Why deep tech founders should consider partnering with generalist VCs

As deep tech matures, partnering with generalist VCs brings unique benefits: broader market vision, proven scaling playbooks, diverse operational talent, and strategic connections for growth and exits

As deep tech ecosystems expand rapidly, founders often face a strategic choice: should they partner exclusively with specialized deep tech investors, or is there also significant value in collaborating with generalist VCs?

Based on our (admittedly biased!) experience at Alven, here are 5 reasons why generalist venture capital can uniquely complement verticalized expertise and drive outsized impact for deep tech startups:

1. Broader market perspectives and cross-sector insights

Generalist VCs work across diverse industries, providing a panoramic view of market dynamics. This broad perspective can help deep tech founders identify unconventional applications for their technologies, amplifying market opportunities beyond their immediate sectors.

More specifically, as techbio grows and various business models are being iterated on at the crossroads of software and life sciences, we believe that there might be a tendency among biotech funds to apply biotech playbooks, which could be detrimental to finding the unique road to market and to revenue from the ground up and based on customer-based iterations.

As an example, recent discussions we had with a techbio company to accelerate discussion cycles with pharma companies were inspired from cybersecurity and marketing tech: surfacing potential ROI from using the solution based on public data and the customer’s data before a discussion to build a tailored and compelling business base and improve conversion.

2. Strong network of complementary founders and experts

The goal of deep tech scaling is to become mainstream. When we at Alven invested in Dataiku in 2015 or Cardiologs in 2019, the company was founded, not by researchers, but by developers with strong and bleeding-edge data science skills. Fast forward to today, the companies have become category-defining leaders with a scale and market share making these companies “mainstream tech”.

These scaling journeys have been accelerated by advisors, board members, and tactical help coming from various industries, which create innovative and creative points of view on their traditional domain space. This is the type of network more generalist VCs maintain and is how they think of their network.

3. Building up teams with interdisciplinary backgrounds and scaling mindset

Bringing a deep tech product or service to life requires strong research and scientific background among the team to craft and fine-tune the technology behind the product. Then, bringing this product to the market, taking care of its customers, finding the right to frame and message the value proposition, iterate towards the right business model to turn it into a business and then hire and structure an organization to turn this into a proper company require a whole different set of skills.

The business acumen and experience with hundreds of execs across different sectors are a great asset for investors with more generalist background when it comes to hiring for these functions - engineering leadership, product management, customer success, partnerships and BD, admin and finance.

A recent example of this is a techbio company with a strong tech edge but limited go-to-market experience whose pipeline expanded 4x in a few quarters after onboarding a senior leader who has been involved in scaling the pharma practice within a tech company.

4. Supporting scalable go-to-market strategies and business models

Generalist VCs can help scaling businesses commercially. While deep tech teams excel in technical innovation, translating breakthroughs into viable products often demands complementary expertise in product management, marketing, and sales. Generalist VCs bring extensive experience and playbooks from scaling various business models—valuable guidance that can significantly shorten paths to market success.

This is especially the case for techbio companies, where business models can span across service fees, model and platform licence fees, but also fixed-fee milestones + royalties (as will be covered in the Techbio series coming up).

5. Greater access to follow-on capital and exit opportunities

Generalist VCs frequently maintain strong relationships with later-stage investors, corporate VCs, and strategic acquirers across various sectors. This extensive network significantly enhances startups' access to growth-stage funding and strategic exit opportunities, much more than being labeled as « too biotechy » for example, with both the value proposition, the founders’ profile and the investor base being exclusively linked to biotech.

Optionality for downstream interest for deep tech founders is of great value, especially in a field notoriously known as very capital intensive (although I have been mitigating this point in my previous post).

Alven's approach: leveraging a generalist perspective for deep tech

At Alven, our generalist background uniquely positions us to help deep tech founders navigate from lab to market. Our collaboration with startups combine specialized technical diligence where we get up to speed based on research and network, but will never pretend we can guide founders in the next frontier of their own scientific field (just as we wouldn’t in a SaaS startup either - founders are on the battlefield, not us), with a broad commercial and strategic lens that we believe is all the more complementary to most deep tech founders as they are usually bringing the scientific edge to the table themselves.

