Thibaud Simphal

I am proud to share that Pepea Capital has been selected to join the Neycha Accelerator and Fund, a program designed to propel mission-driven companies aligned with agroecological principles toward scalable, sustainable growth. Among a highly competitive pool of applicants, Pepea Capital stood out for our integrated fintech model, cooperative engagement approach, and our potential to enhance agroecology-aligned financing via our credit scoring AI platform, Jasmine. Through this opportunity, we look forward to refining our credit offerings, optimizing interest rates, and deepening our outcome-based financing strategies. Through Neycha, we will gain: 1. Expert mentorship tailored to our growth trajectory 2. Access to catalytic capital 3. Valuable connections across the agroecology ecosystem As we continue our journey to reimagine food systems in Africa, through innovative finance, this partnership marks a powerful step forward in aligning our operations with climate-resilient and regenerative agricultural models. A big thank you to the Neycha team for believing in our vision. We're excited to co-create solutions that drive lasting impact for smallholder farmers and rural communities across Kenya and beyond. Kampala, here we come, greetings from Nairobi. SHONA Capital Ltd, FSD Kenya, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, EY-Parthenon, Bright Tide Salome Akite, Jackson Ssetuba, CPA, Sarah Makena, Kennedy Berenju, Andrew Gwadiva, Arucy Lionel, Lilian Ogwari, Edward Ochuodho, Mauga Moses. #PepeaCapital #Agroecology #FintechForFarmers #InclusiveFinance #NeychaAccelerator #ClimateSmartAgriculture #ImpactFinance #SmallholderEmpowerment https://neycha.shona.co/

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There's a new category of startups beginning to pop up. Not FinTech - VentureTech Decile Group and Adeo Ressi are at the very forefront of it

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𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧'𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲'𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬. This week on #WomenRaisingTheBar ⚖️, we spotlight brilliant founders securing funding and building bold solutions across Europe and LATAM. From sustainable biotech and mobility to sports innovation — these women are showing what’s possible. 🇩🇪 Larissa Ruf & Greta G. – BiMA raises €500K to launch a screen-free projector for children 🇫🇷 Adèle James – Phagos raises €25M to create a sustainable alternative to antibiotics 🇩🇪 Helena Most – Resourcly secures €2.7M to cut manufacturing inventory inefficiencies 🇪🇸 Paloma Långstrum – TRIBBU raises €2M to end the lonely commute and tackle carbon emissions 🇲🇽 Natalia Salcedo Franco – PITZ raises $2.1M in one of LatAm’s largest pre-seed rounds 👏👏👏 𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒆𝒂𝒄𝒉 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 — 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒔𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒂𝒓 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒂 𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏. The bar keeps rising. The capital is following. — 👋 I’m Anais, founder of Amela — a global network supporting women founders. Every Saturday, we spotlight the women raising the bar. #WomenRaisingTheBar #FemaleFounders #VC #Startups #Amela ♻️ Found this inspiring? Repost to amplify women raising capital. ⚡ Want more stories like this? Hit follow.

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Back to the mics. Today I’m excited to open a new chapter with the first episode of Humans of Asterion, a series of conversations with the investors and builders tackling deep, structural challenges within the Asterion Ventures ecosystem. And I couldn’t have hoped for a better opening guest than Patricia Apostol, CTO and co-founder of Bubble Robotics. Patricia worked at NASA, building robots for space exploration. She’s now applying that same engineering discipline to a frontier that is much closer, and still largely overlooked: the ocean. “The ocean has 30 times the carbon-capture potential compared to the same area on land. By 2040, the areas to monitor will be 1,000 times bigger,” she told me. And yet, we still inspect offshore infrastructure with boats, divers, and narrow weather windows - tools that simply don’t match the scale of what’s at stake. Bubble proposes a shift in mindset: instead of visiting underwater assets occasionally, we should live alongside them, through resident autonomous robots capable of continuous monitoring. We talked about: - space engineering applied to the ocean - why offshore energy, climate and security can no longer be separated - what it takes to build a deeptech company critical to Europe’s future The episode is now live. Link in the comments. (And if this resonates, their round remains open for a few more weeks. You can reach out via DM.) Next episodes continue this journey with Philippe Berland, CEO of EverDye, and Alex Haag, CEO of the Franco-German deeptech Futurail. For me, this podcast is also a return to long-form interviews - and I’m genuinely happy to be back in this format.

