Founder Report — Q2 2026

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ESCP FOUNDER REPORT Q2 2026

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Research it.

Company Overview

Investors

Learn it.

Build it.

ESCP helps people learn entrepreneurship, research what works, and build real ventures. Our

ecosystem brings together students, alumni, faculty, founders, and partners across Europe to

turn ideas into companies and impact.

450+

ESCP-linked

unicorns $23bn

Raised by ESCPlinked startups to

Entrepreneurs supported in 2025 through Blue Factory

date

Company Overview

Investors

25+

12,000+

Founders, investors,

Entrepreneurship-

Entrepreneurship courses across our

and corporate

focused faculty

campuses

innovators

researchers

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Introduction & Methodology

This report was prepared by the ESCP Alternative Investment Society, with institutional support from ESCP Blue Factory and ESCP Business School.

The ESCP Alternative Investment Society (AIS) is the leading student-run finance society at ESCP. The society is structured around four divisions: Venture Capital, Private Equity, Real Estate, and Hedge Funds, uniting a network of more than 800 members. AIS is dedicated to enriching education, promoting professional development, and preparing ESCP students for careers in alternative investments. Learn more

Blue Factory is ESCP Business School’s entrepreneurship hub, supporting multi-sector entrepreneurs from idea to scale through dedicated programs, mentoring, and a European network of experts, alumni, and partners. Based in Paris, Berlin, London, Turin, and Madrid, it supports 450+ entrepreneurs every year. Learn more

ESCP Business School is the world’s oldest business school and has a long-standing commitment to educating accountable, bold and creative leaders. ESCP’s six campuses in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Turin and Warsaw are the stepping stones that allow students to experience ESCP’s European approach to management grounded in multiculturalism. Each year, the School welcomes 11,000+ students and 6,000+ executives from 140 nationalities across a wide range of programmes, all of which include a multi-campus experience. With innovation as its cornerstone, ESCP is accelerating academic research and business education to forge new pathways for a better future for all. It all starts here. Learn more

This report is based on data from Crunchbase and PitchBook, and includes all companies identified in either database. A company is classified as an ESCP startup if at least one of its founders studied at ESCP Business School, including full-time, exchange, MBA, executive programs or was part of ESCP’s incubator program at Blue Factory. Founders are counted if they co-founded and actively built the company, even if they later exited the business.

The initial list of ESCP-affiliated startups was identified using the Crunchbase ESCP alumni hub, which served as the primary data source. For each company, we collected data on founding year, headquarters, sector, funding rounds, total capital raised, investors, and exit status. PitchBook was used selectively to validate funding data and to identify investors and angel backers only when information on Crunchbase was incomplete, unclear, or unavailable.

All Crunchbase and PitchBook entries were accessed and reviewed between 12 April 2026 and 28 July 2026, which also serves as the research end date for this report. All financial figures are presented in USD. Amounts originally reported in other currencies were converted using exchange rates as of 15 July 2026 to ensure a consistent reference point. A company is classified as a unicorn if it has reached a valuation of at least USD 1 billion at any point in time, even if the valuation later declined.

Because the analysis relies on publicly available venture databases, some early-stage, bootstrapped, or stealth companies may not be captured. Using two independent data sources provides a robust and consistent overview of the ESCP startup ecosystem.

