France's new Kima Ventures to invest in 100 companies

[France] The birth of a new seed fund has been announced in France, spearheaded by Jeremie Berrebi and Xavier Niel. The new fund, Kima Ventures, plans to invest in 100 start-ups within the next 2 years.

The duo behind the fund first met in 1999 when co-investing in a company and have become great friends and business partners since. Niel is the co-founder of Iliad and behind the creation of France’s Freebox, the IP triple-play. Berrebi is best known as a blogger and serial entrepreneur – founding companies including Zlio.com and Jewpedia.com – and has invested in 17 start-ups.

Together, they hope not just to offer funding – between €5,000 and €150,000 per start-up – but to also develop a dynamic and collaborative environment for all the companies they invest in.

Rumor has it that they were receiving 5 business plans per day prior to the official launch of Kima and have already made several investments to be announced in up-coming weeks. While part of the goal is to make more seed money available for early-stage technology start-ups in France, they plan to make a fair share of their investments internationally in order to develop a global ecosystem for their portfolio companies from the get-go.