Vibe projectsThe name stands for “For Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneurs,” and as it turns out, he continues to support seed-stage startups with the launch of his second fund. The second fund has a target of $75 million, which is 2.5 times larger than the first FEBE Fund and 90% of which has already been committed. As part of the launch, FEBE Ventures also announced a co-investment partnership with Tekton Ventures.
FEBE Ventures was founded in 2019 by Managing Partner Olivier Roussin. To date, FEBE Ventures has backed more than 200 companies, including Local, Zenyum, Tindle, Silverbird, and Manata. New members of its leadership team include Nicolas Elbaz, who was a general partner at Partech and also founded several startups, including Softway Systems, which was acquired by Microsoft; tech entrepreneur and angel investor Aditya Pendyala; and Tekton Ventures Managing Partner Jay Choi.
The lead investor in Fund II is Otium Capital, an international family office founded by Pierre-Edouard Sterrin, a serial entrepreneur whose startups include Smartbox Group. Otium Capital, which also backed FEBE Ventures’ first fund, has $1.4 billion in assets under management across 100 investments and has seen an IRR of more than 25% since its inception.
While FEBE Ventures’ first fund focused on Southeast Asia, the broad investment thesis for its second fund is pre-seed and seed-stage companies across different geographies and sectors.
“We love B2B, but we also love healthcare. We love sustainability and climate tech,” Roussin tells TechCrunch. “But we are people-driven, founder-focused, and founder-driven. We always consider founders to know best, so we let them surprise us and are happy to discover new industries and new topics. A typical check size will be around $250,000.
Roussin says FEBE II will continue to invest a lot in Southeast Asia, but one of the reasons it is taking a more global approach is because of new collaborations that expand its network around the world.
Febe Ventures’ new partner Tekton Ventures is the San Francisco-based technology investment arm of Partech founder Vincent Worms’ family office. Choi has led investments in unicorn companies in various countries, including Coupang, Toss, Merman, Newports, Flutterwave, and Signifyd. This partnership will enable FEBE Ventures and Tekton Ventures to share their networks in Southeast Asia, Silicon Valley, Latin America and Europe and invest in more companies around the world, especially in emerging economies.
The partnership will see Choi and El Paz take on roles as partner and venture partner, respectively, at FEBE Ventures.
The four members of the FEBE Ventures leadership team are former entrepreneurs who, between them, have launched dozens of companies and served as investors around the world, says Rossin. When backing startups, they are looking for the kind of services and products they dreamed of when they founded their companies.
This also affects the way they interact with founders, he adds. “We try to be very honest and real and share with a lot of humility the mistakes we have made in the past in order to save time. We also have a mindset of building a sustainable business that generates EBITDA over the long term.
FEBE Ventures and Tekton Ventures decided to work together because they both have global investment thesis. “We are geographically very complementary, which is why we decided to forge these exclusive, long-term partnerships to work together with a joint investment plan,” says Roussin. “We will share our deal flow and co-invest together.”
Regarding FEBE Ventures’ collaboration with Otium Capital, Roussin said: “[Stérin] He made $1.4 billion starting from scratch, so he’s also really an entrepreneur. “We share the same human values and the same entrepreneurial mentality, and we work well together.”