Kima Ventures, the French early-stage investment firm that wears the “most active angel investor in the world” badge it received from Business Insider last year with pride, is poised to let startups worldwide know it is just getting started.
Jérémie Berrebi, a former IT journalist who became a startup investor and co-founded Kima Ventures along with French serial entrepreneur and business magnate Xavier Niel, tells me the fund has invested in 160 startups in 18 countries since January 2011 (in 20 months, in other words).
That’s a lot of seed funding activity in a very brief period of time, something that is often (and derogatorily most of the time) referred to in investment circles as a “spray and pray” financing strategy popularized by prolific ‘super’ angel investors.
That is to say: backing way more startups than the average investor, with relatively small sums of cash in the hopes that a handful of exceptional exits will make up for the many ‘normal’ or failed portfolio companies.
Berrebi says Kima Ventures invests roughly $150,000 per startup in the Americas or 100,000 euros in Europe. Of the 160 tech startups it has backed to date, approximately 40 percent has raised a second round of financing.
There have been some noteworthy exits of portfolio companies (Sparrow to Google, Rapportive to LinkedIn, Treatful to OpenTable and others) and Berrebi says others are already “very profitable”, without going into detail.
Kima Ventures will invest in 100 more startups in the next 12 months, Berrebi promises, all of which will become part of a list that includes companies like Freshplanet/SongPop, Ifeelgoods, Leetchi, Storific, DaWanda, Cake Health, Roomorama, ZooZ, Adility, Kwaga and loads more.
Asked about the investment strategy, Berrebi says the fund will invest in any interesting ICT related startup with upwards of 2 founders, and that the firm tends to invest in “simple projects that answer simple needs”.
Simple, really.
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