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Startup scouting & investment

CLOSE TO THE DEAL FLOW.

I meet new founders almost every day — sometimes as a mentor, sometimes running a programme, sometimes as a scout or an investment-committee member. Four different roles keep me close to how very early-stage companies are actually found, questioned and selected.

Not a full-time VC

I do not run a fund and I try not to inflate these roles. I stay close to early-stage investing because it sharpens my work with founders: I see more companies, more selection decisions, more reasons to say no — and occasionally the rare reason to say yes.

Four different lenses

SCOUT. QUESTION. DECIDE.

They overlap, but they are not the same job. That is precisely why the combination is useful: founder-first selection, business-angels deep tech, multi-sector seed investing and hands-on incubation each expose a different part of the early-stage funnel.

2025–now

EWOR

Venture Scout

15founder nominations so far
1 fellow accepted: Melious.aiIdeation: up to €300KTraction: €500K

The platform

EWOR is deliberately extreme about selection: it says it backs the top 0.1% of founders and looks for people capable of building transformative, very large companies. The public programme is founder-first and sector-agnostic.

My actual role

I nominate founders I genuinely think deserve that bar. Across the nominations I have made, the recurring questions are not simply ‘is this a good startup?’ but: is the founder exceptional, is the opportunity enormous, is there a structural advantage, is progress unusually fast, and can the company become category-defining?

Why I stay involved

It gives me a demanding international calibration point for the founders I meet elsewhere. I receive a small success-based scout reward when a nomination is accepted; it is not the reason I do the work.

2024–now

BADGE

Member · startup scout

~20dedicated sourceurs in the network
300+ member network~1,000 startups met yearly by sourcingStrong deep-tech tilt

The platform

Business Angels des Grandes Écoles is one of France’s most active business-angel networks. It has operated for more than twenty years, finances around twenty companies a year and has invested more than €60M since 2005. In 2024, 25 of the 29 startups it supported were deeptech-labelled.

My actual role

I am one of the dedicated sourceurs, coordinated by Michael Schack. I spend time at incubators, research events and pitch sessions looking for founders worth bringing into the BADGE funnel — especially researchers turning difficult technology into a company. I am a paying member, but I have not yet personally invested through BADGE.

Why I stay involved

This is the role that most directly reflects how much I enjoy deep tech: getting out into the ecosystem, meeting technical founders early and helping a promising project become ready for serious investor scrutiny.

2024–now

NEO FOUNDERS

Investment Committee member

15+startups backed per year
Pre-seed & seedMulti-sectorTypical €100K deal ticket

The platform

NEO Founders is a collective of entrepreneurs and early-stage investors using a mix of direct investment and club deals. It is broader than deep tech, is not limited to founders from NEOMA and focuses on helping high-potential startups become ready for the next institutional round.

My actual role

I participate in the Investment Committee and contribute to sourcing and investment discussions, representing the NEOMA Alumni side of the ecosystem. This gives me a deliberately different lens from BADGE: software, consumer, services and other models sit alongside technology-heavy companies.

Why I stay involved

It forces me to separate ‘interesting technology’ from ‘investable company’. Different sectors create different evidence, growth and execution patterns — and that makes the comparison useful.

2025–now

SOUTHWESTX INCUBATOR

Programme lead · Head of Startups

€100Kup to per selected project
4 investments so far12-month incubationDeepTech · AI · Green Transformation

The platform

The southwestX Incubator is the most hands-on of the four: selected teams receive up to €100K and work closely with the incubator for twelve months. The programme is currently Saarland-based and is designed for founders ready to incorporate and build locally, with a strong preference for defensible technology and international growth potential.

My actual role

Here I do not scout from the side — I lead the initiative as part of my Head of Startups role. That means building the pipeline, assessing teams, preparing investment decisions and then staying close to the founders after selection. We have made four investments so far.

Why I stay involved

It closes the loop. I can see what happens after a selection decision: what founders actually do with capital, coaching, customer introductions, IP support and pressure to turn a research or technical project into a fundable company.

Patterns across the four

WHAT MAKES ME LEAN IN.

There is no universal scorecard. But the same questions keep resurfacing across mentoring, scouting and investment decisions.

01

Founder trajectory

What has this person already done that makes an unusually ambitious future believable?

02

Scale of the opportunity

A solid niche business can be excellent without being a venture-scale investment. I try not to confuse the two.

03

Defensibility

Technology, IP, data, distribution, network effects, regulation or execution advantage: what gets stronger rather than easier to copy?

04

Speed + evidence

How much has changed in the last three months? Great founders tend to turn uncertainty into evidence unusually quickly.

05

Commercial instinct

Especially in deep tech, a brilliant scientist still needs the hunger to build a company, sell, recruit and make hard choices.

06

Financing readiness

Cap table, valuation, ownership, team structure and future capital needs can make an otherwise strong company very difficult to fund.

Why this matters to my work

PATTERN RECOGNITION IS ONLY USEFUL IF YOU GIVE IT BACK.

The point is not collecting investor titles. It is being able to tell a researcher or founder, early and concretely, what an investor is likely to challenge: the market, the founder story, the moat, the evidence, the cap table or simply the scale of the ambition — and then help them improve what can be improved.

THE DAILY LOOP

  • Meet founders before the story is polished.
  • Ask the questions investors will ask later.
  • Help turn technical truth into investable evidence.
  • Connect the right company to the right programme — not every company to every investor.
  • Keep learning from the decisions I get wrong as well as the ones I get right.