In 2024, it’s hard to wake up without reading about another large round of funding from a company in the AI space. Intuition, a new VC firm based in Paris, is doing something radical and betting exclusively on consumer technology.
Behind the scenes, Hugo Amsellem (pictured left) and Etienne Boutan (pictured right) will be the general partners of this new fund. Hugo Amsellem has been working for Jellysmack for the last few years, writing about consumer technology and influencers – including this very interesting article about loneliness and how it affects consumer technology and culture.
Amsellem is also better known as one of the first employees of The Family, a legendary startup accelerator based in Paris. More recently, “The Family” has been on everyone’s lips because of the ongoing lawsuits against its co-founder Oussama Ammar. He is said to have diverted millions of euros for his own benefit.
Amsellem left The Family in 2019. When we spoke about that part of his career, he was both disappointed with how things ended and wants to move on.
Etienne Boutan began his career as a professional basketball player. Before founding Intuition, he co-founded the AI startup Heex Technologies.
The duo teamed up to raise initial funding of 15 million euros ($16 million at today’s exchange rate). After an initial closing, they have already invested in a handful of consumer startups in Europe and the US, but are still actively raising money for the fund.
They also recruited Axel Toupane (NBA champion), Eliott Kessas (co-founder of Daring), and Erika Batista (general partner at On Deck Runway Fund) as venture partners.
“Hugo and I have been among the most active early-stage investors in consumer startups in Europe and with the addition of Axel, Eliott and Erika as venture partners, we wanted to ensure we could expand our coverage in the heartland of the US.” Consumer technology in San Francisco and culture in Los Angeles,” said Etienne Boutan.
The investment thesis for Intuition is quite simple. There is currently a lack of investment in consumer technology. That’s because investing in consumption and culture has historically been somewhat risky for two reasons.
First, it’s hard to generate revenue when you’re working on a fun mobile app or the next big social network. Sometimes it feels like you’re either working on the next unicorn or ending up in Deadpool.
Second, there are a handful of consumer-focused tech companies that simply dominate – Meta, ByteDance, Snap… Sure, some big tech companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon have acquired consumer companies to turn them into major consumer platforms like Instagram, YouTube, etc. Twitch. But it feels like that acquisition window has closed.
“It’s really not cool to work in consumer today because the consumer industry has been failing for five to seven years and there’s not a lot of liquidity,” Amsellem told me.
“All the funds that have experienced this underperformance and that have had to deploy huge amounts of money because they raised gigantic funds are still saying, ‘Yes, I’m doing consumer business,’ but they’re not saying it too loudly,” he added. “In fact, this is our chance.”
At the same time, there are still many bright minds working on consumer products – think BeReal, Amo, Retro, The Browser Company, etc. Innovation hasn’t stopped and some of these companies will succeed.
And given the current pace of innovation in the field of artificial intelligence, Intuition expects new interesting things to happen in this area.
That’s why Intuition wants to help the next wave of consumer companies. The VC company plans to invest between 100,000 and 500,000 euros in the pre-seed or seed phase. She will use her seed fund to invest in more than 40 companies.
“There is only one topic I want to work on, and that is the consumer and everything related to the consumer – everything that changes culture,” Amselem said.
Intuition is VC + events
“I don’t think there is room for a €30 million consumer fund that focuses exclusively on consumer goods,” Amselem said. Adding events on top of investments will increase Intuition’s revenue, which should help the company hire a larger team and make smarter bets.
That’s why the company wants to create a community of people who care about consumers and culture so they can learn from each other and find the next big thing together.
Intuition is launching a series of events co-hosted with other key VC firms such as Felix Capital (in London), a16z (in New York), Greylock (in Los Angeles) and General Catalyst (in San Francisco). Later this year, this tour will culminate with Intuition’s flagship event on September 20th at Station F in Paris.
This event strategy reminds me of Jason Lemkin’s SaaStr conferences. While SaaStr attracts 15,000 people to the main conference, Intuition is still early in its journey. The new company plans to invite a few hundred people to its first events. But it’s interesting to see a VC firm taking consumer technology seriously again.