HCVC

Founder and Managing Partner Alexis Houssou leads the partnership alongside General Partner Aymerik Renard. The investment committee is engineering-heavy, reflecting the firm's thesis that deep-tech underwriting requires operator-level fluency in robotics, manufacturing, and aerospace. Founding Partner Jerry Yang also contributes to sourcing and diligence. The firm's lean structure means investment decisions are made by a small group of partners who have direct experience founding or scaling hardware companies.

HCVC's primary sourcing channel is a membership network of hundreds of hardware founders worldwide, a structure inherited from the firm's origins as Hardware Club — a community platform that predates the formal venture fund. Founders share supplier contacts, manufacturing benchmarks, and introductions to emerging teams before they begin institutional fundraising. This network gives HCVC early visibility into technical teams that often bypass traditional VC pipelines.

HCVC is structured as a traditional venture capital firm with external limited partners, not a family office. It raises discrete fund vehicles from institutional investors and manages capital on behalf of European LPs seeking exposure to hard-tech seed-stage opportunities. The firm does not manage a single-family balance sheet or operate a permanent capital vehicle.

HCVC focuses almost exclusively on pre-seed and seed rounds, writing first checks that typically range from $500,000 to $2 million. The firm reserves capital for follow-on investments through Series A in select portfolio companies. It does not participate in growth-stage rounds, buyouts, or public-market investing, maintaining a deliberate early-stage mandate across its hard-tech verticals.

HCVC avoids pure software-as-a-service, consumer internet, fintech, and digital media investments — sectors that dominate the portfolios of generalist European seed funds. The firm also does not invest in therapeutics, medical devices requiring FDA clearance, or hardware startups that are primarily consumer-goods branded rather than technologically differentiated. Its mandate explicitly requires a defensible hardware or physical-engineering moat.

HCVC has historically led or co-led rounds rather than following, reflecting its conviction-driven approach to hard-tech underwriting. The firm co-invests alongside specialist deep-tech funds in Europe and the United States, including funds that share its engineering-first philosophy. HCVC does not operate a club-deal model or syndicate rounds widely to passive LPs; it typically concentrates ownership in a small number of aligned co-investors.

HCVC is one of the few European venture firms that invests exclusively in hard-tech — companies where the primary competitive moat is a physical product, not a software platform. The entire partnership possesses technical fluency in robotics, aerospace, and manufacturing, which allows the firm to underwrite technical risk that deters generalist seed investors. It also maintains a proprietary sourcing network of hundreds of hardware founders, a structural advantage in a category where warm technical introductions carry far more signal than cold outreach.