It's hard to wake up in 2024 without reading about another big funding round in an enterprise AI company. Intuition, a new venture capital firm based in Paris, is doing something radical by betting solely on consumer technology.
Behind the scenes, Hugo Amselem (pictured left) and Etienne Boutin (pictured right) will be the new fund's general partners. Hugo Amsellem works at Jellysmack and has been writing about consumer technology and influencers for several years. It also includes a very interesting article about loneliness and how it affects consumer technology and culture.
Amsellem is also best known as one of the first employees of The Family, an iconic startup accelerator based in Paris. Lately, people have been talking about The Family due to the ongoing lawsuit against his co-founder Osama Ammar. He is believed to have diverted millions of euros to his own benefit.
Amselem left The Family in 2019. When we talked about this part of his career, he said that while he was disappointed to see how things ended, he wants to move on.
As for Etienne Boutin, he started his career as a professional basketball player. Prior to founding Intuition, he co-founded AI startup Heex Technologies.
Together, the two raised initial funding of 15 million euros ($16 million at current exchange rates). They have already invested in several consumer startups in Europe and the US after their first closing, and are still actively raising capital.
The company also hired Axel Tupane (NBA Champion), Elliott Kessas (co-founder of Daring), and Erika Batista (general partner of On Deck Runway Fund) as venture partners.
“Hugo and I are among the most active early-stage investors in consumer startups in Europe, and with the addition of Axel, Elliott and Erica as venture partners, we are in the heart of Europe, in the US “We wanted to make sure we could expand our coverage in San Francisco's consumer technology and Los Angeles' culture,” said Etienne Boutin.
Intuition's investment theory is very simple. There is currently a lack of investment in consumer technology. That's because investing in consumers and culture has historically been a bit risky for two reasons.
First, if you're working on a fun mobile app or the next big social network, it's hard to generate revenue. Sometimes it feels like we're either working on the next unicorn or we're going to end up with Deadpool.
Second, consumer-focused tech companies like Meta, ByteDance, and Snap are simply dominating…Certainly, some of the big tech companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon are They bought companies and turned them into major consumer platforms like Instagram and YouTube. Twitchy. However, it feels like this acquisition window has closed.
“It's not very cool to work on consumer these days because the consumer space has been failing for five to seven years and there's not a lot of liquidity,” Amselem told me.
“All the funds that have seen this underperformance and have been able to put in a lot of money because they have raised a lot of money, they still say, ‘Yes, we do consumer trades,’ but they don’t say it. “I won’t put it out.’ It’s too loud,” he added. “In fact, this is an opportunity for us.”
At the same time, a lot of smart people are still working on consumer products. Think BeReal, Amo, Retro, and The Browser Company. Innovation never stops and some of these companies will succeed.
And with the current pace of innovation in artificial intelligence, Intuition expects new and interesting things to happen in this space.
That's why Intuition wants to support the next wave of consumer companies. The VC firm plans to invest between €100,000 and €500,000 at the pre-seed or seed stage. The company plans to invest in more than 40 companies with its initial funds.
“There's only one theme I want to work on, and that's the consumer and everything adjacent to the consumer – anything that changes culture,” Amselem said.
Intuition is VC+ event
“I don't think there is room for a €30 million consumer fund focused solely on consumer products,” Amselem said. Adding events on top of investments should increase Intuition's revenue and help the company hire a larger team and make smarter bets.
So the company wants to create a community of consumer and culture people so they can learn from each other and find the next big thing together.
Intuition is launching a series of events co-hosted with other leading VC firms, including Felix Capital (London), a16z (New York), Greylock (Los Angeles), and General Catalyst (San Francisco). Later this year, the tour will culminate with Intuition's flagship event on September 20th at Station F in Paris.
This event strategy reminds me of Jason Lemkin's SaaStr conference. SaaStr's main conference will draw 15,000 people, but Intuition is still at its starting point. The new company plans to invite several hundred people to its first event. But it's interesting to see VC firms taking consumer technology seriously again.