Crescent Enterprises Ventures

Pléiade Venture est une Société de Capital Risque Française. Elle investit sur le long terme, sans horizon de sortie prédéterminé. Elle soutient les entreprises innovantes de tous secteurs, hors biotech. Elle dispose de plus de 100 M€ d'actifs et investit de 0,5 à 3 M€ par opération. Elle est financée par des entrepreneurs qui forts de leur expérience désirent contribuer activement à de nouveaux succès. Elle est animée par une équipe en liaison étroite avec une vingtaine d’entrepreneurs contributifs. Nos différencesEvergreen: Pléiade Venture, à la différence des fonds, investit ses fonds propres et réinvestit ses plus-values, sans horizon de sortie prédéterminé. Actionnaire stable et pérenne, Pléiade Venture s’adapte au projet long terme de l’entrepreneur. Contributif: Notre capital est constitué d'entrepreneurs issus de secteurs variés. Ils réinvestissent une partie de leur patrimoine et partagent leur expérience avec les dirigeants de nos participations. Un quart de nos actionnaires sont d’ailleurs les fondateurs d'entreprises que nous avons financées. Galaxie: Pléiade Venture s’inscrit dans un ensemble de structures indépendantes : Pléiade Investissement (Capital Développement, LBO et retournement) Pléiade AM (Fonds d'actions cotées) autour d’une idée commune : « Faire ensemble, et faire autrement, ce que nous ne ferions pas seuls ! ». Nos CritèresStade: Seed, Series A Secteurs: Tous sauf : Biotechnologies, Entertainment, Immobilier Montant: 0,5 M€ à 3 M€, Seul ou en coinvestissement

In the past 15 years, Canada’s innovation ecosystem has taken off. Startups, accelerators, incubators, investors, and forward-thinking policies have created a true hotbed of entrepreneurship. Bold ideas are flourishing, transformative ventures are thriving, and Canadian technology is reshaping industries, driving growth at home and societal impact worldwide. We could look back and self-applause our progress, but let’s be radically transparent: major challenges remain and there is still a lot left to be done. A majority of our technology companies are not achieving the global scale they legitimately could attain. They do not achieve their full potential; frequently selling prematurely instead of being the market consolidator and building for the long term. ​ A central cause of this problem is the lack of early-stage venture leadership and risk-taking at the true “inflection point” - when startups have early revenue, signs of product-market fit, and are ready to scale. Canada has no shortage of funds willing to follow on, but far too few are prepared to lead Seed and Series A rounds: to structure financings, set valuations, negotiate terms, and define the conditions for success. The “Death Valley” is real. Canadian venture capital lacks leadership, and needs to contribute more expertise. The “Death Valley” is the critical scaling stage that most companies fail to overcome. It happens as a company attempts to bridge the gap between early commercial success and achieving significant revenue scale. In 2024, roughly six in ten Canadian seed rounds included foreign investors, a dynamic that intensifies by Series A and beyond. Half of that was led by US Too often, the most promising Canadian startups saw their early rounds led by U.S. VCs. While we welcome foreign investors, global connections strengthen our ecosystem, Canada simply lacks enough lead investors to keep ownership at home. For early-stage and scale-up companies, the shortage of funding alternatives is a major barrier. Many of our best founders head south in search of stronger capital partners. The gap is readily filled by international investors, and who can blame them? Canadian founders are known to outperform and to be more capital efficient than their U.S. peers. The best founders will always attract global capital and seek out the strongest partners. But this comes at a cost. Every time leadership is ceded abroad, Canada loses ownership of its most successful businesses. An ecosystem of “follower investors” produces an economy of subsidiaries, when what we need are global leaders. The problem is twofold: not enough Canadian capital to lead at the inflection point, and not enough seasoned expertise to scale our champions. If you believe, as we do, that local technology champions will be the cornerstone of our future economic prosperity, then our ecosystem must level up. We need more early-stage capital that doesn’t just follow, but leads. Equity financing must evolve to deliver not only dollars, but expertise, resources, and technology to nurture local champions. Understandably so, when they lead funding rounds, most Canadian VC firms will either focus on the pre-seed stage, where the power-law is magnified and placing many small bets is more important than bringing expertise, or the growth stages (Series B+) where significant risk is already behind and larger checks drive the outcomes. A paradigm shift is required. New organizations must emerge that add real value and aren’t afraid to take the lead at the Seed stage. This is why we are launching Amiral Ventures. Amiral Ventures is a new venture capital firm on a mission to empower Canada’s most ambitious founders with dynamic capital and scaling expertise, building the next generation of technology flagships with lasting societal impact. Vaisseau Amiral (French for Flagship): A ship or building that is recognized for its size and strength, making it the pride of a fleet or an organization As entrepreneurs ourselves, we have utmost respect for the founder journey. We don’t just invest, we aim to deserve the right to partner with them along the way. Amiral creates the ecosystem where visionary founders thrive, with capital, expertise, global networks, and technology to fuel their growth. We’ve built scale-ups, felt the entrepreneurial highs and lows, and now channel that experience into backing the founders solving the world’s toughest problems. Prosperity Decoded Backing Canadian founders at seed to series-a to drive enterprise productivity, sustainability & resilience The challenges we face, low productivity, climate urgency, and fragile infrastructure, are systemic. But they also represent one of the greatest investment junctures of our time. New enterprise technologies, powered by AI and software, can equip leaders with transformative, mission-critical solutions. Productivity. Canada’s productivity gap is real—our workers produce only ~70% of what their U.S. peers achieve. The answer isn’t more talk, it’s action: applied AI, automation, robotics, and digital platforms. We back Canadian founders building these solutions at home and scaling them worldwide. Sustainability. Profitability and environmental impact can no longer be at odds. The transition to renewables and the optimization of energy use are urgent. Software and AI will be the linchpins of this shift, from clean energy production to efficient consumption. Resilience. Supply chains, industries, and critical infrastructure are under strain. Building resilience means more autonomy, security, and sovereignty, enabled by smart industry, robotics, digital twins, cybersecurity and intelligent manufacturing. More than just capital. Founders-led and founders-backed. Amiral Ventures will focus on leading early-stage rounds between theSeed and Series A and will actively support companies to achieve a strong global position. Capital is a commodity, expertise is not. An integral part of our investment thesis is having a dedicated impact team that will create value post-investment. Our initial focus is helping portfolio companies expand globally and seize international opportunities to scale. Over time, Amiral’s impact team will operate like a service organization, combining internal expertise, external networks, and proprietary technology to empower founders. Our goal is clear: every dollar invested by Amiral should deliver a measurable impact on a founder’s trajectory. Beyond the Amiral team’s expertise, we are surrounding ourselves by an unprecedented group of investors who are themselves founders, CEOs, CTOs, CROs, and not only share our vision but are eager to roll up their sleeves to help our flagship companies. ​Building an enduring franchise We are proudly Québécois but our market is much wider. We believe that for Québec & Canada to succeed, we must expand beyond our borders just like the Admiral butterfly. Papillon Amiral (French for Admiral Butterfly): Emblem of Québec, it is known for its rapid flight, its impressive migration, resilience and its noble appearance. Building a dynamic, resilient, and cleaner economy means securing local ownership while scaling globally. Amiral is an investment firm with an entrepreneurial mindset, built to create value for the next generation of innovators. We stand on the shoulders of the Canadian venture pioneers who came before us. History will mark the early 2020s as an inflection point. Technologies once magical are now everyday tools. The means to create prosperity are in our hands. But good is no longer good enough. High-paying jobs, economic development, and new technologies are necessary but we must also increase Canadian ownership in our champion companies, deploy smarter capital, and elevate our ecosystem. The “Death Valley” for Canadian startups must be crossed. Ambitious founders are ready to take flight on the global stage. Let’s build the next generation of Canadian flagships.