Deep tech investment opportunity for a generalist VC platform

Why traditional VCs are doubling down on deep tech—and why it’s not about hype, but strategic opportunity.

“So you folks are now focusing more on deep tech, right?”

With dozens of Hello Tomorrow side events unfolding this week, it’s a question I’m hearing repeatedly.

Indeed, at Alven, we’re dedicating increasing time and attention to founders building in sectors like techbio, industrial automation, semiconductors, and new space. Far from chasing a fleeting trend, venturing deeper into these emerging frontiers aligns with:

(i) talent inflows, (ii) market opportunities, and (iii) our inherent curiosity and relevance.

Talent inflow: blurring the lines between researchers and entrepreneurs

Investment decisions at the early stage invariably hinge on the quality of founders and their ability to scale transformative projects. Today, deep tech sectors are seeing unprecedented talent migration:

Researchers turning entrepreneurs

Approximately 40% of deep tech founders now come from academic backgrounds, marking a clear shift from labs to entrepreneurship. The current elephant in the room here is obviously AI researchers launching a startup. Programs like DeepTech Founders and the EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative, aiming to skill one million individuals in deep tech by 2025, exemplify this trend.

Experienced founders starting again in deep tech

Founders previously successful in digital and software sectors are shifting focus to deep tech, driven by impactful opportunities, curiosity about scientific topics and strong defensibility now that they have first experience in company building and first successes and scars.

Better matchmaking between scientific and business profiles

Increasing collaboration between business leaders and researchers has fueled more commercially viable ventures. Structures like EntrepreneurFirst have systematized this approach, but hopefully that is happening organically as well. The founding duet at Aqemia, an AI-driven drug discovery company, or the management setup at SeqOne, a next-gen sequencing data decision-making platform are perfect examples of combining business acumen with research excellence.

Market opportunity: investing in potential long-term differentiated monopolies

While traditional SaaS markets face saturation and diminishing returns, getting easier and easier to launch but harder and harder to scale — deep tech, being based on new scientific or engineering breakthroughs being brought to market for the first time, offers distinct advantages:

Solving the world’s most pressing issues

While software has been busy “eating the world”, it really has eaten the world of bits so far, enhancing productivity in a variety of sectors. The world of atoms has been less affected so far, while being lower in the Maslow pyramid of needs, in the form of access to healthcare, shelter (energy, climate), but also making science move forward. Working on this kind of hard problems is not only gratifying, but also helps attract talent, good intentions and attention around the project. How cool does “curing cancer with AI” sound?

Defensibility and strategic asset value

Deep tech ventures develop proprietary, complex technologies creating potentially significant competitive barriers. These offer a higher initial hurdle to product at all, and product-market fit second, but improved defensibility once they are launched, potentially resulting in the monopolistic positions Thiel’s fanboys and fangirls are dreaming about.

As Tom Perkins (yes, of Kleiner Perkins) said, “market risk is inversely proportional to technical risk, because if you solve a truly difficult technical problem, you will face minimal competition”.

Stable demand and reduced cyclicality

Deep tech sectors often align with long term megatrends which seem very much like the shape of things to come, creating and underpinning long term movement to smooth out the shorter term cycles:

• living and aging healthily (from penicillin to techbio)

• cleaner and more efficient energy (from coal to nuclear fusion)

• more powerful computers (from Ada Lovelace to GB10s)

• more productive industrial output (from steam machines to robotics)

• pushing the boundaries of exploration of the universe (from Magellan to Falcon 9)

It’s hard to bet against these trends, which in turn fosters public support initiatives, with programs like the European Innovation Council (EIC) investing €10 billion from 2021-2027 specifically to back deep tech startups.

