IRIS on the road for new EUR 150m venture fund

IRIS Venture IV, which will invest in seed and series A round in companies across France, Germany and Europe, has so far received EUR 110m in commitments and held a first close at beginning of this year.

Julien-David Nitlech, Managing Partner at IRIS Capital Venture

IRIS Venture IV has so far made two investments: France-based Spinergie, an artificial intelligence maritime solutions provider, and Austria-based Helu, a financial application software provider. The firm expects to make two further investments in France-based businesses focusing on app development as early as Q1 2023, said Nitlech.

Paris-headquartered IRIS has also recently appointed Denis Duverne, former chairman of AXA's board, as senior advisor and chairman of its supervisory board. Based in France, he will support the firm in its fundraising strategy, particularly for its upcoming growth fund, according to a press release. He will work closely with the management team to increase the size of the upcoming IRIS funds dedicated to European technology scaleups.

Investors
Fund IV is backed by existing IRIS’ LPs such as Publicis, Orange, and Bpifrance, who are also the vehicle’s cornerstone investors. New investors include tech entrepreneurs, European family offices, and portfolio companies founders including Amirhossein Malekzadeh, cofounder of Logmatic; Fred Potter, founder of Netatmo; Yannis Yahiaoui, cofounder of Adot; Grégoire Delpit, cofounder of ProcessOut; Patrick Asdaghi, founder of FoodCheri; and Adrien Nussenbaum, cofounder of Mirakl.

Historically, IRIS has operated with “smaller pockets” in the seed and Series A space, but as LPs have been impressed with cash returns and unicorn creations it was a logical step to launch a larger fund, Nitlech said.

Investments
The fund will deploy tickets in the EUR 1m-EUR 8m range in Seed and Series A rounds for technology companies across Europe with a particular focus on France and Germany, where its investment team is based.

It can invest in several areas including software, artificial intelligence, robotics and logistics, fintech and cyber security, said Nitlech. The VC prefers co-investing with other firms, he added.
Ideal targets will be at pre-revenue or from EUR 2m run rate revenue to EUR 45m, Nitlech said.

The fund will invest in 15-25 companies and make four to eight deals per year. It expects to be fully deployed in two to three years as “it is logical to renew vehicles often in the current market conditions to avoid pressure,” Nitlech told Unquote.

Previous funds
IrisNext held a final close in June 2019 on EUR 280m and is deploying its final tickets as it is five years old, said Nitlech. It is scanning the market for deals. It focuses on early and late-stage investment with a much smaller pocket, he added. Once this fund is fully deployed by the end of this year or early 2023, the VC will be on the road for another late-stage vehicle.

The VC has 45 companies in its portfolio, 40% of them being in France, 40% in Germany and 20% in other European countries, North America and the Middle East, said Nitlech.

IRIS has invested in several unicorns including French robotics group Exotec, German logistics company Forto, and US-based cloud treasury business Kyriba.

The firm has a team of 18, 12 of them in the investment team, with offices in Paris, Munich and Berlin.

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