Incubate

You are a team with a plan?

Capital for the bold

SUBMIT YOUR PITCH

Fil Rouge Capital provides seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you’re getting started. Apply to our Startup School program and get up to €10K investment

What you get

Funding

Each company receives up to €10K (ten thousand Euros) investment to get you going. Use this money to start your company, and cover your initial expenses.

Perks

Access to FRC suite of perks and get the value provided by companies like Microsoft, Amazon and others.

Mentors

Full access to our mentor network and their Office hours. Learn from the best within their respective industries.

Accelerators

Privileged access to FRC Accelerator program and possibility to raise up to €50K investment.

You

You need a professional advisory team that can guide you to your next development stage

You have created a unique piece of Intellectual Property

You are thinking big

You are determined to expand internationally

You are highly innovative and passionate in your approach

You are tackling a real problem

Are you bold enough ?

FAQ

To apply, please go to our application form (click on apply button) and fill in the information set within the form.

When applying, please follow the guidelines below:
– All application forms must be in English language, no other languages are accepted
– You should describe your idea in detail (product/service), applications that are lacking in content will have a smaller chance of receiving the money.

We review EVERY application and respond to every one; sometimes the response is not the one you were hoping for, but we reply to every application we receive.

It is never black or white. We look at the product, the market size and the market segment, the business model, the company’s early traction, and of course above everything else the TEAM that should be cohesive, credible, and passionate. We love early traction but also consider smaller traction with a passionate (small) user base.

We are generalist and rather agnostic looking mainly for disruption but our sweet spots are: SaaS, cloud services, marketplace, e-commerce, AI, deep tech, Fintech, Logistics, IOT, industry 4.0, 5G applications, B2B, B2C, etc.

If you are not from Croatia, you will need to open a company here and employ a certain number of key staff in that company. Fil Rouge Capital will be able to advise you on what steps need to be taken and provide you with all the relevant contacts to make this process as easy and fast as possible.

 

Yes, at least one person. While this is usually the founder, it can also be somebody else (but the founder needs to show us his commitment if he will not be employed in his company). Of course, you will want to employ more people as you will start growing so fast…

Our experience shows that the best mix is a combination of tech founder and sales founder. In general we would rather invest in a tech team without sales genius than the other way around but everything is possible, gut feeling plays a major role here!

This depends on you. The most important part of the program are office hours with Mentors, and you will make the decision on how many office hours you want to book. There are also two events every week that last between 1-2 hours, the most important one being the Founder’s Speech event – a one-hour session with a successful startup founder that will share his/her experience with you and answer your questions.

It has become very common for VCs to claim they give you more than money, very few actually live by it. At FRC, we always stand behind our founder, in good and bad times. Our support goes from very tangible actions such as helping you raise your next round, to much less tangible ones, such as taking late phone calls to discuss life/work balance when your GF/BF starts complaining that the company we invested in has become your mistress.

It is a privileged access peer-to-peer membership available to all the FRC Portfolio companies available for assistance, introductions, and commercial relationships.

It is the network of companies, individuals and organizations that work with and sponsor the FRC program and to whom FRC portfolio companies have direct access for resources and potential customers.

It is the network of relationships that FRC maintains for co-investment in FRC portfolio companies, potential follow-on, next stage investment and for potential exit. FRC is connected to approximately 80 VC across the USA (East and West coast), Europe and Asia.

We get it right with say 90% of the founders. We do miss sometimes, same for the founding team; this is a bit like in a marriage, sometimes it just does not work out. We will be happy to introduce you to a couple of founders who have been working with us and they’ll tell you everything about us: the good, the bad and the ugly. But in reality the last two don’t exist. 😉

Who are the people behind Fil Rouge Capital?

Take a look at our team page and you ll know everything about us.

What stage do you invest in?

We invest from €10k up to €2M across four stages: idea stage, MVP stage, growth stage and follow on stage.

How many investments/year are you making?

Very hard to say since we do invest at 4 different stages, but say 30-40 investments/year should be a good average. Note that investment means this could also be in the same company- as we tend to follow on our beloved founders.

Will you give me a reason if you reject my application?

No, why? We just don’t, but why?

Who are your investors ?

Some of our investors publicly disclose their investment into FRC, others don’t. We don’t have anything to hide but we are not allowed to disclose them, sorry! They range from Pension funds, Investment and retail banks, family office, HNWI, etc.

Do you co-invest?

Yes, we lead and we follow, we have no religion if we like the founding team.

How big is your current fund?

€46M