Serena

❓How can we motivate C-levels to prioritize impact? A few weeks ago, this question took center stage during the France Digitale CIO x Investors Breakfast at Serena. Here’s what we learned: 💡 The challenge Many companies struggle to align executive incentives with ESG goals. The reasons? Differences in organizational maturity and competing strategic priorities often stand in the way of meaningful alignment. 📈 Financial Incentives: A growing trend Linking executive compensation to measurable ESG objectives is gaining traction, but adoption is still inconsistent. Progressive companies are incorporating impact-related metrics into bonus structures and management packages, but there’s plenty of ground to cover. 🤝 Investors as catalysts for Impact Investors play a crucial role in accelerating ESG integration. Funds that encourage their portfolio companies to implement structured roadmaps with clear sustainability targets are driving meaningful change. However, without consistent board-level engagement and external recognition, momentum can falter. 🌍 The Power of leadership Appointing dedicated sustainability roles within leadership teams has proven to accelerate ESG integration. But to maintain momentum, these roles need stronger support and recognition across the organization. 🔑 What works? - Creating mission committees to unify leadership around sustainability objectives. - Setting shared ESG goals across the executive team to ensure collective accountability. - Leveraging frameworks like CSRD to bring clarity and transparency to ESG efforts A big thanks to Jérémy Rasori, Maurine Riou, France Digitale, and everyone who joined!

🎄How are startups redefining marketing in 2025? Lessons from Serena’s Marketing Breakfast. A few weeks ago, with Jessica Ifker Delpirou and Heba Hitti, we brought together marketing leaders from our portfolio (the Serena Squad) and industry experts for a breakfast and learning session focused on the 2025 budget, strategy, and trends. 📚 A highlight of the morning was hearing from Gaëlle Le Goff, Guillaume Laguette, and Yannig Roth, co-authors of a game-changing book featuring insights from 30 top tech marketing leaders. Together, we tackled key challenges and opportunities facing startups as they prepare for 2025. Three takeaways: 📊 Marketing Budget: - For B2B, allocating 10% of revenue to marketing is “reasonable”; for B2C, 15%+ is the standard. - Branding typically accounts for 20–30% of the budget in tech but may increase in consumer-focused sectors. 🔗 LinkedIn is more than just a platform: - A well-planned LinkedIn strategy delivers long-term results but requires consistent effort and a strong editorial approach. - The bonus? Efforts shared across the leadership team multiply visibility and impact. 🤖 Generative AI: A Game-Changer: - From tool stacks to innovative use cases like Alan’s LinkedIn strategy powered by Gen AI, the potential is immense. Marketers can harness AI to elevate consistency and efficiency across campaigns. 📖 With the book set for release in early January, there’s plenty more to uncover in 2025. Big thanks to Gaëlle Le Goff, Yannig Roth, Guillaume Laguette and everyone who joined!

🇫🇷🏛️ In 2024, Serena startups drove key discussions with French officials! And this is just Part I... ✨ Electra at the Élysée Two months ago, Aurelien de Meaux, Co-founder of Electra, the ultra-fast electric car charging network, joined President Macron, for a dinner at the Élysée Palace to tackle the challenges and opportunities of electrification. 💡 The highlight: A unified vision for green mobility, with OEMs like Renault and Stellantis aligned on accelerating the shift to electrification. 🚗⚡🔋 👩⚕️ May at the Assemblée Nationale Cécilia Creuzet, Antoine Creuzet, and Adrien Brunet, founders of May, the mobile health app for personalized and proactive parenting support, met MP Paul Midy to discuss: -> Reducing emergency room overcrowding -> Enhancing family health with mental and physical prevention -> Bridging gaps in underserved medical areas 🏠 kelvin at RENT Clémentine Lalande, co-founder of Kelvin, the French startup providing software solutions for construction and real estate professionals, met the Housing Minister Valérie Létard who told her "Energy renovation needs Kelvin, we need you” 🔄 These dialogs mark the start of collaborative efforts to scale green housing solutions across France. 🌾 CarbonFarm at FrancoTech During the Francophonie Summit, Vassily Carantino, founder of CarbonFarm, a satellite-based MRV company making regenerative agriculture profitable, raised awareness about the hidden methane impact of rice production to President Macron. We're thrilled to witness our entrepreneurs and their teams making strides in critical sectors, from green mobility to sustainable housing and healthcare innovation!

