Frst Capital

Frst Capital

Frst Capital was founded in Paris in 2017 by Pierre Entremont and Bruno Raillard. Entremont previously spent a decade at Otium Capital, the family office of Pierre-Édouard Stérin, where he led tech investments including early backing of Evaneos and Zenly (later acquired by Snap). Raillard joined from a technology operating background and brought experience scaling European startups. The firm emerged from a thesis that Europe lacked a dedicated pre-institutional partner for the most ambitious technical founders — someone willing to commit material seed capital before a company even has a name. Frst operates a concentrated seed strategy across Europe, targeting technical founders in enterprise software, AI/ML, cybersecurity, fintech, digital health, and climate tech. The firm typically invests €1–3 million in a first round and reserves significant follow-on capacity. Portfolio companies are selected at the earliest stage — often pre-product, pre-incorporation. Frst's public record includes early backing of Pigment, the Paris-based business planning platform that reached unicorn status; Electra, the French EV fast-charging network; and Doctrine, the legal intelligence platform. The geographic footprint spans France, the UK, Germany, and the Nordics. Co-investors in portfolio rounds have included Blossom Capital, FirstMark, and LocalGlobe. Frst manages multiple fund vintages and publicly announced the close of its third fund generation by early 2024, consistent with a roughly biennial cycle since inception, though the firm does not disclose total AUM. The partnership remains intentionally lean, centered on Entremont and Raillard with a small investment team operating from Paris. The firm has not disclosed adjacent vehicles, philanthropic structures, or external club memberships. In late 2023, portfolio company Pigment raised a $145 million Series D led by ICONIQ Growth, marking one of the largest rounds for a European SaaS company that year and a significant validation of Frst's earliest-stage entry point. What structurally differentiates Frst is its pre-incorporation entry model — the firm commits capital before a startup is legally formed, a posture almost no other European seed fund systematically takes. This allows Frst to influence cap-table architecture, founder equity splits, and initial governance in ways that later-stage investors cannot. The model creates unusual alignment and information advantage, but concentrates risk around a small number of founder relationships per year. Succession and governance remain tied to the founding partners, making the firm's long-term architecture dependent on whether the next generation of investors can replicate the same pre-company conviction that Entremont and Raillard have built their reputation on.