E362 | Salomon Aiach & Blaise Matuidi, Origins Fund: Why consumer sector is the underdog in venture capital

0:00Hi, everyone, and welcome to another EUVC Podcast episode. I'm David. I'm your sole host for today. So bye-bye, Andreas. He's not joining us this day. Today, we're welcoming the amazing duo Blaise Matuidi and Solomon Ayat. I hope I said that right, Solomon, by the way, from Origins. And Origins is a VC fund investing 100k to 500k US dollars tickets into B2C or B2B2C companies. And Origins LP base is mostly athletes, celebrities, investors with very large social media trends. thus representing a total community of roughly 160 or more million followers. If you're listening in and you love our show, you know what to do.

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1:40Tear down this wall. It's more than just an alliance. This is a union of values. United and determined we can serve as a model for other regions of the world. The nature of a problem requires a European response. Europe is a story of new beginnings, new, new beginnings. Let's start acting, acting, acting, acting. This show is not investment advice and the hosts of this episode may be invested in the funds and companies featured. Les, let's start this thing off with your story. You're not the average guest here in this pod as you are first and foremost known as an athlete. And you've been the world champion in 2018.

2:28uh can you give our listeners like a quick overview of who you are um but maybe even like more interesting to chat about a bit is like your journey from like athletes to now investor hello yes i'm brazil matruidi i've been a soccer player for like 18 years playing in the some teams in France like Troyes, Saint-Etienne, PSG. I had the chance to play also with the national team, winning the World Cup. And then I became an entrepreneurship. And now I am a GP partner in Norwegian. And during my career, I've been fascinated by various individuals in the entrepreneur world. This has opened my mind to the business world.

3:27I started as a business angel in different businesses. Then I felt the desire to bridge the gap between technology and sports. My goal was to show future generations the possibility of combining these two fields. especially considering the short duration of an athlete's careers and the need to manage post-career. You know, it's an interesting story, and we're now starting to see across the globe, right? Not only Europe, across the globe. We're starting to see more and more athletes, you know, becoming closer and closer with both the business world. I think that's been going for longer. But more recently, we've seen more and more athletes becoming closer with the investment world, specifically tech investing startups entrepreneurship right so i'd love to ask you a bit like in that when you first started doing your angel investment tickets the first couple of ones how was that experience for you because i'm sure it might have been daunting but i'm also quite sure that as a high profile high performance athlete there's a lot of people knocking on your track to pitch to pitch pitch your stuff right so how how the hell does does an athlete in that situation start thinking about doing his first or couple of first investments it's exciting it's exciting he's like uh play his first uh professional game you know i was exciting i was thinking to to be the best uh like to do my best you want to win all the time uh that's my goal uh was my goal when I was a soccer player and it's my goal now as an entrepreneur.

5:17Of course, you spend your money, so you have more attention. But still, I think between these two worlds, I think there is connection and the resiliency, to be consistent, to be a hard worker. and is what I wanted to see from the founders. Yeah, David, you know, it's like, and it's also what I was amazed by Blaise is, I mean, he mentioned Iskara, but he also moved to Miami recently, right? So I think since he moved to Miami, he obviously saw and was like super inspired by what Serena Williams did, Kevin Durant, and a lot of like top, top celebrities there, right? And I feel like that's where he was, I would say, way above anyone else.

6:11He had the ability to question himself and to say, hey, why are they doing this overseas and why we're not doing this in Europe? And I think to have that kind of emotional intelligence to be able to start from zero and to go back from scratch and to say, hey, it's fine if I don't know, I want to get back to the weed of something I don't know. I think that's where, I mean, he inspires me every day on obviously the hard work, the discipline, the expectation that he has on the team and where he wants Origins to go. But I think this emotional intelligence to say, hey, why do they have this and we don't have it?

6:46I want to be the first one to build this. I think that was also something that was super cool. Yeah, I agree. Solomon, by the way, welcome to the show. You're probably more well known to our more loyal listeners. But can you just give us a quick intro? and also how did you meet Bleds? Like, how did this duo come together? Yeah, I don't know if I'm more well-known. I mean, it's like, I'm going to have an adventure for you. To the VC geeks only, right? Yeah, so my journey into venture started not too long ago, actually. It started very similar to Bleds, maybe at a different scale. Bleds started as an angel.