2025 is calling for a reset ⏯️ The race for growth is no longer the only game in town. 2025 is shaping up to be the year where operational efficiency, profitability, and responsible scaling take center stage. From applied AI driving breakthroughs in healthcare and manufacturing to ClimateTech and NatureTech answering global challenges with concrete solutions such as small modular reactors (SMRs) or technologies related to water management, innovation is still the beating heart of transformation. Shoutout to Manon Triniac from Maddyness for this insightful article on Venture Capital trends in 2025 where I contributed my perspective alongside peers Cyril Bertrand (XAnge), Charles Cabillic (Épopée Gestion), Stephanie Hospital (OneRagtime), and Pierre-Eric Leibovici (daphni). Serena

Serena 2024 - A Year in Review 🌟 Here’s a quick look back: 👥 We welcomed three new teammates Guillaume Decugis, Juliette Ast, Alix Trébaol, and celebrated four well-deserved internal promotions: Stéphanie Nizard, Floriane de Maupeou, Mamadou Bilo DIALLO and Isabel Lavoura. Fresh talent and expertise have made our team stronger than ever. 🤝 We partnered with 18 new startups, committing €30M in funding and celebrated six successful exits, including Leonardo.Ai acquired by Canva! 🏆 Our portfolio companies stood out this year, earning recognition on key lists like STATION F and Sifted's fastest-growing startups in France. Some even caught the attention of policymakers, making an impact at the Élysée Palace and beyond. 📚 From the Commercial Open Source Benchmark to the Ultimate VC List and Nature Tech Report, we created resources to empower founders and the broader tech ecosystem. 🪸After two years of championing women in our Serena and Ring Capital portfolios, we transformed the PALM program into an independent non-profit. Our mission? Boost gender equality in French Tech and support 100 companies by 2026. To our investors, founders, and teams—thank you for making 2024 exceptional!

📊 Did you know? The number of French VC funds with Operating Partners has skyrocketed by 121% since 2019! Operating Partners have become key players in the venture capital ecosystem, enabling startups to tackle the challenges of hypergrowth with deep expertise. 💡 According to the France Invest and Alvarez & Marsal study: - 1 in 4 Operating Partners are former CEOs, while 15% hail from consulting. - They bring an average of 23 years of experience, including 17 in corporate roles. Yet, many founders still struggle to access this expertise. Only 18% of Seed-stage VCs offer Operating Partners, and even at later stages, it’s just 29%. As one of the pioneers of this model in France, Serena has embedded operational excellence into its DNA for over 15 years, addressing the unique execution challenges startups face at every stage of growth. This approach is brought to life by: ✅ A team of 8 expert operators, including seasoned executives and entrepreneurs, who actively collaborate with founders. ✅ 80 startups accelerated through tailored programs designed to streamline execution and unlock growth potential. ✅ A vibrant community of 500+ professionals exchanging insights and expertise to drive progress. 🌟 Special recognition goes to Marc Fournier, Xavier Lorphelin, and philippe hayat for paving the way with France’s first Operating VC program. In close collaboration with our investment team, our Operating Team (David Bitton, Emilie Stevelinck Benayad, Jessica Ifker Delpirou, Jerome Stioui, Elodie Charles, Heba Hitti and Brune Jacqmin) work hand in hand and empower founders to navigate growth milestones seamlessly and realize their boldest ambitions. 🔗 Curious about this shift? Check out Les Echos’ article by Charlie Perreau (link in comments).

👾 Pixeltable raises $5.5M to redefine AI application development and launches its open-source dedicated platform! The seed fundraising is led by The General Partnership, alongside Exceptional Capital, South Park Commons, Liquid 2 Ventures, Serena (Data Ventures), and renowned industry leaders. AI’s growing complexity often leaves teams bogged down in managing data pipelines and infrastructure instead of innovating. Pixeltable redefines how teams build AI applications through a declarative, incremental approach to multimodal data management. Its unified table interface processes video, images, audio, text, and structured data seamlessly, enabling automatic incremental updates, lineage tracking, and transitions between development and production without rewriting code. The result: infrastructure code reduced by 80% and compute waste halved. “Pixeltable eliminates the tradeoff between development ease and application control,” says Pierre Brunelle, CEO. “Teams can now build production-ready AI applications with real-time context awareness in under 100 lines of code.” Early adopters report cutting infrastructure code by 90%, compute costs by 70%, and accelerating iteration cycles. Engineers can now focus on delivering better models rather than managing infrastructure. With $5.5M in funding, Pixeltable is set to expand its core capabilities, enhance multimodal collaboration features, and develop Pixeltable Cloud, a fully managed service. Congratulations Team! Floriane de Maupeou Matthieu Lavergne Guillaume Decugis Juliette Ast Bertrand Diard

#Fintech Bitstack raises €5M to pioneer the future of banking in France! Bitstack, the #1 Bitcoin savings app in France, has secured €5M in a funding round led by Stillmark, alongside Serena, Plug and Play Tech Center, Y Combinator, AG2R LA MONDIALE, Founders Future, and STATION F. This milestone fuels their mission to make Bitcoin and innovative financial services accessible to everyone. 📈 In today’s economy, inflation continues to erode purchasing power, leaving many searching for better ways to preserve their wealth. Bitcoin, with its limited supply of 21 million units, offers an alternative store of value. In fact, 12% of French citizens now own crypto-assets—more than those holding traditional equities—and 22% are considering entering the crypto market. 🩵 Bitstack is at the heart of this movement, empowering over 150,000 users to save and invest more than €125M in Bitcoin with a user-friendly app. The solution makes saving effortless by rounding up everyday purchases and automatically investing the spare change in Bitcoin. Users can also buy and sell Bitcoin instantly, set up recurring investments, and send or receive Bitcoin seamlessly. What sets Bitstack apart is its focus on accessibility and innovation. Users can start with as little as €1, and in early 2025, the app will launch euro accounts with IBANs. These accounts will enable salary deposits and automatic Bitcoin conversions, supported by a VISA debit card that allows payments in euros or Bitcoin, with cashback rewards in Bitcoin. This €5M funding will accelerate Bitstack’s growth, enabling the company to launch these new features, expand its user base, and recruit top talent to solidify its position as a leader in the future of banking. 👏 Congratulations to Alexandre Roubaud, Kabir Sethi, and the Bitstack team for driving financial innovation and empowering users to confidently navigate an evolving financial landscape! Olivier Martret Maxime Furet

📣 The Next Frontier for VCs is not AI, it’s our Planet 🌍   At Serena, we invest in transformational change. We believe the next big disruption lies in addressing challenges related to our planet. Environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity have been addressed separately but these issues are interconnected and collectively impact our planet’s health. That’s the reason why we invested in #climatetech five years ago, then #naturetech two years ago, and now #watertech.   ➡️ According to McKinsey, $275 trillion of cumulative spending on assets and infrastructures would be needed over the next three decades to decarbonize the global economy. For VCs, it means that we need to invest in “hardware” (infrastructures and real tangible assets), not only in digital or software solutions. This is a new paradigm for VCs. At Serena, we know what it means since we invested in hardware companies in our first VC fund launched in 2008. For the last 5 years, we have been investing in successful infrastructure-based startups such as Accenta.ai (smart energy storage for buildings), Electra (ultra-fast charging stations for EVs) and Jimmy Energy (small nuclear modular reactor).   ➡️ The WEF estimates a nature-based transition will bring over $10 trillion in business opportunities.   We are at the beginning of a cycle of major innovations in nature-based technologies that will have strong societal and business impacts, transforming industries like food and agriculture to achieve net-zero and nature-positive targets, and unlocking hundreds of billions in biodiversity investments through the Global Biodiversity Framework adopted at the COP15.   During the COP16, Serena announced the release of the report "Integrating nature tech: A guide for businesses" from Nature4Climate, in collaboration with KPMG, Climate Collective and Nature Tech Collective . We also published our analysis of venture capital funding and trends in nature tech for 2023 and the first half of 2024.   ➡️ According to WWF, the annual economic value of water and freshwater ecosystems is estimated to be US$58 trillion – equivalent to 60% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Nearly 4 billion people, almost two-thirds of the world’s population, face severe water scarcity for at least one month each year.   Serena is working on a new cycle of conferences and studies on water and water tech for 2025. Stay tuned…   🎧 If you want to better understand how Serena is revolutionizing venture capital by addressing major global challenges such as biodiversity and climate change, listen to the #SRI360 podcast. 👉https://lnkd.in/g7QbkPCT #ImpactInvesting #Sustainability #NetZero #Biodiversity #NaturePositive

♨️ Attention open-source entrepreneurs and GitHub contributors, let’s meet up! We’re hosting an informal gathering on January 15, in the heart of Paris (2nd arrondissement), to explore a key question: how do we turn open-source projects into thriving businesses? This is your chance to share ideas, exchange insights, and connect with peers navigating the same challenges and opportunities. Juliette Ast, Guillaume Decugis, Bertrand Diard, Emma Guetta, Matthieu Lavergne, and Floriane de Maupeou, from our Serena team will be around to chat! No slides, no formalities – just meaningful conversations, good company, and a drink (or two)! 🍻 Register now using the form below and by sharing your GitHub link 📥