Attractive Exits and Investment Returns

Differentiated, potentially oligopolistic market positions drive superior valuation among buyers, especially as some behemoths (e.g. pharma companies) are de facto outsourcing their innovation roadmap to their M&A teams. As an example, over half of Roche’s R&D budget is through acquisitions.

Recent high-profile exits underline this trend—such as Darktrace’s $5.3 billion buyout by Thoma Bravo. According to Dealroom’s 2025 Deep Tech Report, deep tech-focused VC funds consistently outperform traditional tech funds, achieving net IRRs of around 16% compared to 10% in regular tech (not sure these IRR stats are a great news overall but you get the point).

Exit paths are also more predictable, deep tech companies don’t necessarily need to reach a massive business scale before attracting buyers, relying on strong team, IP and technological assets, as well as a potential shortcut to regulatory hurdles.

Capital Intensity: myth or reality?

Deep tech financing is often followed with deep pockets needed to fund long technological development cycles before revenue kicks in. However, the combination of (i) potential upfront payment from big, long-term contracts, (ii) grants and subsidy initiatives, and (iii) potential debt-based financing thanks to real-world assets being used as collateral help debunk this myth. When looking at the data from the European Deep Tech report, 3 main ideas emerge:

• Purposeful capital allocation: While deep tech startups indeed require higher initial capital, most of this investment builds lasting value through infrastructure and intellectual property rather than transient expenses like marketing.

• Comparable revenue milestones: Contrary to widespread assumptions, the timeline and capital required for deep tech startups to reach initial revenue milestones (e.g., $1 million in annual revenue) are similar to those of traditional tech startups. The divergence emerges primarily at mid-growth stages, where additional capital supports larger-scale infrastructure investments, subsequently accelerating long-term revenue growth​.

• Similar Exit Timelines: Deep tech startups achieve exits on timelines comparable to conventional tech ventures, with most exits occurring around 6-7 years post-founding. The misconception that deep tech inherently demands significantly longer periods to reach liquidity events is thus unfounded​

In addition to investment opportunity considerations, we also think our generalist VC track-record and way of partnering with founders offers high leverage and is complementary to deep tech vertical approaches, which I’ll cover in the next post, before going down the rabbithole of techbio.

Enjoy the ride!

What will happen in 2020: the year of sustainability in tech?

Following yesterday's post about what happened in the French tech / VC scene in 2019, here's a "prediction" post about I think will happen in 2020.

Prediction posts may seem arrogant. ‘Who’s that muppet who thinks he can predict what’s gonna happen this year?’ is a rightful thought.

The goal is mostly to (i) force myself to structure my own thoughts and stand by them, and improve mental models and (ii) to generate deep and fruitful discussions with people.

As I write these things, two big trends seem to underpin these 10 predictions: making tech beneficial to agents that used to be left behind and being more thoughtful in company building. Hence, there appears to be a sense of sustainability in more of these predictions… let’s hope so.

So here we go, let’s take the leap!

1. More and more startups will target non-tech SMBs as customers

2019 was the year when a lot of startups selling software and/or service to other tech startups started blossoming, helped by record VC money amounts invested which created new cash-rich customers, and a high level of tech-savviness. This created a lot of companies in the finance, HR and productivity spaces.

However, as concerns grow around the macroeconomic situations and as founders and investors alike start to realize that tech startups as a customer group might be too niche to create a large business, more and more startups will target the good ol’ traditional business as a customer.

• I’m particularly excited by (i) B2B marketplaces in all sorts of sectors reshaping the supply chain process, à la Rekki and by (ii) software tools digitizing core business activities for these SMBs (as opposed to productivity, which they might be less sensitive to).

2. Extra attention will be paid to non-trivial distribution channels

As a result of this new customer segment, new strategies will be deployed to reach these SMBs, but also consumers. As the money poured into venture-backed businesses went massively to the online advertising duopoly formed by Google and Facebook, performance marketing will be increasingly tough for most businesses, which have been pretty effective for tech-savvy startups.

