There is a new venture capital fund in town – at least if you live in Paris. Introducing Resonance, a new $150 million (€150 million) fund backed 100% by Otium Capital.
You may already be familiar with Otium Capital. It is Pierre-Edouard Sterins family office. In 2003 Sterin co-founded Smartbox group, the company behind many popular experience gift boxes. He still owns Smartbox Group today and has a lot of money.
With Otium Capital, the family office has a broad investment strategy from leveraged buyouts to real estate – and it’s made quite a few startup investments over the years.
Some past investments include: PayFit and Owkin. But part of the venture team at Otium left to start their own fund in 2019 — first.
Resonance will be Otium Capital’s technology-focused venture capital fund in the future. Maxime Le Dantec and Alban Oudin will manage the day-to-day operations of the fund.
Le Dantec was previously Principal at Balderton Capital and worked on deals with GitGuardian, Kili Technology, Numeral and Request. Oudin was previously a Principal at XAnge and was involved in investments in Animaj, Vertuoza, Cajoo, Silvr, Join Stories and Workmotion.
Resonance will focus on seed and Series A investments ranging from €100,000 to €10 million. While the team will be based in Paris, Resonance plans to invest across Europe.
The team insists it doesn’t want to spray and pray. Instead, it will focus on a handful of investments each year so that it can provide the right level of support on various topics, such as key hires and future fundraising efforts.
That’s the main advantage of having a single backer. If there are macroeconomic problems, you don’t need to put in a lot of capital every year because your limited partners have defined a short life cycle for your venture capital fund.
Resonance is not going to target a specific technical vertical. Based on the team’s background, it can invest in everything from enterprise software to fintech, web3, consumer and software-as-a-service products for SMBs.