Audax Ventures launches to invest in brave and bold underestimated diversity founders and markets.
By: Jessye Joyce Bimono
Tags: Diversity, Fundraising, Investors, Startup, Venture Capital

Story telling me

I’m Jessye Mouangue, French national born and raised in Western Africa, settled and currently residing in France since 2005, after my entire family left Ivory Coast amidst a political and civil-war. My siblings and I aged 18–14 were sent to France in October 2005, precisely one month after France students head back to school. My mother Sylvie had found a position in another country (Luxembourg) where she was hired by her former company CEO Patrick L. Fortunately and miraculously, Mr Patrick had set up one of his company headquarters in Luxembourg and needed a trusted employee to run the operations. My family couldn’t dream of a smarter opportunity to smoothly transition to our new, unexpected and ever-changing life. This also meant that my mother was to start in her newer position November 2005. We were given a new head start in those tumultuous times.

My dad, Gedeon decided to sacrifice himself staying in Ivory Coast in order to close the operations he was running in order to provide for our family of 5, letting the house he has spent years building, quite a lot of souvenirs difficult to get rid of.

My two siblings and I were sent to my dad’s cousin, she was to take care of us three sheltering us and helping us to have a smooth start in an unknown country. Luckily, we are French speaking natives, we went to a school orientation office to determine our school level and be oriented in the right high-school and grade level as we were living in the Paris suburban area.

Due to a lack of room in my dad cousin Claire’s apartment my older brother had to leave us, find a room to share in another city. My sister and I remain on the same roof, which had profoundly deepened my relationship with her while impacting my relations with my older brother. Without mentioning how heartbroken I was to be separated from my parents for the second time at 1 year interval.

This brutal yet fortunate in light of the circumstances had a negative impact on my grades, I must admit I was mediocre at school. Yet there was one class I was sticking around English. I understood from an earlier age that English was ruling the business world. Both mom and dad were using it at home as a codified language to express private thoughts when we are around. My curiosity was picked up! I never ceased to learn and practice speaking, reading and writing in English from the moment I received my first english class. I owe it to a very talented teacher Mme Houndji. She did an amazing job teaching me English grammar. I failed to replicate the same in German. Nonetheless, from 2012–2013 I took a bold approach to live in Berlin on my own for 4 months immersing myself in the country to upgrade my German level. That self-investment paid off as it enabled me to own my bachelor degree from University of Lorraine.

Fast forward our school year ended up in Fontenay-sous-bois. I was happy, expecting our family’s next moves: all reunited. Well, I had to wait, my mom had to search for an apartment in the neighboring France, her middle working class salary wasn’t enough to afford us an apartment rent in Luxembourg. A smart move, plus none of my siblings and I were to enter Luxembourg school system, not to mention the European School. My dad was still in Ivory Coast. Summer 2006 we moved to Thionville, that’s the place I call home since then.

Thionville in Lorraine is home to a great middle to upper working class population, economically flourishing, the startup ecosystem is fueled with talents from local universities, Luxembourg professionals, business angels from close cities.

2008, I managed to pass my high school degree, I was meant to decide about my next move. Going for a business school or university degree, choose which area finance, business administration, economics or else. I opted for business administration with majors in English and German. That’s when my German gaps unveiled turning this experience into a five years long nightmare.

Attending university was exciting, I was unaware of the brutal perception my peers and university professor had about young French black and arabic people. From my personal experience, not everything was racism but ignorance. I was once called up by one English professor and expelled out of class as he was setting a case of his authority. I would argue that I wasn’t the one causing trouble, undisciplined contrary to my peers. I decided no longer to fall victim of such acts and request a meeting with my mom and him. So he could explain his behaviour. I was shocked, hurted and emotional about that episode. That meeting set a precedent in my relationship with my peers (couple hundreds against dozens of french black, arabic and foreign students). Distance was going to be my best asset to protect myself out of racially or ethnically oriented acts of ignorance turning into discriminations.

My dad used to teach us that we are born free, when entering adulthood I got a full grasp on what he was meaning. I still believe he taught and raised us with his visionary mindset. I am grateful for that. I somehow kept this teaching in my head and this dictated my moves, my decisions until today.

I was born free, thus could choose not to fall into the mainstream and rampant opinion poisoning France for generations, conversations around French minorities inclusion and representation at every layer of the economic, political, social, financial sectors was vividly discussed in news programs with french minorities expressing their viewpoints on discriminations that was from 2005–2013.

At this very critical moment I decided to escape, to discover the world and to form my own opinion. I travelled for the first time with my younger sister to Baltimore, MD summer 2009. These were the most refreshing moments, being around Black and Afro-americans, I felt like I belong. Whereas in Thionville you could easily count on your two hands the Black residents. The arabic population was already settled in the region from late 1936 to early 1937*.