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Introduction

Investor Insights

Funding Overview

Founder Insights

Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory

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ESCP Unicorns

Nicolas d’Audiffret

Daniel Schulenburg

Clément

Delangue

Denis Ladegaillerie

Jean-Luc

Robert

Firmin Zocchetto

M. Philippe

R. Sabban &

Konstantin Sorger

Elizabeth

Florian Brand

Müller

Dr. Joerg

Thomas Fayon

Schweikert

Jonathan Anguelov

1. New York, USA Jonathan Anguelov MiF, 2013

2. Paris, FR Thomas Fayon MiIE, 2018

3. Berlin, GER Florian Brand MiM, 2013

4. New York, USA R. Sabban & M. Philippe MiIE, 2009

5. San Diego, USA Jean-Luc Robert MS, 1976

6. New York, USA Clément Delangue MiM, 2012

7. New York, USA Daniel Schulenburg MiF, 2005

8. Paris, FR Nicolas d’Audiffret MiM, 2003

9. Paris, FR Denis Ladegaillerie MS, 1994

10. Paris, FR Firmin Zocchetto MiM, 2014

11. Sao Paulo, BR Konstantin Sorger EMiM, 2007

12. Berlin, GER Dr. Joerg Schweikert MS, 1993

13. Berkeley, USA Elizabeth Müller MiM, 2001

Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory 5

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Q2 2026 Snapshot

Germany

United States of America

United States of America

France

In Q2 2026, ESCP alumni startups raised over $212 million across 18 funding rounds

worldwide.

USA

$99.50M

France

$82.03M

Germany

$14.50M

Luxembourg

$5.90M

Switzerland

$5.90M

UK

$2.50M

Italy

$1.80M

Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory 6

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Founders in numbers

Startups relative to the number of students

1,151.1

ESCP Berlin

1,062.2

HHL Leipzig

Zeppelin Universität Friedrichshafen

EBS Universität

WHU Vallendar

Frankfurt School

Hochschule Fresenius Idstein

Helmut-Schmidt-Universität Hamburg

Universität der Bundeswehr München

Technische Universität München

Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Universität Mannheim

FOM Hochschulverband

Hochschule Mannheim

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

Technische Universität Berlin

Technische Universität Hamburg

HTW Berlin

HWR Berlin

Universität Bayreuth

* Figures extrapolated to 10,000

ESCP Berlin ranks #1 in founders per student in Germany

The chart ranks German higher education institutions by start-up intensity: startups founded per 10,000 students. Because it is normalised by student population, it measures entrepreneurial output per student rather than absolute volume.

ESCP Berlin leads with 1,151.1 start-ups per 10,000 students, ahead of HHL Leipzig (1,062.2) and Zeppelin Universität Friedrichshafen (815.2). The top five are all private business schools, while large technical universities such as TU München (182.9) rank far lower on a per-student basis.

Source: Fiedler, M., Heidegger, L., Treffers, T., Welpe, I.M. (2023). Entrepreneurship Performance Deutscher Hochschulen 2023. Chair for Strategy and Organization (TUM). https://www.entrepreneurshipranking.com/german-entrepreneurship-ranking

Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory 7

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Introduction

Investor Insights

Funding Overview

Founder Insights

Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory

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Investor Interview

Growth Equity Investor

Interview with Elena Moneta Managing Director at Balderton Capital (ESCP MiM 2015)

Elena, you studied at ESCP, went on to Morgan Stanley, became an operator at Peppy Health, and eventually made your way through Partech to Balderton. How does that journey connect?

You went from investing in Peppy Health's Seed round to joining as Head of Growth. Vinod Khosla says most VCs haven't earned the right to sit on a board because they've never felt what founders feel. Was that move you earning that right?

That's a question I asked myself too: is one year enough to earn the right? As to your question, today I see both models work well. There are incredibly successful VCs who have never been operators, and ones who have. Both come with a trade-off.

If you spend a decade building a company, you know deeply what it means to operate within that industry, that go-to-market motion, serving that customer, the organization you're building. But you know a lot about one thing. If you spend the same time as a pure investor, you accumulate pattern recognition across different contexts that's also incredibly valuable. There isn't a single right answer.

Honest answer: out of ESCP, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I asked myself what the toughest thing I could do was, and the answer seemed to be investment banking. I went for it, spending a summer and then three years on the equity capital markets team, working on IPOs and large capital issuances. I learned a lot, but realized it wasn't the right long-term fit. I thought I'd move into private equity as a natural next step, but realized I'd still be a small ant in a big machine. I stumbled upon venture capital almost by accident - it wasn't as popular a decade ago. After 3+ years of large banking deals, I wanted to go as far from it as possible, so I joined a very early-stage fund, and that was the start of my investing career. From there, I spent a couple of years investing at pre-seed and seed, a couple at Series A and B at Partech, and now a couple at growth stage at Balderton. So I've slowly made it back to the large deals after all. I also took two years out of investing, one to become an operator and one to do an MBA at INSEAD. The operator parenthesis was really important.

