Hugo Amsellem and Etienne Boutan, two French investors behind the new VC fund Intuition, are on the hunt for “slightly delusional” consumer tech founders.
And by “slightly delusional,” Amsellem means passionate, insightful, and visionary founders who can “convince a lot of people that they’re not crazy.”
“When you’re a consumer founder, you’re trying to target millions of users, and you’re trying to provide them something that they don’t know that they want yet,” Amsellem, a former founder himself and startup advisor, told Business Insider.
Intuition is launching with a €15 million fund (about $16 million), per the firm. Amsellem and Boutan, both general partners based in Paris, plan to deploy between 40 and 50 small checks as they scout early-stage consumer startups based in Europe and the US. The fund will be deployed over four years, Amsellem added.
“During the last two years, the venture market behaved irrationally towards certain industries deemed riskier, including many investors overlooking consumer markets,” Boutan wrote in an email to BI. “This a unique arbitrage opportunity for B2C specialists like us to invest in rounds with preferable terms (e.g., stronger teams, better valuations) and become top of mind for founders with a strong brand.”
In addition to Boutan and Amsellem, Intuition has three venture partners: Axel Toupane, Erika Batista, and Eliott Kessas.
Intuition wants to ‘shout’ about consumer
Some of the hottest topics in consumer startups right now include various applications of AI (especially when it comes to creating content), new ideas for social networking, and commerce.
“We invest in consumer and culture,” said Amsellem, which means “anything that scales to millions of users and changes culture.”
And while The Information reported that VCs were bucking consumer investments earlier this year, Intuition plans to “shout consumer louder than everyone else,” Amsellem told BI.
Later this year, Intuition will launch a “Consumer Tour” where the two partners will host summits in Europe and the US, bringing together founders and builders in the space. The conference tour will begin in May in Berlin, and visit US cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in the summer, wrapping up in Paris come fall.
“To be frank, the categories are changing so fast,” Amsellem acknowledged. “Consumer is going to get into such a revolution right now that maybe, it’s going to be something that we don’t even know now.”
Because of this, Inuition is hesitant to slap any core focuses as it sets out to write its first checks.
“It’s anything that is around content, community, commerce, and that is the stack of the consumer,” Amsellem said.