Consequently, when my family and I settled in Thionville we could easily identify French arabic population from the few sub-saharan african immigrants to French afro-descendants and Caribbean and French-asian residents.

I must say from an identity point of view that I belong to many. My mom is Caribbean from La Martinique, born and raised in French Guyana and later moved to Metropolitan France in Marseille. My dad and her met in Tunis, Tunisia after he left Cameroon to pursue his higher education. They got married in Marseille, moved to Cameroon but finally settled in Ivory Coast where my siblings and I saw daylights until we resettle back in France at the misfortune of a civil-war.

Today I believe I belong to every single part of my identity. I’m Caribbean, I’m Ivorian, I’m Cameroonian, I am French, I am Baltimorean, I am Welsh, I am Berliner, I am European, and I am very familiar with the many specificities of these cultures. Each of these cultures contributed to my personal identity, to define my trajectory that’s what I learned pursuing a Master degree in Cultures and Languages with a minor in Chinese from University of La Rochelle in France.

My own trajectory as French afro-caribbean has merged with Europe in 2014 when I decided to pursue a Master degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from the University of Luxembourg.

Pursuing this degree I was searching for where I belong economically. I knew from a younger age that I belonged to the doers, value creators, money makers because in the summer 2004 in Ivory Coast my dad introduced my siblings and I to trade. So we identified what we could trade that had a unique selling point: Grapefruit. just as US kids entrepreneurs selling lemonade, honey, bow ties, handmade soap.

So did we started our entrepreneurship journey implementing the following:

1) Building a complementary team:

Our board of advisor: My Dad advised us on the pricing: 2 grapefruits for less than $1.

The team of siblings: 2 pre-teens and 1 teenager.

2) Sourcing the grapefruit: In our own orchard 2 grapefruit trees filled with ready to be picked fruits. I was in charge of picking them up, climbing trees. An unforgettable experience!

3) Selling the grapefruit at a price point according to market demands: My sister & I.

4) Evangelising our offering : My older brother in charge of channelling the sales.

Today in most chains in Thionville it’s €.99 per grapefruit. I ate it for free, organically grown straight from my orchard.

I drew upon this experience to find my own path to position myself. I needed to acquire theoretical knowledge about how to build a venture in Europe. I was familiar with the institutions and ecosystem, yet lacked the practical knowledge of startup ventures like writing a business plan and building a financial plan to forecast revenue, EBITDA, EBIT, Profit & Loss, break-even analysis, sensitivity analysis. I was in a mindset to lead with value.

In November 2015, I was attending my graduation ceremony with family and friends. A great reward 10 years after my family resettled in France. I also recall telling my Belgian friend that I can’t wait for it to pay back. Otherwise, to be the ticket to belong to the economic growth of my country and in a broader view Europe.

Today 5 years later after a career start in tech that abruptly ended (product management, sales management in Luxembourg) and 2x co-founder of tech startups and continuously intersecting tech and sales) in France. I am questioning the ecosystem on the reasons why minority-led companies and entrepreneurs are rarely receiving the support we think we deserve compared to our peers.

With the hindsight, back in 2015 I had the opportunity to connect with Monique Woodard as I was navigating how Afro-americans tech savvy individuals were changing the face of entrepreneurship building inclusion from within with others like Angela Benton NewMe, Wayne Sutton Change Catalyst, Chris Benett from blackfounders.com & Soldsie. I was listening to how the paradigm shift was taking place driving innovation and inclusion in San Francisco / US /tech and newer VC players as Harlem Capital, Zane Ventures, Backstage, Precursor Ventures…). I still do today.

Having an insider experience on capital raising exclusion ( finding an trustworthy accountant,debt, equity, angel investing)as a two time founder. Having been overlooked and rejected after applying to several VC firms in Europe. Certainly after identifying inevitabilities specific to France diversity and inclusion issues. My experiences led me to educate myself on M&A, Private Equity, and finally Venture Capital as the missing key component among many to drive minorities-led early-seed stage tech ventures to successful exits as a vehicle to create generational wealth in France.

My Investment Thesis — We are the change we seek

The scars in the game, I came to form my own investment thesis as a starting point to an emerging venture capital fund creation which focus is to invest in France and Luxembourg minority led fintech, media & software startups pre-seed to series A. These companies must be registered and operate in France and Luxembourg with a Total Addressable Market spanning across continents Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Companies pre-traction and pre-revenue, post-traction with revenue, a product MVP and a team, with a market tested business model.