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Startups: Raising your first €100K might be harder than raising your first €1M. Last week in a panel at 4YFN (MWC Barcelona) several founders asked me the same question:“When should we start talking to VCs?” The answer is simple. Most founders approach the wrong investors too early. Every stage of a startup has different investors and different expectations. Here is the typical order. 1️⃣ Ideation → The 3Fs ·      Friends, Family and Fools ·      Typical round: €5K – €30K ·      ~5% equity ·      Goal: Validate the idea ·      Advice: Pact an exit point for the 3Fs as you may want to rebuy your shares later. Even if it's friends and family, always sign an agreement. At the beginning they might feel they are helping you. Later — if the company succeeds — expectations can change and they might want to hold to your startup shares. A clean cap table matters for future investors. 2️⃣ Ideation - Pre-Seed → Grants ·      Validate Concept: Customer interviews ·      MVP plan ·      Grants and public funding ·      Typical grants: €10K – €150K ·      3–6 month process ·      Advice: Don’t underestimate this source. Many founders ignore this. After the panel a founder told me his startup had already secured almost €5M in grants. It takes paperwork — but it works. 3️⃣ Ideation - Pre-Seed → Business Angels (BAs) ·      Typical angel ticket in Europe: €5K – €30K ·      Often invest before VCs ·      Usually invest in industries they understand ·      Advice: Don't try to reshape your startup to fit the angel. If it’s not their domain, ask for introductions to other angels. Good angels are usually well connected. 4️⃣ Pre-Seed / Seed → Venture Capital (VCs) ·      Traction signal: €3K – €30K MRR ·      Proof customers are willing to pay ·      VCs analyze GTM strategy, scalability, competitive advantage and team strength Final Thoughts ·      Fundraising advice is always probabilistic. In reality, you only need 1 or 2 investors to believe in you. Sometimes they appear where you least expect them. ·      Even when you might be ready to ask investment, talking to BAs and VCs might be interesting to build a relationship. So talk but don’t ask for money until ready. Thinking about building a startup? At Wolver Ventures we run the Wolver Startup Launcher — a 10-week interactive program where aspiring founders: ·      Find co-founders ·      Validate B2B ideas ·      Build an MVP ·      Prepare for fundraising ·      Apply here: https://lnkd.in/ePJ6bRft Cristobal Alonso Juan Alonso-Villalobos George Macavei Jourdan Alexander-Younis Naiara Azpiri Gilles DC Francisco Mejia Brianna Quintero Zane Bojāre Karlis Jonass

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What I'd say if I could teleport from Africa to #RFSIEurope. Really glad to see this conversation happening in Brussels and sorry I can’t be there in person this year. Bart van der Zande points to the mismatch between what regenerative ventures actually need and the structures capital currently can offer. This mismatch feels even more potent when you look at the landscape in Africa. IFC estimates the financing gap for agricultural SMEs in Africa at $117 billion, and data from Briter shows investment markets across the continent remain fragmented and heavily concentrated at later stages, with high but fragmanted super early grant money. Missing the middle. We can talk about funding gaps, but looking more closely, the issue starts to seem less like a pure shortage of capital and more like a mismatch between the kinds of ventures emerging and the structures capital currently offers. Not just the investment stage, but the whole set of expectations that come with investment. And bear in mind, that most of our (minimal) capital is still flowing into conventional agriculture systems. Even when money is invested in adjacent subsegments like bio-inputs, it often still serves the existing industrial food and farming model rather than enabling a transition to regenerating and agroecological systems. Add regeneration into the mix and these ventures become even less legible to investors primed for the dominant tenor, return bracket, portfolio mix and so on. I’m super excited to see investors globally recognising the power of regenerative agriculture. Regenerative Food Systems Investment tracked 76 regenerative food system deals worth USD $1.45 billion in the first half of 2025. Bodies like RFSI do the noble work of showcasing that regeneration is an investible asset class, and of building the movement amongst investors: this is an incredible and necessary shift to bring big money into a sector that has super high potential. The conversation that Bart is having, and which we have all the time at Inanna takes this deeper. Understanding how capital actually needs to be structured if regenerative food systems are to grow (from our perspective, especially in places where food systems are built around smallholder economies, fragmented value chains, and long uncertain biological timelines). That means asking questions about capital design: about risk, return expectations, time horizons, and who carries what through the transition. If regenerative agriculture is becoming investible (yes!!!), the next step is making sure the capital that flows into it is actually fit for the systems it is meant to support. Really curious to hear what emerges from the cases and conversations in Brussels. Good luck all! #RegenerativeFoodSystems #CatalyticCapital #FoodSystemsFinance