Successful direct outbound sales playbooks (à la Doctolib) will be replicated as a first step to reach non-tech SMBs, creating more heavily-staffed teams and additional managerial challenges for startup founders and C-levels.

As a second step, founders will get extra creative (and investors will get more demanding) around new distribution strategies, including non-trivial partnerships, product-led growth initiatives, and controversial PR initiatives aimed at strengthening word-of-mouth.

• As a product lover, I’m particularly excited about product-led growth initiatives that make the product both a product and a distribution vector. Usual techniques like watermarking, referral programs or social media sharing are now pretty common, however, so new kind of organic growth triggers will appear.

3. A new social network platform will emerge

Facebook fatigue will be even stronger in 2020 among part of the population, and this time it will go beyond the Facebook -> Insta dumping. FB’s messaging apps failed to innovate, and Instagram and TikTok alike will increasingly become influencer-led Media x Shopping destination apps, failing to recreate a social graph around meaningful relations, while Snap’s editorial choices and core mechanic around ephemerality will prevent it to get non-millennials back.

As a result, a new mobile-only social network platform will emerge in 2020.

• I’m particularly excited about platforms that would gather people (i) in a trustful environment and (ii) around activities that people can do together, which I think will go through some gaming or conversation-starting social content and (iii) be centered around meaningful interactions with a limited number of people as opposed to wide and shallow exposure to a lot of likes / followers / comments.

4. The average European consumer will pay >€50 p.m. of digital subscriptions

As this new social platform will not follow the rules of traditional volume-based, ad-financed social media, new ways to monetize will be increasingly important.

As mobile carriers in the 1990s, ISPs in the 2000s and Netflix/Spotify in the 2010s evangelized users to the very business-friendly subscription business model, this model will continue to rise and most startups selling a product that used to be transactional will try to shift to subscription based.

• I expect gaming to come first (see Google’s, Apple’s and Snap’s initiatives in that field), but would be very curious to see founders applying this model to less obvious topics such as live entertainment, food or fitness.

5. More and more startups will target the 99%

Similarly to B2B startups tackling other tech-startups which are both early adopters and easier to reach through online channels, many B2C startups chose to tackle high-income, forward-thinking urban customers with products offering a mix of extreme convenience and sleek, pastel-colored design.

As this target group appears to be both niche and saturated, I expect (and hope) more and more startups will tackle “the 99%”. I believe several social movements in Europe, including the “gilets jaunes” in France, as well as the recent success of companies like Wish, Vinted or the Facebook marketplace shed light on how successful ‘mainstream’ businesses can be.

• I am very excited about this trend because I believe it will also favor entrepreneurs with less privileged socioeconomic background, who can have a more original insight

6. Values-driven consumption will continue to rise

With the division between a Greta Thunberg’s and a Donald Trump’s view of the world being a key topic in 2019, I believe consumers will use their spending as a way to express their values even more in 2020.

I expect consumers to be even more concerned and inquisitive with businesses around selling and promoting green, sustainable and healthy products.

• As a result, I expect new ideas and companies to emerge in the area of travel (with the increasing number of people who refuse to get on a plane), food (more fun and diverse plant-based food, less meat and processed foods) but also fashion and entertainment

7. More DNVBs will emerge, less will get VC funding

Speaking of values, many direct-to-consumer brands choose to position themselves around strong values to capture a group of customers.

As direct-to-consumer playbooks started to get widely known in 2019 spread by role models like Hims or Care/of, and as getting a direct-to-consumer brand off the ground became easier and easier (set up a Shopify website, buy and repackage an often off-the-shelf product), more direct-to-consumer products will emerge and tackle small niches with a more nuanced brand universe.

However, as investors start to notice the lack of defensibility that most of these businesses show and the subsequent proliferation of companies bidding against each other in marketing (see mattresses-in-a-box, menstrual panties or erectile dysfunction pills) and given that growth often plateaus after the initial niche has been saturated, I expect the VC appetite for D2C brands to be lower in 2020. These businesses can be great bootstrapped businesses with amazing outcomes for the founders, employees and customers.