What I can say is that the year at Peppy was the hardest I've ever worked. You're always maybe six months from bankruptcy. In the early days, if you screw up how you spend your go-to-market budget for one month, the company is done. Coming back to the investor side, I now genuinely understand that pressure, as well as the resilience, and speed founders need in order to grow their companies as fast as they do.

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Investor Interview

European tech. It's not saying you have to stay in Europe and can't expand into the US.

Balderton recently led the Series C extension into Quantum Systems, explicitly framing it around European sovereignty in defence and dual-use technology. Is defence-tech a genuine secular shift in European VC, or is it a cycle driven by geopolitics that will cool down?

There is definitely strong momentum for defence investing right now. But the real or broader theme is European resilience, of which defence is one key pillar. And I don't think this is just hype, it's sustainable.

There's been a lot of negativity around Europe versus the US in recent years, debates about who works harder, whether there's enough talent, whether capital markets are open enough, and we think that's wrong. Europe is a fantastic place to build and grow companies. That doesn't mean companies don't eventually go global and go to the US. What we want to remove is the narrative that Europe isn't a great place to build. We took 100 of the most successful founders and companies that started in Europe, many now global and present in the US, to celebrate them and push back on that negative narrative.

There's an acceleration because of current geopolitics, but the deeper reason it's here to stay is structural. NATO has significantly underspent on defence infrastructure for decades. Reports from a few years ago have shown that if certain European countries were attacked, we'd have something between two and five days of ammunition, against a NATOmandated number of thirty. No one has published refreshed numbers since, for obvious reasons.

To your actual question, it depends on the business. For a classic SaaS business, we often tell founders to go to the US earlier than they think, not because the business becomes American, but because capturing that market early matters. Fintech and health plays tend to be more localized, more European in nature. It's case by case.

What's your actual process when tracking a company before a deal is live? How do you build conviction?

The other structural problem is that NATO historically over-invested in sophisticated, expensive systems, while the world has moved toward economic asymmetry, where cheap mass like drones can take out a tank worth twenty or thirty million. We need to fix that misalignment. We led both the Series C and the extension into Quantum Systems, and we remain incredibly bullish on the sector. We look at defence companies every single week.

We start with a big step back and think about where the world is going. At the growth fund, you need certain size outcomes to make your returns, so you need to back the emerging category leader in an enormous market, or one you believe will become enormous. That makes this a proactive, deep-thinking exercise about which areas we should be investing in and why.

Balderton just launched Built in Europe. But founders are still told to flip to Delaware and move to SF by Series A. Honestly: when is building in Europe the right strategy, and when is it a founder's cope?

Built in Europe is, at its core, a celebration of

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Investor Interview

Let’s finish with a quick-fire round:

What's the single most underinvested vertical in European tech right now?

It is not underinvested yet, but we need to do so much more around AI infrastructure and cybersecurity.

In a world of AI, I've never seen so many companies grow so fast, and I started investing eight to ten years ago. But what matters is how sustainable that growth is. Everyone wants to adopt AI right now, so what's the actual revenue quality, the business model, where does the company internalize value versus rely on others, and what gives it a sustainable advantage so it becomes the undisputed category leader in five or ten years, not just on a hyper-growth curve today.

One European founder you would back unconditionally right now?

Gianni Cuozzo from Exein. I would do it a million times over again.

What was the worst life advice you have ever received?

Innovation cycles are also compressing dramatically. We used to invest with a tenyear view, aligned with a fund cycle. Now it's hard to predict the status quo even two or three years out. So at growth stage we increasingly focus on backing teams that can ship product fast, hold strong opinions loosely, and iterate and pivot at speed as the category evolves.

To look at the career and job market based on what worked for people who were successful twenty years ago. We are in a new world now. Forget all of that and just look at what feels right right now.

