Monte Carlo Capital

Ian Sosso, the founder and managing partner, leads all investment decisions. He built the firm after a career in capital markets and derivatives at HSBC, UBS, JPMorgan and Commerzbank across London, Paris, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong. Sosso was named Best European Angel Investor by EBAN in 2019 and operates MCC alongside a small investment team.

It operates as a hybrid. Sosso originally founded Monte Carlo Capital to invest his own capital, which is the traditional starting point of a family office. Over time the firm broadened into a syndicate of high-net-worth individuals and family offices, then launched a formal venture fund in 2023, making it more of an asset manager than a pure family office.

Both. The firm invests through its own venture funds — Fund I launched in 2023 and Fund II in early 2026 — and supplements those commitments with special-purpose vehicles that can invest up to three times the fund's ticket in a single company. Individual SPV commitments reach $1.5M and cumulative exposure in one name has hit $7M across several rounds.

Pre-seed, seed and Series A. The firm's history of 50+ lead angel deals across Europe and the US anchors its capability at the earliest stages, though it continues backing companies through later rounds using SPVs. Recent portfolio-company Series A rounds include Scout AI at $100M and StarCloud at $170M (per the firm, 2026).

The firm invests principally in the United States and Europe. Its founder's prior capital-markets career across Asia informs a network that can help portfolio companies expand into Asian markets, but Asia is not a direct investment geography for the funds.

Deal flow runs primarily through Ian Sosso's network — built over a decade of leading angel rounds, board seats at EBAN and the Monaco Venture Capital Association, and relationships with venture-capital firms that lead rounds MCC co-invests in. Sosso's parallel role at the Startup Nursery fund, which spins out deep-tech companies from US universities, provides an additional sourcing channel.

Ian Sosso serves as a managing partner of the Startup Nursery fund, a separate vehicle that finances deep-tech spin-offs from US university laboratories. SUN operates as a dedicated frontier-science incubator, distinct from MCC's broader early-stage co-investment activity, though the two share intellectual and network resources.