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Venture capital is famously opaque. For most people, learning how the industry actually works is a game of guesswork and gatekeeping. In 2021, Geri Kirilova, Jeffrey Silverman and David Arcara did the thing they do best: imagined an ambitious reality and excuted it with a small but mighty team. They asked, "What if we could pull back the curtains at scale?" The answer became the Venture Cooperative - a free, private fellowship and community that gives an insider's view into fund operations and early-stage investing.💰 What started as an experiment is now a global community, managed from NYC: 1,500+ fellows across 30+ countries, more than 80% from underrepresented groups. Fellows have launched funds, venture studios, startups, angel syndicates, and even regional communities 🚀 A quick fun fact: a Venture Cooperative fellow (hi Ross Haleliuk 🤍) once invited Geri to speak at Included VC (another brilliant VC fellowship), where I first met Laconia. I later joined a public session of the Venture Cooperative, and the rest is history. The butterfly effects are infinite ♾️. Cohort 10 is launching in mid‑February. Applications are open year‑round, but if you want to be considered for this cohort, please apply by *February 1, 2026*. Huge thanks to Andrew Chang, Dorothy Chang and Lynx Collective for sharing the Venture Cooperative story with your community! We can’t wait to meet our newest fellows. 🤗

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🚨 Founders raising Pre-Seed — this is for you 🚨 Today, I’m sharing the LvlUp Ventures Pre-Seed Fundraising Guide — built from working hands-on with hundreds of portfolio companies and reviewing 15,000+ early-stage funding applications annually. It distills what we see every day: what actually gets funded, where founders lose momentum, and how the strongest teams position themselves to win at the pre-seed stage. Inside the guide: 🔹 How investors really think at Pre-Seed 🔹 What metrics matter (and what to ignore) 🔹 How to price your round without killing momentum 🔹 What a strong Pre-Seed deck actually looks like 🔹 How to run a real fundraising process (without burning months) 🔹 Practical guidance from the LvlUp IC and what we see every day. 👇 Want the guide? Like this post and comment “Guide” — I’ll DM it to you. #PreSeed #Fundraising #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #Founders #Startups #StartupAdvice #VCInsights #RaisingCapital #Tech #CPG #Founder #PitchDeck #AngelInvesting #SeedFunding #LvlUpVentures #VC

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When founders think of their next idea, who they call? Their founder friends. They want to hear feedback, bounce off ideas, get their more experienced friends to join them as mentors or angels. This is how companies got started (and funded) in the original S16 Apartment. This is how I joined 20 founders as angel, including Miro and BORZO. Over the last 6 months, together with our friends at ellipsis we have been quietly building a virtual version of our apartment, where we match founders who are just starting out with superstars who have already made the journey multiple times. We call it Founders for Founders Hub. FFF Hub is the new kind of accelerator. There is no cash or equity commitments upfront. Mentors only get sweat equity if their founders raise a round at our demo day. There is progressive elimination that ensures the group can move super quick. We get a front seat to observe founders in action. More details below and at our freshly launched website! https://fff-hub.com