Focused on the rising consumption story in India and Indian SaaS companies catering to a global market. CONSUMER TECH Backing tech native businesses for India’s internet users and middle-class. AgriTech EdTech HealthTech SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS) Backing product-led SaaS startups that can reach a global scale. Automation, Collaboration and Intelligence Vertical SaaS SaaS enabled marketplaces FINTECH Backing companies which manage finances in the most tech efficient way Vertical neo banks, lending Embedded Finance, infra APIs Insurtech Alternative investing DEEPTECH Backing companies solving deep engineering problems Artificial Intelligence Robotics / Drones Space tech and Semiconductors OUR APPROACH We invest in people rather than companies. From great entrepreneurs emerge great brands and companies. We are good listeners and that is a trait needed in our profession to grow. We have a non-intrusive approach and we completely believe in the entrepreneurs we have backed. An entrepreneur can think of us more as a resource and a sounding board. WHAT WE LOOK FORWe prefer to invest in mission driven founders who have relevant work experience and domain expertise Significant growth potential over the next 3 to 5 years. We prefer backing founders with at least 4-5 years of prior experience. Differentiated products or services that have strong ‘moats’ built around it. HOW WE INVESTWe invest in pre-seed and seed rounds. We invest ~US$ 250K per startup in the first round and then in follow-on rounds We are open to investing through convertible structures and instruments, however, we prefer straight equity. We generally prefer to co-invest along with other VC funds and micro VC funds In a larger round of fundraising – we co-invest with our select Limited Partners.