• Nevertheless, I’m very bullish on brands that (i) have a true product edge (ii) have distribution edge, possibly through an existing engaged community and (iii) target non-saturated groups of customers.

8. The Blitzscaling model will run out of fashion…

2019 was the year the scaling model behind Uber or worse, WeWork, and the kingmaking strategy of their backer Softbank Vision Fund started to show their limits.

Subsidizing exponential growth at the expense of healthy unit economics with equity has been the path chosen by many low-tech, execution-driven businesses believing all markets were ‘winner-takes-all’ markets. Uber’s so-so IPO performance and WeWork drama have shown that this model can not only be terrible for employees (whose options become worthless), society (it’s a machine that’s by design not optimized for efficiency of resources) but also the investors themselves (with Softbank’s performance).

Hence, I believe a more human, resource-conscious approach to growing a business will prevail in 2020, and Blitzscaling will no longer be considered as the only way to go for more businesses. VC money, which is the main fuel of this engine, will as a result no longer be the only way to finance startups and I suspect debt and revenue-based investment models to develop.

9. … but will still be widely used for some businesses, creating new breeds of ‘Unicorns’

However, I think this model is still very effective for some businesses when it is executed with more foresight and less hubris.

As even more money will seek to be invested in few opportunities, I suspect the time between funding rounds to decrease even further than it did in 2019 in the ‘very best’ (read: hottest) companies, vastly driven by the fact US tier 1 VCs will want to quickly build local presence in Europe by buying their way into identified success stories.

10. More startups will tackle heavily regulated topics

Finally, as many low-tech businesses have become more and more competitive due to lower setup costs and greater availability of capital, and as the time to market for deeper tech companies (think blockchain, quantum, AR/VR, some ML applications), I expect more founders to turn to more heavily-regulated businesses as a way to build a differentiated and defensible business.

In France for example, a second startup became regulated as an insurance company (Seyna, after Alan in 2016), while there was no new insurance company since 1986.

I believe entrepreneurs will take on more regulated businesses in the fields of healthcare, finance, insurance, but maybe also some professional services, special transportation, etc. But also maybe stuff that is beyond regulation for now, think illicit drugs, for example.

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Thinking about these topics was really enjoyable for me, I hope reading it was too. I’ll surely be wrong about most of these, but I think setting out thoughts clearly and sharing them for comments is both fun and useful!

9 things that happened in 2019 in French startups

As 2019 ends, here's a brief and very factual summary of what happened in 'La French Tech' in 2019

As you may wonder if you’re familiar with VC blogging, yes I unashamedly stole this blog post format from USV founder Fred Wilson. I think it’s a great format to wrap up a year that passed and start off the one that’s starting with a clear mind and concrete, falsifiable assumptions to be tested.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of interesting things that happened in the VC ecosystem, with a (strong) focus on France. Let me know if you see things differently!

1. As a sign of a maturing startup ecosystem, the number and visibility of repeat entrepreneurs with an exit under their belt skyrocketed:

   • Ex-Withings founder Eric Carreel’s Zoov raised this year

   • Made.com’s Ning Li launched Typology

   • Alittlemarket founders Nicolas Cohen and Nicolas d’Audiffret launched AnkorStore

   • the team from MonDocteur launched PixPay this year, while its competitor Kard is also co-founded mostly by ex-entrepreneurs

   • Criteo’s Romain Niccoli co-founded Strana

   • Wit.ai’s Alexandre Lebrun launched Nabla

   • the PriceMatch founders launched and/or raised for several new ventures

   • I know of at least 3 others that haven’t changed their LinkedIn profile so I won’t name them here, tackling the consumer fintech or direct-to-consumer space with new projects

   • Interestingly, fintech and direct-to-consumer seem to be topics that particularly attract repeat founders this year :)

2. These repeat founders can count on the fact that seed investing is becoming more and more structured in order to get initial funding based on their track-record and kickstart the business:

   • Frst.vc spun out of Otium and raised a seed fund (congrats Pierre, Bruno & Gabriel!)

