Alven in $1.4m seed round for Deepomatic

Deploying equity alongside Alven were tech entrepreneurs Pierre Valade, who helped found Agora, and Jean-Charles Samuelian, the co-founder and CEO of plane seat designer Expliseat.

Alven provided around $1m of the $1.4m total, while the individual investors supplied the rest.

The VC, which secured a minority stake in Deepomatic, drew equity from its fourth fund. Alven Capital IV hit its €120m hard-cap when the nine-month fundraising process concluded in March 2013. With the Deepomatic investment, more than half the vehicle's capital has been deployed, unquote" understands.

The $1.4m investment in Deepomatic mirrors the firm's strategy whereby companies are sought during an early development stage to minimise competition from other VC funds.

The current seed round comes as an EY report found that French startups raised an aggregate €759m from investors in H1 2015, a 70% jump on the average seen during earlier years.

According to the document, it is tech-focused companies such as Deepomatic that are driving the surge – the sector was found to be the most popular fundraising-wise during the period, with highlights including the €100m raised by network operator Sigfox in February.

Company
Founded in 2014, Deepomatic develops software allowing website owners to monetise visual content by linking images with buyable products. Headquartered in Paris, the startup currently employs seven professionals, with plans to recruit a further three in the coming months.

People
Alven's work on the deal was coordinated by managing partner François Meteyer. Augustin Marty, Aloïs Brunel and Vincent Delaitre co-founded Deepomatic and are currently the startup's CEO, CPO and CTO respectively

Advisers
Equity – 2Cfinance (Financial due diligence); Broccard & Associés (Legal).

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