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Back from Barcelona, I feel a very sharp duality in the air. On one side, an almost overwhelming enthusiasm — the kind that pushes founders into journeys with little real awareness. On the other, an understandable (yet dangerous) pessimism fueled by AI disruption and macro uncertainty. That same day I met with 3 founding teams — 2 of them in my portfolio: → A fintech tripling revenue every year. Alone in their category. Building tools that are hardly replaceable by AI, set to dramatically compound their growth from here. → An edtech doubling revenues this year, with sales accelerating across multiple countries and closing their best customers to date. → A proptech that has built a defensible position in their core market (a very sizeable geography), and is now pursuing a vertical integration strategy to make them one of the best — if not the best — proptech startup in Europe. All 3 companies are over 8 years old. Doing better than ever. Making positive cashflows — or at least net zero. And most importantly: their teams have more energy than ever to capitalise on years of work well done. This is not a sprint. It's a marathon. Opportunities are everywhere — for those who know how to observe. Being pessimistic can be just as counterproductive as being euphoric. Both cloud your judgment. Are you building something real and playing the long game? — I'd love to hear from you. #venturecapital #founders #earlystage #startups #europe

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Excited to be doubling down on Rapidata alongside IA Ventures and Canaan, after leading the pre-seed a while back. Looking forward to see them build out their real-time AI x humans RLHF cloud https://lnkd.in/dFJDGkrJ

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We’ve mapped out the 50 hottest seed-stage companies in Europe. Nominated by fellow early stage investors, and selected by a jury of leading angels. An incredible group of companies, reflecting some new trends around: - The blossoming of the Spanish ecosystem - Strong wave of experienced repeat founders swinging for the fences - Emerging founder factories Website with the 50 companies & more in the comments!

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The Titan Fund is excited to participate in Levl's seed round. Levl provides instant value-add by leveraging stablecoin infrastructure to power leading fintechs i.e. neobanks and remittance platforms so they can process payments and move money instantly across major markets without building in-house solutions or navigating the fragmentation of legacy systems. The opportunity is significant. The global cross border payments market transacts more than $200tn currently per annum (estimated >$300tn by 2032) and generates over $200bn in annual revenues for existing service providers. Proud to back Jaisel Sandhu, one of the strongest founders we have met and who possesses highly relevant experience. 🏋 https://lnkd.in/g8Sr24ah

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As we begin a new chapter at Gingo, we’re excited to share the formation of Gingo Foundation, which ambition is simple, but bold: to replace acceleration with cultivation. By shifting away from short-term, speed-driven acceleration programs, we aim to support innovation that is sustainable, resilient, and grounded in real-world impact — not just demo days or short-term outcomes. This is about building better startups by building better ecosystems 🚀 We’re kicking off this journey with an exciting panel discussion at the 24SIX9, bringing together industry leaders to openly challenge the traditional accelerator model and explore how innovation can truly be built for the long term. If you have ever questioned the accelerator playbook, you definitely want to be part of this conversation🙃

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Mobility is one of the first domains where AI had to deliver precision, safety, and reliability in the physical world. That same formula is already moving into factories, warehouses, and robotics — and eventually, everywhere. That's not a coincidence — it's a pattern. The exponential progress in AI and the emergence of interactive AI will likley accelerate this faster than anyone expects. More in my contribution to the State of European Mobility Startups 2026 👇

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Me + Mento VC in one post I’m Alex, founder of Mento.vc. I split my time between Portugal and the US, raising three kids and do love for people and numbers. Background: Previously Director at AltaIR Capital ($600M AUM, 14 unicorns) and angel investor in Miro, Deel, Jeeves and many more. What we do at Mento VC: We back US-based B2B AI startups (Seed/Series A) alongside top-tier firms like Sequoia, a16z, GV, Index and etc. Fund I Performance: - 25+ investments in 2 years (0 write-offs). - 1.5x TVPI & 8.9x median revenue growth in 2024. - 22 of 25 companies have tier-1 co-investors. Our Edge: We are a team of 8 building the fund like a product for our 50+ LPs (founder of unicorns, operators and angels). We use a data-driven model to spot signals, but we win through relationships. We earn our spot on the cap table by being helpful before we invest - helping with hiring, new customers, and strategy. Building something big in AI? DM me - let’s connect early.

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