If a founder reading this is deciding between joining a VC firm at 25 versus going into a startup first, what would you tell them?

The pitch deck slide that kills a deal faster than any due diligence ever could?

When you put three buzzwords on the same slide.

One habit that everyone around you thinks is weird but you swear by?

It depends on your ultimate goal. If you want to become a later-stage investor, you can't skip the basic training, whether that's banking or consulting. That foundation matters. But if your goal is to start your own company and you get the chance to jump on a rocket ship and work close to the founders, that's the right path.

I meditate a lot.

One thing founders consistently lie to investors about?

Their sales pipeline.

Honestly, I think I got lucky with the career I had. In hindsight, the thread connecting it all looks more logical than it felt at the time. I'd do it over again. The one thing I'd change is spending a little longer as an operator.

Favorite book or podcast?

The Hard Thing About Hard Things. If you're an aspiring founder, it'll give you goosebumps too.

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Investor Interview

Early Stage Investor

Interview with Alexandra Reinert Investor at Accel (ESCP BSc 2020)

Alex, you started at ESCP, then went on to LBS, joined a London startup, and then moved through Bain to Venture Capital. Can you share a bit about your background?

to crack it. Both founders were ex-consultants, which got me thinking about the consulting path, but I didn't want to do it the traditional way, so I moved to Paris and joined a small innovation team within Bain, working across San Francisco, London, and Paris. That gave me a front row seat to how big companies think, where they get stuck, and where politics gets in the way of innovation. I realized there's a huge space where startups can fill the gaps big companies can’t.

I'm originally from Luxembourg, where I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. Taking risks to fulfill a vision was normal on a day to day basis, so I've always been fascinated by entrepreneurship on one side and technology on the other. One of the historical figures I've always admired is Da Vinci: an artist, an anatomist, but also an engineer. That combination of curiosity across many fields, paired with the audacity to chase an almost impossible vision, is very similar to what modern entrepreneurship demands.

Around three years ago, I decided I wanted to be back on the builder side, but still help many founders at once, and venture capital was the marriage of both. I first moved to MMC, an earlier stage, deeply technical, research led fund focused on AI and infrastructure. Last year, I joined Accel. What drew me to Accel is the ambition ceiling: we back founders on the quest to be category defining and solve the impossible, with a strong European conviction while still building to a global standard. Here I stay close to the frontier missions I care about: AI, robotics, defence, and more.

By the time I was at ESCP, tech and entrepreneurship were already my two biggest obsessions, so my whole experience there was built around that: internships in startups and bigger tech companies, and a thesis on smart cities, since that's where everything I cared about came together. I'd go to conferences where I was clearly the youngest and least qualified person in the room, but did it anyway. Being around people ten or twenty years ahead of you and trying to be a sponge is the best way to learn.

In typical career journeys, people move from consulting or banking into startups. What's the first month truth nobody tells you about switching between these worlds?

I think you just learn how to figure things out. You're thrown in the deep end, and people don't have time to coach you or show you exactly the path you need to take, so you have to work it out yourself.

After ESCP, I did a master's at LBS, where I got introduced to the founder of Otto, a fintech he was just launching. I jumped in as effectively employee number one, and being in a very early stage startup means you get thrown into an impossible mission and have to find a way

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Investor Interview

When you're young and agile, you get used to that, and I think it's one of the most valuable skills to have today.

in ARR in just eight months, making it one of the fastest growing software companies globally, and it has since reached a five hundred million revenue run rate. Just one year after launching at Slush, they'd already opened offices in Europe, Boston, and San Francisco, and in June they announced London and New York as well. It's a prime example of an application layer company with deep European roots operating at a truly global scale.

There's been a lot of debate recently about whether Europe can compete with the US and China on foundational models, with the consensus being that Europe simply isn't catching up. If the foundational model race isn't one Europe can win, where do you think Europe can actually become a category leader?

Let’s finish with a quick-fire round:

You're big into golf and skiing. Where have you had your best investment idea or thesis: on the ski lift, or on the golf course?