7:25I also started as an angel. So for our listeners, I was born in the US, grew up in Paris, went to school in the US, worked in banking in the US, and then moved back to France. When I moved back to France, I had a very, I would say, high visibility role, not highly responsible role, but a lot of visibility on the startup VC ecosystem for Facebook. And that gave me deal flow and I had a little bit of cash from savings. So I started putting five, 10Ks in companies. And you know, you start as an angel and I think that's where you start creating that desire of wanting to do more, building something more.

8:00So I did that for Facebook for years. After that, I had the chance to open the French office for one of the largest funds in Europe called Early Bird. And then the idea of Origins came around and it made a lot of sense because I had seen at Facebook how much consumer companies, or I would say companies that had an end consumer needed to spend on customer acquisition. it's on average 20 to 40 percent of your VC money that you spend there and we wanted to build something different we wanted to build you know I think uh Vinod Kostler said 90 percent of the of the investor don't add any value they actually destroy the value of the cap table and we wanted to be part of those 10 percent and that's how we came up with the idea of origins I think the idea totally emerged from Blaise of wanting to be that example and that leader and saying like hey guys I I want to be the first one building this in Europe.

8:54And then the idea to say, hey, we want to do either a B2C or B2BDC company fund, sorry, because that's where we would have the most value add for our founders that I think came from Elan and myself. And that's where we are today. Bles, I have two questions for you there. Why did you decide to go and become like a GP at a fund? like you could you could obviously with with your profile you could associate yourselves with others if you wanted to right but no instead you decide to go all in and learn a bunch of stuff that you probably didn't really know much about right uh but also there's a lot of hours uh poured into that it's it's a whole new career why did you opt for that you um as you said we always start from from something right i started as a as a business angel and i get the chance to meet to meet some people and i uh after i met uh elan one of my partner in in origin we felt the desire to bring together the two worlds i realized that i could provide added value to company through social and media.

10:11With this trend, we can help companies enhance their communication power. Today, as you said before, we represent an audience of over 160 million, and it's huge. And our athletes are recognized worldwide. So I always have, sorry, in my mind that in life as in sport together we are stronger so with that with origin is what we the value that we add with with the athlete side and the business part is just uh it's just strong and amazing and blaze like one thing that he wanted the most was and i'm sure we'll speak about it later was wanted to bring like the family together and the family is like the older player he played ways in the other teams right he didn't want to say like i want this to be like bless fund he wanted i always say he's like that midfielder you know he's always been like an harmonizer and i always say he's like he's really like an harmonizer he's like between defense and between offense and i think even the way the fund was created you didn't want the fund to be around him but around like the lps which is I would say a summary of his career.

11:33So that was also super cool. Yeah, and that was actually my follow-up question. So why Origins and why not Blaise Fund1? Or Matuidi Fund1, right? But you kind of answered that. Blaise, a more personal question here. In shifting from professional athletes to professional investors, what's been the hardest thing for you? Listen, there is more works, I can say, as an investor. I slept well, less, sorry. But I think both of them are very good to spend time. I think when you wake up in the morning and you have a goal for me is exciting. I've always been in that world and I definitely think that they are in the same world but did not do the same things.

12:34So it's been now five, six years that I am in this world and to be able to give back also to the young athletes that are still playing in their sports for me is an amazing value and I want to keep that I want to keep that and that is my goal for the next years at what time did you start angel investing was it early on in your career was it towards the end already as an athlete I was in my time in PAG so I had a 27 years old and for me it was important to see what I can do after. Most of the athletes, and especially the soccer players, when they arrive at the end, they realize that in two years it will be finished.

13:30So what do I have to do? My father always told me that you need to prepare. You need to prepare yourself because maybe you will have kids and we will have a family and you cannot wake up every single day. And regarding to the mirror yourself, I wanted to do something. I wanted to be something and to be an example also for my kids. After you win or you lose, the most important is you try. And I try to do my best. I imagine that with Origins now, a big part of your focus in time is also kind of, you know, identifying other athletes that would like to be part of this journey, right? Do you find that athletes are thinking about this at the right age, a bit too late already in their careers?

14:26But what are you seeing there? And who have you, without naming people, that's not what I'm asking, but what types of profiles have shown an interest in joining this journey? Now there is every age as an athlete, I can say we have, for example, young players and we have players arriving at the end. And we have also players that are on top of the career. So I think the world, the sport world is changing now. Most of the athletes are interested to be part of this world, entrepreneur world, sorry. So for us, it's very interesting because I think, like I said, we have an amazing value to give to the company and to the sport world.