We have invested in more than 90 companies since 2016, including Pinterest, Compass, Hippo, Ro, Carta, Dutchie, Anduril, Varda Space Industries, Ghost, Front, Esusu, OKCredit, and Unqork. Additionally, through our subsidiary fund, New Slate Ventures, we have financed films, documentaries, and limited series that have been acquired by Apple, Netflix, and Disney. Based in New York City, we invest globally. Backstory Sinai Capital Partners was founded in 2017. We raised $100 million and built a talented team of young investors with offices in New York, Palo Alto, and Los Angeles. We made over 90 investments, realized 11 exits, and achieved a 1X return on our first fund within two years. In 2019, we raised $100 million for a subsidiary of Sinai Capital called New Slate Ventures, with the goal of supplying the many players in the streaming wars with independent content. Our films, series, and documentaries won Academy Award nominations, Golden Globes, Grammy’s, and Emmy’s, and were acquired by the likes of Apple, Disney, and Netflix for multiples of their cost. As a solo GP, I believe boutique, disciplined, early-stage funds with effective managers will generate the best returns for investors in this forthcoming innovation cycle. Throughout my career I’ve nurtured relationships across Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Washington DC, and Hollywood, and aim to leverage this access on behalf of the founders I support. Where to Now? We’re currently in the midst of the greatest acceleration of technological progress since 2010 and the advent of mobile/social computing. New frameworks for problem solving are emerging daily aided by artificial intelligence, CRISPR technologies, climate manipulation, and several other radical new fields previously dismissed as science fiction. When we started Sinai, the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley was that “hardware was hard” and that software investments provided much better risk-adjusted opportunities. That assumption is becoming less credible in the current venture capital landscape, with space exploration, brain computer interfaces, driverless electric vehicles, autonomous warfare drones, and nuclear fusion companies all appearing to be increasingly within reach, with potentially transformational impacts on civilization. Sinai’s new focus will be on these harder technical problems, as we believe this is where the majority of the value creation for this next venture cycle will emerge. While we still welcome revenue generating SaaS businesses, its become clearer to us that the best returns come from the most non-obvious ideas in undefined markets and categories. Some of our latest investments include Anduril, Varda, Galvanick, Rangeview, Factory.AI, Science.IO, and several others. We seek to invest in 5-10 companies each year, with average check sizes ranging between $1-5M depending on stage. We’re happy to lead seed rounds where we have high conviction, but prefer to collaborate with our friends at top funds across the globe. We are geographically agnostic, but are most active in New York, San Francisco, Miami, London, and the South Bay of Los Angeles.

We are looking for entrepreneurs and their brilliant ideas. We want to be there when technologies call entire industries into question. Since 2014, we have seen this as both an opportunity and a challenge. Today, DvH Ventures is one of the most active early-stage investors in Europe managing various venture capital funds from its offices in Cologne and Vienna. Our story began with our first venture capital fund and the significant backing of publisher Dieter von Holtzbrinck. We focused our early stage investments on publishing-related, digital business models and supported startups from then on not only with funding, but also with an enormous media reach of the publishing groups Handelsblatt, Tagesspiegel and DIE ZEIT. This fund was soon followed by a dedicated investment fund with a focus on Fintechs and InsurTechs and fund investors from the banking and insurance industries. Thanks to the business-related media, we were able to build up one of the most successful FinTech portfolios with such stars as LIQID, Compeon or Nect. Both funds are now disinvesting. Today, we operate two independent and very active early-stage investment funds. With DvH Ventures Fund III, our Digital Tech Fund, we have been investing primarily in deep tech and education startups since 2017. This enabled us to attract the founders and potential of companies such as LiveEO, StudySmarter, Masterplan or buynomics at an early stage. In August 2020, DvH Ventures launched a new €60 million Digital Health Fund in the first closing, which invests in technologies across Europe that solve future healthcare challenges. OUR APPROACH As an independent venture capital fund, we invest in early investment rounds with initial tickets between € 500k and € 2m, often acting as lead investor. In addition to financial resources, we support our portfolio companies with management expertise and an international investor network. An exclusive media-for-equity program also offers access to strong brands such as Handelsblatt, WirtschaftsWoche, DIE ZEIT and Apotheken Umschau, and thus an enormous reach into the respective target groups. INVESTMENT FOCUS We invest in ideas whose success we believe in. We are building successful investment clusters including but not limited to the fields of digital health, education or financial services and will stay hungry for more digital innovations. These can be ideas in artificial intelligence, enterprise software, Internet of Things and Big Data. The same applies to mobility, energy or the future of work. On the other hand, some of our most successful startups are those with ideas that we hadn't even thought of yet. So, if you want to pitch convincing ideas that don't come from the areas mentioned above – we'd ❤️ to hear about them.

As a Zone for Great Minds, from our Limited Partners, Management Team, our Partners, to the startup founders we invest, ThinkZone gathers Great Entrepreneurs who have Great Visions, to create Great Values for the society, and the capability to make their visions come true. Non-cash Investments We provide startups with non-cash investments via our ThinkZone Accelerator, the accelerator program with the largest scale of support value in Vietnam. 3-month mentoring & coaching Fundraising support Partnership connection with big corporates $300,000+ support packages value in terms of sales & marketing, cloud services Cash Investment ThinkZone Ventures focuses on Seed to Series A tech startups from diverse verticals, with investments size up to $3,000,000. We also invest in accelerator-stage startups via ThinkZone Accelerator, with investment size ranging from $50,000 to $100,000.