Anywhere combining sports and outdoors is where my mind is clearest

Europe is already building category leaders in AI on a global scale. On one side you have world class universities at the forefront of AI research, and big tech companies building strong AI research presence across the region. Europe is very well positioned to take advantage of the rise of AI, and I think our roots in applied maths and AI have produced a generation of founders who are now building global champions out of here.

Robots or LLMs: which one is actually changing the world in the next two, five, or ten years?

LLMs win the next two years, physical AI win the ten. LLMs had quasi free distribution, an API call and you're live. Robots have to earn every deployment in the physical world - the curve is slower but with a much higher ceiling.

What's your current go-to podcast, or your all-time favorite book?

The Kite Runner.

We already have exceptional companies across many layers of the stack. From our own portfolio, we have Nebius on the infrastructure side and Fractile on the chip side, and then global champions at the application layer such as Lovable and Legora. AI is one of the most transformative technologies today, and it really acts as a time compressor. We're seeing companies hit revenue milestones faster than ever, reach unicorn valuations within two to three years of founding, which we've never seen before, and expand globally much faster too.

What's the AI application you personally use the most that has nothing to do with work?

Claude.

What's the best and worst life advice you've received?

Lovable is a great example of growth that's essentially unprecedented. They have more than fifty million projects built on the platform to date, with over one million new projects created every week, and projects built on Lovable now get more than seven hundred and twenty million visits per month. Lovable went from one million to one hundred million

The best: nothing is impossible. The worst: be patient.

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Introduction

Investor Insights

Funding Overview

Founder Insights

Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory

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Funding in Q2 2026

# Company HQ Founder Stage Investors

1 Tim Niekamp Series A $11.0M

2 Ali Khachlouf Seed $18.0M

Pre-Seed

3 Ghali Bennani

$2.5M

Laafiret

Grant &

4 Elizabeth

Müller

APO $55.0M

Pre-Seed

5 Jeremy Skowronek

$1.9M

6 Abhinav Soni Pre-Seed

$0.5M

7 Frederic

Marin

Grant $5.9M

8 Clément

Ouizille

Series C $47.1M

9 Bastien Deliège-

Seed $4.0M

Coste

10 Yann Chilvers Seed $5.4M

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Funding in Q2 2026

# Company HQ Founder Stage Investors

Venture

11 Ilies Larbi

Round $3.5M

12 Federico Leis

Debt Financing

$0.5M

13 Louis Schmidlin

Seed $3.5M

Pre-Seed

14 Matteo Bossolini

$1.8M

Venture

15 Vincent Pavanello

Round $11.4M

Venture

Luca Cartechini &

Round

Gian Maria

NA

Gramondi

17 Erlend Dugstad

Grant $0.1M

18 Elizabeth

Müller

IPO $40.0M

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Q2 Funding Round

Company Overview

Company Overview

Investors

HTGF

eCAPITAL

APX

VisioLab is a foodtech startup building AI-powered selfcheckout systems for high-traffic venues. The platform combines real-time item recognition, POS, and payment in one tablet-based setup to cut queues and boost throughput.

zwei.7

Tim Niekamp Iwo Leonhard Gernemann

Co-Founder Co-Founder

Founded

Series A $11.0M

Location Osnabrück

Company Overview

Investors

Bpifrance

Calm/Storm VC

SquareMind is a medtech startup building Swan, a fullbody dermoscopy robot. The device automates skin mapping and scanning, using AI-driven change detection to make skin exams faster and more accessible.

Teampact ventures

Sonder Capital

Adamed Pharma

MSc, 2020 MiM, NA

Ali Khachlouf

Co-Founder Co-Founder Tanguy Serrat

Location

Founded

Seed $18.0M

Paris

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Q2 Funding Round

Company Overview

Company Overview

Investors

Antler

Plug and Play

Sure Valley Ventures

Ralio is a UK-based fintech startup building the trust layer for agentic business payments. The platform verifies AI agent identity, enforces spend limits, and logs a full audit trail before any transaction executes, letting businesses safely let AI agents pay invoices and manage treasury.