15:18One thing that we're not mentioning, like I've learned it by spending a bit of time, obviously, with the players, but it looks so glamorous from the outside, right? Like you go to a stadium and you watch a game and you watch the lifestyle on Instagram and you watch it and it looks so glamorous. But after spending time, the work ethic that those people have and the discipline, it's incredibly inspiring, right? And it transpires, like, obviously on the field when you see them play, but it also transpires on the field. Like, the number of times where we have a partners meeting every single week with Origin and Blaze is coming back and is, like, just asking more from the team, saying, like, hey, I don't care that it's December, that deal flow has gone down.

16:05Like, our job is to invest. why I haven't seen new companies in December. You know, it's like that work ethic and that requirement to always be the best, right? We obviously have big thought for the next chapter, potentially the next fund, and we start discussing size of the fund. And that's when it comes and we say, are we dreaming big enough, right? And I think that's something that I would love our listeners to know is it could look so glamorous from the outside, but deep down they have and blaze was speaking about it like that work ethic that discipline that mental resilience that aspiring to be the best you know they've known failure i mean blaze can speak to you speak to you about like his feeling after psg barcelona champions league when they came back it's like but mental resilience is like really really tough at that moment right it's like all values that that like we have on a daily basis and we have a chance to to be around Solomon, I have a follow-up question for you and it's more about like, let's bring this all together.

17:10Early stage, 100K to 500K, B2B2C, B2B2C, VC as an investor. Why did you look at this and feel this is something I have to be a part of? What was that edge that really made you super excited about being a part of the Origins journey? And whilst you share that, maybe it'd also be cool to share with our listeners. what's the history behind Origins? Because even though we're talking about it today, a lot has been done up until today, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. On the first question is like, why Origins? Like I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur on a personal level. I just never had the courage.

17:47Like to say it very bluntly, I never had the balls to be an entrepreneur and to start something. And I think this is the first time that I really had the feeling that I'm an entrepreneur because you get to build something and you're hiring a team and sometimes a team member is doing great. sometimes it's not doing great and then you don't know how you're going to do fund two and the market and stuff so i think that's really really on a personal level and i would say the second thing is remember david we raised the fund in 2021 2021 was like the craziest year for vc with crazy valuation tons of americans were coming in into europe especially and basically to become a lead investor was probably the most competitive thing when you were a sexy company.

18:31When you had a top company, you had all those US top investors in UK or even Germany that were just coming in and snapping those term sheets really quickly. And basically the thesis that we wanted to build was we're never going to compete with those guys. They've been around for way longer. The funds are huge. But what if we were kind of like the next call on the iPhone, right? We were the next person that they would call. We wanted to be followers. We wanted to be small tickets so we wouldn't bother on the cap table, on the ownership. But at the same time, we could justify the value that we would bring.

19:05And that's kind of like the value proposition that we wanted to build. And we built it in 2021 was really three layers. We never wanted to be it. We wanted to be followers. We wanted to be ton of value add. And at the same time, we noticed that there weren't a lot of known followers or just even lead VCs that had the courage to explore consumer in general, whether it's B2C or B2B2C. And then we saw that there was a niche there. And that's kind of like how we came to the conclusion that the 100 to 500K checks was the perfect size. And then B2C or B2B2C was really the sweet spot where we would have the most value at.

19:46So that's kind of like for the history of origins where we are today. So we've done 13 investments to date. As Blaise explained earlier, every time we invest in a company, it comes with a marketing campaign. So we bring our LPs to speak about the company, raise awareness. So out of the 13 companies, we've already done five campaigns. We're waiting for the other companies to find perfect product market fit, right? Our goal when we do this marketing campaign is never to bring your company from zero to one, but to help you go from one to 10, right? Find your product market fit and we'll help you kind of blow up.

20:24That's how we think about the awareness. So we're waiting for those companies to find perfect product market fit. And yeah, 13 amazing companies. Some companies that you probably know, our listeners will know, such as Opway, MochaCare in the mental health space. We've done arguments in the education space that raised recently and some others. And we had the privilege to be investing alongside some tier one investors, such as like Sequoia, Singular, Left Lane, and some others. So it's a pretty cool journey so far. