← Back
By Alice Albizzati and Elina Berrebi
Revaia’s journey to becoming one of Europe’s key growth tech funds began 5 years ago with a vision around performance, sovereignty and sustainability: investing with a purpose and backing the most ambitious tech entrepreneurs in Europe building global sustainable leadership positions.
Throughout this journey, we remained true to our original mission of building sustainable tech champions from Europe. Thanks to our amazing entrepreneurs, our incredible investors, and our experienced Revaia team, we have built a portfolio of 15 companies with €1 billion in cumulative recurring revenue (including over €500 million incremental revenue post-investment) and 4,000 employees (including 1,000 new jobs created post-investment). Since we first invested in these companies, they have raised over €250 million and are well on their way to becoming the sustainable global leaders that we first envisioned.
As a result of the remarkable work and execution of our managers and entrepreneurs, Revaia is in the top quartile of European funds. These results recently convinced our investors to renew their confidence in us and attract new backers such as Bpifrance, the EIF, CAPSSA, CARAC and UMR with the first €150 million institutional closing of our second fund. We have now raised €400 across our two funds, and we expect more soon.
In late November, we gathered the Revaia community to celebrate our 5th anniversary. While we remain fixed on our future ambitions, we took the occasion to look back at the milestones that have marked our history.
Once Upon A Fund…
We originally met as engineers at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris over 17 years ago. After starting our careers in private equity together in 2010, we joined forces in 2018 driven by the conviction that a new generation of entrepreneurs were building startups that took innovative approaches to sustainability. As we believed that Europe’s most promising startups need more homegrown capital to pursue their scale up goals.
The Revaia startup garage was the 5th floor of our initial financial sponsor, Sycomore Asset Management. It was from here that we recruited our initial team – Morgan Kessous and Anne-Pascale Niez – and refined the goals of our investment thesis to attract our first institutional investors.
By 2019, we had our product-market fit and raised €100 million, the first closing of our new growth fund and a sign of the confidence investors were already beginning to place in us. Those partners included Bpifrance, many family offices, high net worth individuals and entrepreneurs. We also made our first investment, backing Welcome to the Jungle, a leading branding and recruitment company that is emblematic of the French Tech ecosystem.
A Health Challenge…
Just as we were building on this momentum, Covid swept across the globe. Like so many other entrepreneurs, we stepped back to adapt to this health instability. As industries around the world accelerated their digital transformation in response to the pandemic, we saw new opportunities to help. That included participating in Aircall’s €65 million Series C round to fuel the international ambitions of the cloud telephony platform.
This opened new doors for Revaia as we continued to invest while seizing interesting, strategic opportunities. This included becoming a Franco-German project with the opening of our first foreign office in Berlin with a local investment team now led by Jean-David Herld.
This was just the first step toward the internationalization of Revaia. We made our first international investment in UK-based fintech GoHenry, the leader in family finance. And Revaia moved west with operating partners Grégoire Leleu in New York and Anne-Pascale relocating to Canada.
In 2021, we climbed a new summit with the final closing of our first fund at €250 million with almost 130 investors, exceeding our original goals and establishing Revaia as the biggest European growth fund raised by female leaders, as well as one of the largest first-time funds.
Shifting Tides
Our emerging portfolio was carefully selected with an emphasis on software but spanning a wide variety of sectors. These initial years also came amid a period of euphoria in the tech world, buoyed by a low-interest rate environment, among other factors. Against this backdrop we maintained our hallmark financial discipline which is now reflected in the strength and resilience of our portfolio in the face of stronger economic headwinds.
While economic challenges placed an emphasis on costs, we also used this moment to double-down on our core principles by creating our ESG team, which is central to our investment strategy, under the leadership of Bettina Denis.
We also beefed up our corporate teams by recruiting highly experienced people who symbolize the high standards and ambition we have for each of these key functions. This included the arrival of Charles Rousset as CFO, Adil Benmakhlouf to manage investor relations, and the full-time recruitment of Sandra Cadiou as head of communications. We further expanded our investment teams with the addition of Salomé Caillat in Paris and Nirwan Tajik in Berlin.
