Welcome to our X newsletter. It was written with 💛 by Saish Rane, Medina Sinani, Victor Pajot and Amicie Favre
Fundraisings from last week with Gourmey, Yomoni and one ∙ five
News from last week with the Twitter/Musk saga episode 978 and Sista’s first fund
Our content of the week with How To Save A Planet
The latest episode of “Dans la tête d’un CEO” with Sébastien Couasnon (Teampact Ventures)
Internship & Job offers of the week
Wishing you a pleasant read 💛
👨🍳 Gourmey raises $48M led by Early Bird and many more
Haven't you ever dreamed of eating slaughter-free foie gras? Then, Gourmey's products are meant for you! 🦆
The French start-up specialized in the production of lab-grown foie gras (using stem cells harvested from fertilized duck eggs) has just completed a $48M round led by Early Bird Venture Capital. Various investors also participated in this round (Keen Venture Partners, Heartcore Capital, Point Nine Capital, Air Street Capital, Partech, Discovery, Omnes Capital, Eutopia, Beyond Investing, Thia Ventures, Bpifrance and Fidji Simo). 🤯
The money raised will essentially enable Gourmey to build a 46,000-square-foot meat production and R&D site and recruit new talents. 👩🔬
However, Gourmey still faces a major challenge: obtaining the regulatory approvals from the various food safety authorities around the world so that its products can be finally marketed. Indeed, Gourmey’s products are only sold in Singapore as of today. 🇸🇬
The potential target markets for Gourmey are nevertheless considerable, since the current production of traditional foie gras is currently prohibited in various countries. 🚀
Gourmey grabs $48 million to keep working on lab-grown foie gras
💰 Yomoni raises €25M during fourth round of funding
The French fintech startup founded in France in 2015 and which develops a low-fees personalized savings management platform announced last week that it had raised €25M during a fourth round led by Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, the founders of Financière de l'Echiquier (its historical investors) and the management company Amboise Partners. 👏
According to its founder Sébastien d’Ornano, this new round would enable Yomoni to recruit new talents (approximatively 100 within a year and a half), improve its online platform and invest in marketing in order to target “all French people capable of saving over the long-term”. 🎯
The startup aims to become a real alternative to traditional banks in the long-term. 🏦
Yomoni closes its 4th round of financing at €25 million (in 🇫🇷)
🖐🏼 one ∙ five raises €10.5M in seed funding led by Planet A Ventures
Whether it's ketchup, toothpaste or a new smartphone, virtually every product is packaged. But not all packaging is sustainable by a long shot — what consumers would most like to see, according to a Statista survey. 🔊
The german startup One ∙ five, whose name is a reference to the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit the global average temperature rise to well below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, wants to support companies in developing sustainable packaging solutions.🥤
Last week, they announced their seed funding round of $10.5 M led by Planet A Ventures, Speedinvest, Green Generation Fund, Climetum Capital, Revent and WEPA Ventures. The money will be used to grow the team, especially the research department, to learn more about new and innovative packaging materials. ♻️
Lastly, they target the Asian market due to the global waste crisis, impacting negatively how people live in many cities. 🏙
one • fıve takes on sustainable packaging, raises €10.5 million
📺 Elon Musk revives his offer on Twitter for the initially agreed price of $44B
Twitter and Elon Musk were about to face off in court in Delaware, starting October 17th. In fact, the Tesla chief had committed in April to buy the social network for $44B, before unilaterally reneging on the agreement three months later. 😬
In yet another twist, Twitter received last week a letter from the billionaire offering to go ahead with the deal and buy the social network at the initially agreed price of $54.20 per share. Shares in Twitter rose sharply by 18% after the announcement, before being suspended on Wall Street.
