TechDogs-"VC Firm, Intuition, Focuses On Consumer Tech While Sweater Moves To A B2B Model"

Financial Technology

VC Firm, Intuition, Focuses On Consumer Tech While Sweater Moves To A B2B Model

By TechDogs Bureau

TD NewsDesk

Updated on Wed, May 1, 2024

Overall Rating
In a world full of technology giants leading the race in innovation, creativity and solutions providing, smaller startups face difficulty in reaching their target audience.

Sometimes in this case, these promising startups are acquired by a larger organization to propel its products or services. Other times, they are funded by venture capital (VC) firms or other organizations.

In what’s a quite straightforward process, two VC firms, Intuition and Sweater, have brought in unique investment opportunities for startups and the public.

So, what are these two venture capital firms doing? Let’s explore!
 

What Is Intuition Doing?

 
  • Recently, Paris-based venture capital firm Intuition has launched an initial fund of €15 million (around $16 million) to invest in startups engaged exclusively in consumer technology.

  • As per reports, the firm has narrowed down and selected over 40 startups across Europe and the US, which will receive amounts between €100,000 ($106,705) and €500,000 ($533,525) at the pre-seed or seed stage.

  • The idea is to create a community working on consumer and culture, enabling a platform that facilitates sharing and learning from each other to produce the next big thing.

  • Intuition also plans to host events to help grow its revenue and as such has launched a series of events co-hosted with other major venture capital firms.

  • Hugo Amsellem, General Partner, Intuition, said, “Working on consumer is really not cool these days because it’s been five to seven years of failures in the consumer vertical, and there hasn’t been a lot of liquidity.”

  • [Contd.] “All the funds that have seen these under-performances and have had a huge amount of money to deploy because they’ve raised gigantic funds, they still say ‘yes, I’m doing consumer deals,’ but they don’t say it too loud. In fact, this is our opportunity.”

  • [Contd.] “There’s only one subject I want to work on, and that’s consumer and everything adjacent to consumer — everything that changes culture.”

  • Etienne Boutan, General Partner, Intuition, said, “Hugo and I were amongst some of the most active early-stage investors in consumer startups in Europe and with the addition of Axel, Eliott and Erika as venture partners we wanted to make sure we could expand our coverage in the US at the heart of consumer tech in San Francisco and culture in Los Angeles.”


TechDogs-"An Image Of Etienne Boutan, General Partner, Intuition and Hugo Amsellem, General Partner, Intuition"
On the other hand, B2C (Business-to-consumer) venture capital firm Sweater is expanding its unique model to accelerate B2B (Business-to-business) funding.
 

What Is Sweater Doing?

 
  • In 2022, Colorado-based Sweater launched its pilot Cashmere Fund, an entirely new and unique category within venture capital, which allowed anyone to invest as much as they want, whenever they want, with the minimum investment starting at $500.

  • “We believe the VC community can shape the future, and the right to shape the future belongs to everyone,” reads a line on the firm’s website’s home page.

  • The initiative witnessed over 5,500 participating investors, with the fund investing in 33 startups.

  • After bringing “the first platform making venture capital accessible to anyone”, Sweater is now expanding its strategy from B2C to B2B.

  • Through this, the firm will enable qualified partners to “launch Cashmere fund clones to their own audiences and with their own unique thesis.” 

  • As per the offering, Sweater will handle processes such as back-office fund management, due diligence, legal, compliance, portfolio valuation and other functions, allowing partners to focus on fundraising and capital deployment.

  • As per a report announcing the move, Sweater has already closed first contracts with qualified partners, which includes a contract for a $500 million fund VC secondaries. It has also “signed engagement letters with five other potential partners as well, and has a qualified pipeline valued at over $4.6 billion in AUM (Assets Under Management).

  • Jesse Randall, the CEO and Founder of Sweater, said, “We're basically making clones of the Cashmere fund and white labeling them to the audiences of partners. We're closing on our first few partners as we speak and we expect to have dozens of funds on our platform five years from now.”


TechDogs-"An Image Of Jesse Randall, CEO and Founder, Sweater"
Do you think such models will help Intuition and Sweater grow as venture capital firms? Do you think other VC firms need to come up with such innovative solutions?

Let us know in the comments below!

First published on Wed, May 1, 2024

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