A Maturing Outlook…
The Revaia team is now 17 people strong. Together, they have created a foundation that allowed Revaia to expand its effectiveness by developing a buy-and-build strategy with our portfolio companies. We’ve now helped our portfolio companies pursue 8 M&A deals to consolidate their market position.
This past summer, we had the first acquisition of a portfolio company from our first fund when GoHenry was acquired by US-based Acorns, one of the largest fintech transactions of the last 12 months.
The Road Ahead…
Revaia has established itself as a leader in growth investing for responsible innovation. We have built strong pillars for our company based on our growth tech expertise that allows us to invest in fundamental, long-term themes such as the energy transition. With the first closing of our second fund, we have also established our independence by buying out our historic sponsor, Sycomore AM.
As we look ahead to the next five years, we intend to remain ambitious and humble. We have a brand, a team, assets, and a solid investor base that will help us navigate a market that is constantly becoming more volatile and demanding.
We also continue to raise the bar on our goals. The first challenge we've set for ourselves is facilitating more exits by accompanying our companies along the paths that are most relevant to them, be they strategic M&A, sales to PE funds, or IPOs. Our companies continue to receive inbound expressions of interest, and we are working diligently to allow them to evaluate their options and choose the right way forward.
The second challenge is to create value for the managers of our portfolio companies by continuing to develop as a multi-country platform - Morgan will open our London office in the coming weeks - with strong expertise in governance, M&A, and ESG.
The final challenge is for Revaia to ensure the long-term future of our company by seizing this opportunity to be one of the leaders in sustainable finance, in particular by financing the energy transition in tech.
After 5 years, we are more committed than ever to providing the most relevant financing solutions for entrepreneurs and investors. As we celebrate this moment, we feel tremendous gratitude to our partners, teams, founders, and investors for their confidence in us and their support. Together, we will continue to build on this collective success.
December 19, 2023
Revaia 5th Anniversary Milestones
By Alice Albizzati and Elina Berrebi
Revaia’s journey to becoming one of Europe’s key growth tech funds began 5 years ago with a vision around performance, sovereignty and sustainability: investing with a purpose and backing the most ambitious tech entrepreneurs in Europe building global sustainable leadership positions.
Throughout this journey, we remained true to our original mission of building sustainable tech champions from Europe. Thanks to our amazing entrepreneurs, our incredible investors, and our experienced Revaia team, we have built a portfolio of 15 companies with €1 billion in cumulative recurring revenue (including over €500 million incremental revenue post-investment) and 4,000 employees (including 1,000 new jobs created post-investment). Since we first invested in these companies, they have raised over €250 million and are well on their way to becoming the sustainable global leaders that we first envisioned.
As a result of the remarkable work and execution of our managers and entrepreneurs, Revaia is in the top quartile of European funds. These results recently convinced our investors to renew their confidence in us and attract new backers such as Bpifrance, the EIF, CAPSSA, CARAC and UMR with the first €150 million institutional closing of our second fund. We have now raised €400 across our two funds, and we expect more soon.
In late November, we gathered the Revaia community to celebrate our 5th anniversary. While we remain fixed on our future ambitions, we took the occasion to look back at the milestones that have marked our history.
Once Upon A Fund…
We originally met as engineers at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris over 17 years ago. After starting our careers in private equity together in 2010, we joined forces in 2018 driven by the conviction that a new generation of entrepreneurs were building startups that took innovative approaches to sustainability. As we believed that Europe’s most promising startups need more homegrown capital to pursue their scale up goals.
The Revaia startup garage was the 5th floor of our initial financial sponsor, Sycomore Asset Management. It was from here that we recruited our initial team – Morgan Kessous and Anne-Pascale Niez – and refined the goals of our investment thesis to attract our first institutional investors.