Love Ventures

rule30

MiM, 2018

Campus Fund

Seed-X

Co-Founder Co-Founder Ghali Bennani Laafiret Leonardo Rosales

Endurance Ventures

Pre-Seed

Location

Founded

Adeline Arts & Science

$2.5M

London

Alan Morgan

Company Overview

Investors

ARPAE (US Department of Energy)

Deep Isolation is a nuclear waste disposal company focused on deep borehole technology. The company develops and licenses engineered solutions that isolate radioactive materials underground, enabling governments and operators to manage waste safely and permanently.

MiM, 2001

Elizabeth Müller

Founder

Grant+APO

Founded

$55.0M

Location Berkeley

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Q2 Funding Round

Company Overview

Company Overview

Investors

Bpifrance

NewSchool.vc

Sowefund

NotiPark is a France-based mobility tech startup building automated payment for street parking. A patented locator badge detects when a car parks and leaves, starting and stopping the paid session automatically to eliminate missed payments and parking tickets.

N1 investment company

Jeremy Skowronek

Founder

Pre-Seed

Location

Founded

$1.9M

Paris

Company Overview

Investors

Y Combinator

Bento builds self-learning production infrastructure for AI agents. The platform records detailed session traces, flags when agents start failing, and auto-generates reusable fixes, helping teams catch problems early and continuously improve performance.

MSc, 2022 MiM, 2025

Abhinav Soni

Co-Founder Co-Founder Kaushik ASP

Pre-Seed

Founded

$0.5M

Location S.Francisco

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Other Y Combinator Startups

ESCP Startups that got into Y Combinator

Y Combinator is a prestigious startup accelerator that provides seed funding, mentorship, and resources to early-stage companies, helping them launch and grow. The program is highly competitive, with an acceptance rate of around 1% and lasts for three months, concluding with a "Demo Day," where startups pitch to investors.

BentoLabs AI Impact Drones autarc TeamOut

Name

Logo

Abhinav Soni

ESCP Founder

Alessandro Fiume Thies Hansen & Etienne Noel Krause Thomas Mazimann

HQ

S.Francisco S.Francisco Berlin S.Francisco

YC Batch

YC P26 YC S26 YC S24 YC W22

AI Infrastructure Defence Heating Pumps SaaS

Sector

Lago Diligent Moneco Malibou

Name

Logo

Anh-Tho Chuong Edoardo Maschio Bilal Dahlab Alexandre Pernin

ESCP Founder

HQ

Paris London Paris Paris

YC S21 YC S23 YC S22 YC W24

YC Batch

Fintech Fintech Fintech SaaS

Sector

and more

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Q2 Funding Round

Company Overview

Company Overview

Investors

European Commission USIL Therapeutics is a biopharma startup developing treatments that protect people from radiation exposure. The company is building two formulations, an autoinjector and an IV infusion, to protect civilian, defence, and space personnel before and after radiological events.

Frederic Marin Valentin Wiedling

Co-Founder Co-Founder

Founded

Grant $5.9M

Location Luxembourg

Company Overview

Investors

Circeus is an AI-native B2B software holding company that specializes in acquiring vertical and workflow software businesses.

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

MiM, NA

MSc, 1999 MiM, NA

Luca Cartechini

Co-Founder Co-Founder Gian Maria Gramondi

Venture

Location

Founded

Round

London

NA

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Q2 Funding Round

Company Overview

Company Overview

Investors

HPI Ventures

Caesar Ventures

Antler

Qorelo is a Berlin-based AI startup building an automation platform for SAP transformation. The company helps enterprises automate migration workflows, fit-gap analysis, and configuration tasks to accelerate SAP projects and reduce manual work.

Angel Invest

Adesso Ventures

BSc, 2024

10x Founders

Louis Schmidlin Nicholas Torabi

Marino Kurtović

Co-Founder Co-Founder Co-Founder

Location

Founded

Seed $3.5M

Berlin

Company Overview

Investors

Italian Founders Fund

Vento

Nova Venture

Cato is a Milan-based AI startup building an automation platform for public procurement. The company helps businesses find, analyze, and respond to public tenders by automating document analysis, bid preparation, and compliance workflows.

