Stéphane Paillard
Covering European fundraising, first-time fund managers, and the founders behind the rounds. Previously built event and community products across the French tech ecosystem; now runs Sesamers and hosts the Sesame Summit.
Latest from Stéphane
314 articles
How to Raise a Seed Round in Europe: The Complete Guide
Raising a seed round in Europe has never been more accessible — or more competitive. The continent’s seed ecosystem has expanded dramatically over the…
Series A Funding: The Complete Playbook for European Founders
Series A funding represents the most critical inflection point in a startup’s journey — the moment when a promising early-stage company must prove it…
Startup Funding Guide: From Pre-Seed to IPO
Ivee Raises $1M Seed Round to Scale AI Upskilling Platform
The artificial intelligence sector continues to reshape not just how businesses operate, but how workers prepare for the jobs of tomorrow. As AI adoption…
Vertical Compute Raises €37M to Tackle AI’s Memory Bottleneck
The race to build the infrastructure underpinning artificial intelligence has moved well beyond software and into the physical layer of computing itself. As AI…
Qevlar AI Raises €25.8M Series A to Put Agentic Intelligence at the Heart of Security Operations
Security operations centres are in crisis. Analysts at large enterprises and managed security providers routinely face hundreds of alerts per day, with the majority…
Germany’s AIRMO Raises €5M Seed Round to Scale Methane Emissions Monitoring from Space
The race to monitor methane emissions from space is gaining serious momentum. As the European Union moves to enforce binding methane reduction obligations on…
OutPost Bio Raises €2.9M Pre-Seed to Make Human Microbiology Computable
The human microbiome — the vast community of microorganisms colonising the gut, skin, and other organs — has long been recognised as a critical…
Reson8 Raises €5M Pre-Seed to Build Europe’s First Customisable Speech AI Infrastructure
Europe’s artificial intelligence ecosystem has long struggled with a persistent blind spot: while English-language speech recognition has reached near-human accuracy, the continent’s rich linguistic…
Nathan Benaich’s Air Street Capital Closes $232M Fund III to Become Europe’s Largest Solo GP Venture Firm
European venture capital has long been shaped by large multi-partner institutions, yet a quiet structural shift is now unmistakeable: a cohort of solo general…