I aim to fund founders who fit into the following observations:

Underrepresented, overlooked and undercapitalized founders and their tech companies with an inclusive team seeking their first € 50,000 check that be “friend and family” round. Some of these entrepreneurs are building products and serving communities that many traditional Business Angels /VCs don’t understand or aren’t willing to understand. This leads to missed opportunities to fund great companies. Sometimes these founders at the pre-seed stage aren’t as polished, don’t know all the financial ecosystem and VC lingo, don’t have an amazing network, or don’t know how to raise capital. Still, they are just as amazing as founders who have raised tons of money and have deep networks. €50,000 is enough to get these great founders started but not enough for them to fully execute on everything to get to the next level. They still end up needing to pitch to angel investors, go to pitch competitions, join accelerators, and anything and everything else they can do to get additional funding along the way. There are two types of founders who I got excited about. Those who thought a lot about and executed on customer acquisition, and, those building products in markets that are often overlooked. These founders are out-of-the-box thinkers and enduring people, which are skills that serves entrepreneurs very well. Making pre-seed investments, you can make fairly small investments in terms of the check sizes typically found in venture. But even small checks are life-changing for some entrepreneurs, which can lead to pretty amazing return multiples.

Founders that Changed My Life

Efuet And.Atem, author of Smiling in Hardships (Book Cover)

Did Thomas Mpanjo (Drive Me SAS), Efuet Andrew Atem (World-like-home), Omozua Ameze (CWO Solutions), Muntu (9muntu9), Arline Tchagnang (Villerupt Express) really change my life?

As of today they all brought a deepened perspective to my life. Through their stories, working with them on launching and growing their ventures I was forced to look at the blunt and unsustainable truth of how severe their founding experience is in due regards to their personal circumstances. How their life stories influenced their companies, management styles, their lives and families.

They changed my perspective seeing how determined they all are in running their ventures from the ground up, going through trial and errors, adjusting, improving, learning from their failures, welcoming advice to outperform every single day after the other, deprived with funding opportunities, yet holding tight and firm their vision, their mission every single day.

Reaching out to you I would be extremely grateful to hear your sound advice to an emerging fund startupper, be connected to industry experts, investors interested in this niche. I have no track record as founder with an exit, not very connected to investment / fund management professionals neither, although I am building my network.

I draw my strengths from curiosity connecting the dots and hands-on practice after I’ve spent five years of experience in startups as co-founder, and a 2 year long position as revenue generation and operator in funded a Luxembourg-based IoT startup. Currently working with minority startup founders advising, providing hands-on support in their venture to drive growth, build momentum, market their products offering, build their companies internal processes supercharging them for success.

I’m seeking industry expertise to understand how to approach, to build relationships in order to form investment partnerships with fund of funds, Angel investors, UHNWI, HNWI, in order to set up, run and administrate a minority led VC fund from Luxembourg (tax & regulations efficient) investing from seed to series A in overlooked minority led companies with exponential growth potential to be leaders in untapped markets and generate investor returns from day one.

I’m available to discuss your view points over Google Meets, or any other platforms of your choice.

We are Audax Ventures

That’s the challenge I’m faced with. And it is one I am willing to accept. I dug in, and from May to December held calls with minority founders, met with my partner Maurice. We called the fund Audax Ventures because we are investing in bold, brave, long-distance enduring entrepreneurs.

The Thesis

Audax Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in startups and technology companies with high growth potential (figured out product-market-fit) whose tech solutions and products are aimed at both domestic and emerging markets (Europe, Caribbean, Western Africa — Select countries in Africa). This being said we do not make direct investments on the African continent.

Stages of Investment

Audax Ventures invests in pre-seed and seed, generally in companies whose valuation is less than 10 million euros post-money.

Where we invest

We seek to invest in headquartered diversity-led startups in Luxembourg and France, primarily inside of tech hubs (Paris, Marseille, Lille, Toulouse, Nancy, Luxembourg-City) with an eye on the regional tech startup scene.

Target Investment

Our target check size is €50,000 — €500,000.

Industries we invest in

We are specialists investing in three sectors: fintech, media and software with companies owned and operated by overlooked and minority founders in France and Luxembourg.

Target Fund Size

We are raising a €10M fund. If you are an accredited investor and would like to be an LP in Audax Ventures, please email us to join our increasing group of LPs. The minimum investment in the fund is €10,000. This amount will raise over time as we get closer to the target fund size.

We are Audax Ventures, we are investing in long-distance enduring minority and overlooked entrepreneurs!

I appreciate your willingness to share your time. If you’d like to get in touch, invest, become our ally, advise us please reach me on LinkedIn: Jessye Bimono. Follow me on Twitter @EMouangue or Dive app @Jessye Bimono.

Thank you again.