Moonstone

Italian Angels for Growth

MSc, 2026

Heartfelt Capital

Matteo Bossolini

Co-Founder Co-Founder Andrea Zorzetto

B Heroes

Alecla7

Pre-Seed

Location

Founded

$1.8M

Milan

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Q2 Funding Round

Company Overview

Company Overview

Investors

Fongit Backbone is a Geneva-based proptech startup building an AI-powered platform for real estate marketing. The company helps agents create property visuals, listings, and transaction documents faster by automating content creation and marketing workflows.

MiM, 2016

Federico Leis Dorian de Vinck

Antoine Tomasini

Co-Founder Co-Founder Co-Founder

Location

Founded

Debt Financing

Geneva

$0.5M

Company Overview

Investors

n.a.

Ouinex is a Paris-based fintech startup building a multiasset trading platform. The company enables users to trade crypto and traditional financial assets through a single platform with transparent execution and professional trading tools.

MSc, 2009

Ilies Larbi

+ Benjamin Verdot

Co-Founder Co-Founder Jérôme Barthe

Co-Founder Alexandre Debieb

Venture

Location

Founded

Paris

Round $3.5M

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Q2 Funding Round

Company Overview

Company Overview

Investors

Daphni

Entrepreneurs First

Certo is a software platform that automates regulatory and product compliance for cosmetics and broader consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands using AI.

Motier Ventures

Transpose Platform

MiM, 2016

Bastien Deliège-Coste Jean Duquenne

Co-Founder Co-Founder

Founded

Seed $4.0M

Location San Francisco

Company Overview

Investors

Forestay

Mundi Ventures

Convelio is a digital freight forwarder specializing in international shipping for fine art and design, with instant online quotes and end-to-end logistics.

Acton Capital

MSc, 2015

Clément Ouizille

Co-Founder Co-Founder Edouard Gouin

Location

Founded

Series C $47.1M

Paris

Page 25

Q2 Funding Round

Company Overview

Company Overview

Investors

Hi Inov

HTGF

Covalo is a B2B marketplace and data platform that connects cosmetics brands with ingredient suppliers and service providers for product development.

seed+speed Ventures

MiM, 2016

Yann Chilvers Timo von Bargen Co-Founder Co-Founder

Location

Founded

Seed $5.4M

Zurich

Company Overview

Investors

Berlin Startup Scholarship

Streetwise is a safety-tech startup that helps pedestrians navigate cities more confidently, especially at night. The app calculates routes based on lighting, infrastructure, and community reports, and adds features like AI companion calls and live tracking, to make walking home feel safer.

MiM, 2026

Erlend Dugstad

Founder

Location

Founded

Grant $0.1M

Paris

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Q2 Funding Round

Company Overview

Company Overview

Investors

Momentum Invest

199 Ventures

Mister IA is a Paris-based consulting and training firm focused on generative AI adoption for businesses. The company offers strategic audits, custom AI development, and employee training programs.

MiM, NA

Vincent Pavanello Martin Pavanello Co-Founder Co-Founder

Location

Founded

Seed $11.4M

Paris

Company Overview

Investors

IPO (NASDAQ: FISN)

Deep Fission develops underground nuclear reactors using deep borehole technology for safer, cost-efficient energy generation. The company focuses on SMR systems deployed deep below the surface to reduce construction costs, to enable low-carbon baseload power

MiM, 2001

Elizabeth Müller

Founder

Founded

IPO $40.0M

Location Berkeley

Page 27

Introduction

Investor Insights

Funding Overview

Founder Insights

Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory Alternative Investment Society ESCP Blue Factory

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Founder Interview

Co-Founder

Interview with Louis Schmidlin Co-Founder of Qorelo (ESCP BSc 2024)

Could you tell us about yourself and your founder journey — your background, your experience, and how you came up with the idea for Qorelo?

instead because I always felt misunderstood, like I wasn't using my full potential, whether in finance, consulting, or international relations. I believe in young startups that can change the world, bring innovation, and do things differently. Now we have hundreds of users using the product daily.

