones in innovation and growth.

What are some of the unique aspects of the French startup environment?  

I think it’s a lot more centralized than in other European countries. If you look at the data, most of the fundraising and the volume of money raised happens in Paris, which is both good and bad. It makes it a bit easier for us as VCs because once you are in Paris, you have a considerable part of the ecosystem next to you. However, you should not limit your reach to Paris, as you can miss out on great opportunities and know-how at the regional level. There are a lot of aeronautics startups near Toulouse and a strong healthcare and biotech ecosystem in Bordeaux, to cite a few.  

What is the deal that you worked on that you enjoyed most?

I think it was Poppins. We looked into a lot of startups in the digital therapeutics space, but we weren’t convinced by a lot of what we had seen. We didn’t feel like they had found a way to not only bring in the patient, but also the healthcare professionals and the payers. Poppins managed to do all that while creating a product that is fun and that the patients want to use. This was especially impressive because their demographic is children with learning impairments who are not independent and have to rely on the adults in their lives to give them access to the product. So Poppins has to convince the children and their parents to use the app. We made a lot of reference calls with parents, some who knew the app, some who didn’t, speech therapists, and doctors. There was so much interest and enthusiasm around it, which we hadn’t seen with many of the other digital therapeutics we had looked at. They also managed to prove to the payers that their product brings tangible value and is, therefore, worth paying for. Managing these aspects is incredibly hard, but they’re doing it well and are on a great trajectory.

What is it like to work at Verve?

I don’t work in Verve’s main office in Zurich; however, even when you’re remote, you still manage to have a strong link with the rest of the team. It’s great that we still have this unity and company culture, even with several remote people and offices. Because of Verve’s model, we also have many teams beyond the investment team, which paves the way for richer insights and discussions.