The Family Gets €15M

Bigger. Better. It’s Day One again.

The last 5 years have been such a ride:

• 500+ startups in the Fellowship, 200+ still active
• €1B+ in total value now within the portfolio
• Thousands of hours of YouTube videos, hundreds of articles, dozens of dinners, one quickly abandoned podcast 😂
• 300+ events with incredible speakers including Tim Ferriss, Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Seth Godin, John Collison (Stripe), Sam Altman (Y Combinator), Paul Graham, Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise), Andrew Chen (a16z, Uber), Gustaf Alströmer (Airbnb, Y Combinator) and top execs from European giants N26, Zalando, BlaBlaCar, Delivery Hero, Auto1, Lesara, Doctolib, and SkyScanner.

We’ve talked for years about how toxicity in Europe hurts entrepreneurs. We’ve been lucky to find people who agree with us on a lot of things — our entrepreneurs, sure, but also great companies like Index Ventures, Accel, Hummingbird, Project A, Connect, Cherry Ventures, and so many others. We’re proud to be part of an entrepreneurial world in Europe that’s getting healthier and stronger.

There’s still a ton of work left to do, but we know that barriers to entrepreneurship can be broken down. It all starts with a small group of super committed people.

That’s how The Family started 5 years ago.

And we’re still going.

Over the years, people have always struggled to define us. But it’s pretty clear to us that the best thing is to just say that

The Family is a family.

Like any good family, we educate, support and finance our members. We do it with care, we work really hard, and we love every minute of it!

With, Alice, Nicolas, and Balthazar, we set out to develop the best infrastructure for entrepreneurs, giving them resources and room to grow. Nothing is standard — everything is customized and on-demand.

Back in the day, it was just a little apartment and fuzzy photos…

Since the beginning, The Family’s thesis has remained the same:

• You can teach entrepreneurs to be more ambitious. Ok, Europe doesn’t have the same entrepreneurial legacy like in the US or China. That doesn’t mean we can’t do something to make up for it. We just have to work harder, get the right mindset, and take advantage of our local differences. The first step is creating authentic and caring relationships among entrepreneurs.

We learn together, and things come into focus.

• Anyone can become an entrepreneur. Too many people think that becoming a founder isn’t open to them. They hear people telling them that they can’t be entrepreneurs, whether because of their age, their social background, their gender… As long as no one strongly believes and acts differently, things will stay the same. But The Family is creating new models — we’re opening the doors of business with our free educational programs and we welcome and promote new faces in entrepreneurship. These are the examples that can now inspire others.

Bring people together, let them hang out, eat, drink together, and magic can happen.

• Long term happens on a daily basis. With The Family we’re seeing the rise of a new generation of entrepreneurs, ones who are more rebellious and who have a fresh take on how to solve the world’s problems. Others might look at what they’ve done, we look at what they can do, and keep upping the bar even once they’re considered to be successful. We aren’t worried about batches or when you enter The Family — we know that what we have in mind will take decades. We’re structured to support people for a very long time. There will be daily progress, but also the deeply held belief that no matter what happened today, you can always go bigger and harder.

No matter where you are, you know when you’re at The Family.

Ok, so it’s always cool to celebrate a fundraising. But now we need to turn that money into a 10x return, so how are we gonna do it?

1. Reinforce the Fellowship. We’re going to have more experts, from all around the world, more entrepreneurs-in-residence, and every best practice founders need to turn their startups into high-growth machines. Peer-to-peer learning is the best support you can find in a world where things completely change from one day to another.
2. Trade is the best way to build relationships. So we’re going to be building more service companies that generate massive cash flows. Right now we have Pathfinder (providing strategic advice and startup-building for corporations), Lion (free training for those want to become startup employees and programs for corporate employees who need to understand the new ways of working in the digital world), and Kymono (startup outfits and swag). A big part of these funds will go into building 12 new service companies this year, because that’s how we’ll realize our ambition of perpetual cash flows that sustain our evergreen structure.
3. We are going to launch an automatic follow-up fund that will invest in any company in The Family’s portfolio that raises a seed or Series A round (up to €1M), in a purely supportive way. We’ll follow the same terms as the lead investor, and it’s available to 100% of our companies so that there aren’t any signaling issues. Like always, our mission is to support our Entrepreneurs as a Family.

Why did LGT invest with us?

Ivan sent us a wonderful quote for our press release: “LGT Capital Partners and The Family have completed a landmark transaction which firmly aligns our interests. As a long-term investor and early believer in European venture capital, we are proud to be partnering with The Family to continue and expand our support for emerging entrepreneurs across the European continent.”

This quote sums it all up.

Landmark — Yes, because it was incredibly complex. The Family is not a normal structure, and to be honest it was a very messy one. For LGT, originality is fine, but messiness is not. So we had to dig around, inspecting all of the tentacles that emerge from The Family and cleaning everything up (thanks Léa!). It meant transferring rights in 150+ companies and collecting 10,000+ signatures. Totally worth it — our new structure is as beautiful as Notre Dame (in our eyes ;), with everything in place and ready for any future due diligence. Growing up is never easy, but with LGT it was a great thing to do.

Aligns our interests — Yes, because The Family is an evergreen fund, and finding people who are willing to make an evergreen investment is really difficult in our short-term world. LGT is a family-owned institution that knows what “long term” means, and they’re ready to gaze out at the horizon with us. Plus, since what we’re building is complementary to traditional VC funds, we don’t compete with any of LGT’s VC interests.

Early believer — Yes, because they were in venture back when no one else was even aware that it was a thing. And when things crashed in 2000, they doubled down, which is exactly what courageous, inspired people do when things get tough.

In the end, this isn’t just an investment but a real partnership based on mutual respect and a profound joy in working together. Over the years, we’ve met with lots of institutional investors. But we were immediately impressed by the quality and commitment of LGT’s team. It’s taken 12 months to complete this transaction, and it has been an incredible experience. They are smart, driven by the long term, and super honest. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better strategic investor.

And by the way, LGT’s buy-in wasn’t just with a few people, it was with the whole team. They took the time to meet and talk with everyone, not just our top executives. That’s the touch of magic that we really appreciate at The Family.

Ready?