Daphni

Managing Partners Pierre-Yves Meerschman and Willy Braun lead the investment team alongside General Partner Mathieu Daix. The firm operates a flat partnership structure where decisions are made collectively rather than through a single dominant voice. The Daphnipolis platform surfaces deal opportunities to the entire investment committee simultaneously.

Daphni sources through Daphnipolis, a proprietary digital platform that connects a community of over 300 entrepreneurs, executives, and subject-matter experts. Community members submit and evaluate deals directly through the platform and receive carried interest in a shared pool tied to the deals they help source. This structure gives Daphni early visibility into startups that traditional cold-outreach models miss.

Daphni is a venture capital firm, not a single family office. It raises capital from institutional limited partners, including funds of funds and corporate investors, and deploys it through traditional fund structures. The firm does not manage a single family's wealth.

Daphni targets early-stage companies from pre-seed through Series B. Initial check sizes typically range from €300,000 to €5 million. The firm reserves capital for follow-on investments in later rounds when a portfolio company shows strong traction.

Daphni is primarily a direct investor making equity investments into early-stage European startups. The firm does not operate as a fund of funds and does not publicly report making LP commitments to other venture managers as part of its core strategy.

Daphnipolis is Daphni's proprietary community platform, functioning as a shared deal-flow and diligence environment. It gives the firm's network of scouts, advisors, and founders equal visibility into incoming deals and evaluation notes. This open architecture removes the internal gatekeeping that concentrates sourcing power in traditional partnerships and is the central mechanism behind Daphni's sourcing model.

The structural difference is community economics. Traditional Paris VC firms source through closed partner networks. Daphni distributes carried interest to the community members who find and support deals, expanding its sourcing surface area without growing its headcount. The firm also publishes transparent annual reports on European venture trends, a practice uncommon among peers.