While this decision saves Elon Musk from engaging in an open legal dispute, the social network refused to cancel the trial as long as he can provide proof of the veracity of this deal. In fact, Musk blamed Twitter for sharing false information regarding the percentage of bots on the platform, but has not been able to provide strong evidence to prove that. The judge of the Delaware court decided that they have until October 28th to find an agreement. 🧐
Last Tuesday, Musk shared another motivation for acquiring the company by tweeting “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.” So what will this super app look like? What role would Twitter play in it? While Musk did not elaborate on it, Twitter might turn into a very different kind of playground! 📲
Elon Musk proposes buying Twitter for originally agreed $44bn
🤝 France’s Sista announces first close of €100m VC fund
Did you know that only 16% of French startups founded in 2021 had mixed founding teams? 🧐
Last week, Sista has announced the launch of Sistafund, the largest pan-European VC fund to precisely tackle this funding gap. With a target size of €100m, Sistafund will invest into early-stage startups from pre-seed to Series A in Europe with at least one woman cofounder. Its areas of interest include fintech, healthtech, SaaS and consumer. 🙌
Backed by several founders (Celine Lazorthes from Leetchi, Steve Anavi from Qonto, Nathalie Balla from La Redoute, Adrien Nussenbaum from Mirakl, Nicolas Hernandez from 360Learning), portfolio startups will benefit from their expertise. 🤝
A special big up to Natacha Brami, baby vc alumni from batch #1 🇫🇷, for jumping on board! 👏
🗼 Paris Techstars becomes Techstars Sustainability Accelerator
With the city of Paris announcing a green fund and Europe fast becoming a hotbed for startups working in climate, ESG, sustainability and more VC funds emerging, it’s only natural that Techstars would position itself on this sector. 🌱
Paris Techstars takes a stand and positions itself as the accelerator to build future green unicorns. With its worldwide network of mentors and a majority of its cohort coming from abroad, this is a great catalyser for France’s but also Europe’s sustainable ecosystem. 🦄
Here’s to Techstars being successful in bridging the French impact ecosystem with the rest of Europe and the world through their unique capabilities! 📈
Paris Techstars is becoming Techstars Sustainability Accelerator
⛴ Should We Mine the Deep Sea?
We’re all living in a reality where macroeconomic shocks have completely perturbed supply chains across the world resulting in the lack of mustard in French supermarkets and the scarcity of candies for the upcoming Halloween among many other unheard of scarcities. 🙁
A new question also arises then, as the global demand of electric vehicles keeps rising whereas the elements that make the batteries are ever so finite and surrounded by less than acceptable circumstances to mine these metals. For example, the global supply of cobalt comes from one country — the Democratic Republic of Congo where the mines employ roughly 40,000 child labourers to mine the backbone of a green economy. 😕
What do we do then to accelerate fossil fuel divergence and bring about a clean economy? A potential solution that brings about it’s own set of challenges: deep sea mining of polymetallic nodules (pictured below) containing all the metals needed to turbocharge the battery industry. ⚡️
To know more about the pros, the cons and to make an educated opinion on deep sea mining, listen to this podcast episode from How To Save A Planet. 👇
In this new episode, Yacine welcomed Sébastien Couasnon, former journalist (20+ years, 3000+ interviews,… 😳) and now investor at Teampact Ventures and podcast host at Tech 45’. 🎙
Among the topics that Yacine and Sébastien discussed: Sébastien’s first steps as a journalist when he was only 15, his involvement in the creation of a TV show focused on tech in 2015 (when he did not know anything about tech yet...), why now working on Teampact and what does the team mean by its focus on “people first”, etc. 🚀
“When you can’t enter through the front door, try the window!”.
So, if you’re a French speaker (and listener), go check it out! 🎧
Internships
VC Analyst - Elaia (Paris)
Startup & Partnership Intern - Station F (Paris)
👉 And if you’d like to discover more offers… you can check our job board just here!
Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at joinbabyvc@gmail.com. We’d be super happy to have you sharing job/internship offers, events or feedback with us! 🤝
You can also read about us on our website and follow what we do on LinkedIn.
Take care, and see you next week,
The whole baby vc crew 💛