   • Top-notch former entrepreneurs and long time business angels teamed up to create a more structured syndicate

   • Several foreign seed funds chose 2019 to hire or staff a dedicated for France (Samaipata, Stride and Cherry)

   • While obviously most existing seed investment players remained active

3. When these companies are growing, 2019 showed that there’s a striking consistency in the ability of French startups to raise mega-rounds since 2017:

   • 12 of them raised >€25m in 2019 (vs. 13 in 2018 and 8 in 2017): TalentSoft, Lunchr, Malt, Alan, 360Learning, FretLink, Heetch, VestiaireCollective, Ornikar, Spendesk, Akeneo and Blade

   • 7 raised >€50m (vs. 4 and 10): Wynd, ContentSquare, Mirakl, Payfit, Ivalua, Jobteaser and Algolia

   • 4 raised >€100m (vs. 3 and 1): Ynsect, Doctolib, ManoMano and Meero

   • in total, that’s c.20 companies a year raising more than €25m for the third consecutive year (vs. 11 in 2016 and 8 in 2015)

4. Thanks to these mega-rounds, France anecdotically adopted three new ‘unicorns’ to the club in 2019: Dataiku (which my employer Alven backed since the seed round), Doctolib and Ivalua.

5. This slight increase in mega-rounds has been enabled by the fast-growing interest of foreign VC funds in French startups:

   • According to a report released mid-year by PitchBook, US VCs participated in financing rounds equalling half of the money invested into French startups in the first half of 2019 (!), to be compared to c. 1/3 in 2018

   • As you’ve probably read if you’re exposed to the infamous ‘VC Twitter’, the most prestigious US VC firms are said to open shops in Europe, and I wouldn’t be suprised if people in France were lobbying for Paris instead of London

   • European funds are not giving up just yet, with Balderton and Atomico and some more to come relocating some of their teams to Paris

6. These bigger rounds are more often then not in startups that have raised very recently, which shortens the traditional 12-18 months cycle between two funding rounds:

   • Lunchr’s Series B was 9 month after its A

   • Alan’s Series B was 10 month after its A

   • Meero’s Series C was 11 month after its big B round

   • many other companies raised two rounds in 2019, with the second oftentimes led by a non-French investor, sometimes with just a few months gap

7. Interestingly, businesses which were historically outside of this regular VC cash-injection game joined the party in 2019. Hot markets are always a good time to take some money off the table

   • Long-time bootstrapped Legalstart finally raised in 2019

   • Just like data visualisation startup ToucanToco

   • This is not dissimilar to 1Password in the US, which raised it’s first round of $200m

8. Indeed, financially substantial VC-backed exits remained a rare thing in 2019

   • MeilleursAgents (€200m) and Drivy ($300m), two Alven portfolio companies, were the only two companies exiting for >$200m

   • Mailjet, Snips, Sculpteo and Streamroot are filling the ranks of VC-backed exits which still seem pretty desertic

9. Politically, startups became even more of a trendy topic to get positive vibes, on the back of the political line that Emmanuel Macron is having since his election in May 2017

   • Much has been said about the Next40, a curated and contested list of 40 up-and-coming startups that are potential candidates to ‘replace’ the 40 biggest market caps listed on the French market

   • And about the €2bn that the French public investment bank BPI is looking to deploy as an LP into later stage funds

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Hope you enjoyed reading! I kept it very factual and analysis-free on purpose, tomorrow’s post about what I think will happen in 2020 will be a bit more personal :)

Thoughts of a Parisian VC

Welcome to Bartosz’s Newsletter by me, Bartosz Jakubowski. VC @alvencap. Consumer apps, SMB SaaS & Decentralization fan. ex- @eqtventures @XAngeVC @goldmansachs. Football player, LEGO builder, crypto hodler.

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