100IN shares its first lessons after more than 35 investments

Investing €100,000 in 100 young European technology companies: that is the ambition behind 100IN. A few months after its launch, the fund has already met more than 300 entrepreneurs and completed over 35 investments. In an interview with Forbes Belgium, 100IN Partner Julie Capiau looks back at these first months and explains how experience on the ground has shaped the fund’s approach.

One of the main changes concerns the criteria used to assess companies at a very early stage. While 100IN initially focused strongly on recurring revenue, cost structures and financial indicators, the fund now says it pays greater attention to the entrepreneur behind the project: their ability to move forward, energy, determination and resilience in a changing environment.

Geographical ambition has also become an important factor. Julie Capiau explains that 100IN has passed on promising companies because they remained focused on a single country. The fund says it favours teams whose ambitions extend beyond their domestic market.

The dynamics between co-founders are playing a greater role as well. How founders work together and complement each other when facing obstacles has become part of the fund’s assessment. Over time, 100IN has also identified signals specific to its own way of working, including slow responses, avoiding certain features during a product demonstration or remaining vague when asked about concrete points. Capiau stresses that these are not universal criteria, but indicators that may reveal a mismatch with the fund’s approach. 

According to 100IN, regarding early-stage funding, the issue is not necessarily a lack of available capital, but investors’ willingness to deploy it early enough and the added value that comes with that capital. Through its model of making 100 investments of €100,000, the fund says it can take more risk on certain companies than investors making only a handful of investments each year.

These first months also highlight differences between startup ecosystems. At launch, around 90% of the opportunities reaching 100IN came from Flanders, where its founders already had a strong network. The fund has since developed connections in Brussels and Paris. In the four months preceding the interview, 60% of its investments were made in Paris. 

With more than a third of its target of 100 investments now completed, 100IN continues to roll out its model while adapting its selection process based on the experience gained through its first meetings and investments.