By 2019, we had our product-market fit and raised €100 million, the first closing of our new growth fund and a sign of the confidence investors were already beginning to place in us. Those partners included Bpifrance, many family offices, high net worth individuals and entrepreneurs. We also made our first investment, backing Welcome to the Jungle, a leading branding and recruitment company that is emblematic of the French Tech ecosystem.
A Health Challenge…
Just as we were building on this momentum, Covid swept across the globe. Like so many other entrepreneurs, we stepped back to adapt to this health instability. As industries around the world accelerated their digital transformation in response to the pandemic, we saw new opportunities to help. That included participating in Aircall’s €65 million Series C round to fuel the international ambitions of the cloud telephony platform.
This opened new doors for Revaia as we continued to invest while seizing interesting, strategic opportunities. This included becoming a Franco-German project with the opening of our first foreign office in Berlin with a local investment team now led by Jean-David Herld.
This was just the first step toward the internationalization of Revaia. We made our first international investment in UK-based fintech GoHenry, the leader in family finance. And Revaia moved west with operating partners Grégoire Leleu in New York and Anne-Pascale relocating to Canada.
In 2021, we climbed a new summit with the final closing of our first fund at €250 million with almost 130 investors, exceeding our original goals and establishing Revaia as the biggest European growth fund raised by female leaders, as well as one of the largest first-time funds.
Shifting Tides
Our emerging portfolio was carefully selected with an emphasis on software but spanning a wide variety of sectors. These initial years also came amid a period of euphoria in the tech world, buoyed by a low-interest rate environment, among other factors. Against this backdrop we maintained our hallmark financial discipline which is now reflected in the strength and resilience of our portfolio in the face of stronger economic headwinds.
While economic challenges placed an emphasis on costs, we also used this moment to double-down on our core principles by creating our ESG team, which is central to our investment strategy, under the leadership of Bettina Denis.
We also beefed up our corporate teams by recruiting highly experienced people who symbolize the high standards and ambition we have for each of these key functions. This included the arrival of Charles Rousset as CFO, Adil Benmakhlouf to manage investor relations, and the full-time recruitment of Sandra Cadiou as head of communications. We further expanded our investment teams with the addition of Salomé Caillat in Paris and Nirwan Tajik in Berlin.
A Maturing Outlook…
The Revaia team is now 17 people strong. Together, they have created a foundation that allowed Revaia to expand its effectiveness by developing a buy-and-build strategy with our portfolio companies. We’ve now helped our portfolio companies pursue 8 M&A deals to consolidate their market position.
This past summer, we had the first acquisition of a portfolio company from our first fund when GoHenry was acquired by US-based Acorns, one of the largest fintech transactions of the last 12 months.
The Road Ahead…
Revaia has established itself as a leader in growth investing for responsible innovation. We have built strong pillars for our company based on our growth tech expertise that allows us to invest in fundamental, long-term themes such as the energy transition. With the first closing of our second fund, we have also established our independence by buying out our historic sponsor, Sycomore AM.
As we look ahead to the next five years, we intend to remain ambitious and humble. We have a brand, a team, assets, and a solid investor base that will help us navigate a market that is constantly becoming more volatile and demanding.
We also continue to raise the bar on our goals. The first challenge we've set for ourselves is facilitating more exits by accompanying our companies along the paths that are most relevant to them, be they strategic M&A, sales to PE funds, or IPOs. Our companies continue to receive inbound expressions of interest, and we are working diligently to allow them to evaluate their options and choose the right way forward.
The second challenge is to create value for the managers of our portfolio companies by continuing to develop as a multi-country platform - Morgan will open our London office in the coming weeks - with strong expertise in governance, M&A, and ESG.
The final challenge is for Revaia to ensure the long-term future of our company by seizing this opportunity to be one of the leaders in sustainable finance, in particular by financing the energy transition in tech.
After 5 years, we are more committed than ever to providing the most relevant financing solutions for entrepreneurs and investors. As we celebrate this moment, we feel tremendous gratitude to our partners, teams, founders, and investors for their confidence in us and their support. Together, we will continue to build on this collective success.