My name is Louis, and I'm one of the cofounders of Qorelo, a Berlin-based AI company working on AI for SAP transformation.

What made you fall in love with this problem, and what's your motivation for doing a startup?

My background: I'm originally Swiss, but I lived in many different countries growing up, and quite frequently.

The space we're solving, SAP consulting, is extremely manual work. That's what made me unhappy doing this kind of transformation myself. I felt like I was operating far under my real potential. I remember running around 800 workshops with a single client just to gather requirements, and seeing firsthand how inefficient these transformations actually are.

I started my first company when I was 19, in the aviation sector, where I scaled a business from the ground up to around ten employees and successfully exited it. That was my first real touchpoint with entrepreneurship. I've always believed in the fundamental value startups create for the overall economy, and in how you can change the status quo through your own ideas and initiatives.

Consultants, with their day-rate incentives, don't always have the motivation to work in the most optimized way since those inefficiencies actually benefit them. That really bothered me, and it's what drove me to want to change it.

After that, I went to ESCP and explored a more "classical" path for a while. I went into investment banking in a fairly traditional way, and later into strategy and transformation consulting, where I encountered firsthand the problem we're now solving. I saw how much friction there was in SAP transformations, and how technology was never really used to make the process more efficient. Out of that, my cofounder and I founded Qorelo.

What motivates me day to day is finding a space that isn't the most attractive on the surface but is so overlooked and legacy that there's enormous potential to change something. There's a lot of value hidden in "boring" businesses, and that gives me a lot of purpose every day, together with my wonderful team.

I always felt somewhat torn. I tried different paths. I even went into diplomacy and was set to become a diplomat for Switzerland, but I turned that down to start this company

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Founder Interview

What's been the biggest lesson you've learned from building an enterprise software startup?

deadline and building momentum. You need investors to feel like they're missing out if they don't move. You prepare extremely well, build a strong data room, and time good news to land during the process, like closing a new customer.

It becomes about storytelling, making people believe you're building something that could become a unicorn, not just a business that makes millions.

The choice of your co-founders is absolutely essential. It shapes the dynamic and energy you bring to the table because building a startup is genuinely hard. A big mistake founders make is only thinking about the next few months instead of five or ten years ahead. The same applies to relationships. You can never underestimate the importance of reputation. It can take months or years of consistent touchpoints to build trust, and you need to keep giving proof points and never be afraid to follow up.

Closing question: If you were an ESCP student today who wanted to start a company, would you recommend building something immediately, or getting consulting/finance experience first?

Looking back at your fundraising process, what actually differentiated the investors you wanted around the table, beyond the size of the cheque?

I'd still encourage everyone to start a company if they have a real obsession with a topic. But there's a lot of value in working at a fastmoving startup first. Nobody cares anymore whether you worked at UBS or McKinsey unless you made partner.

It's a misconception that VCs simply choose the startups they invest in. I'm not afraid to tell one directly when something's not working. A co-founder relationship is a bit like a marriage, and the same is true with investors. You really need to like them personally, and the relationship should feel natural.

Understanding startup dynamics, how to raise, how to build a go-to-market pipeline, helps a lot. There's never a wrong time to just try it, and either way, you'll come out smarter than when you went in.

For me, it's all about how operational the investor actually is, making real introductions, listening when I raise challenges, and not just telling me to increase revenue and cut costs. I also do reference checks on VCs, asking which of their portfolio companies struggled and talking to that founder directly.

In your opinion, what was the most important thing that helped you raise your round?

Fundraising is all about creating a tight

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Authors

Florian Trepetschnigg Head of Venture Capital

Richard Križan Venture Capital Analyst

Max Södermann Venture Capital Analyst

Andreas Schneid Incubator Manager of Blue Factory

Maëva Tordo Director & Head of Blue Factory

Media Partner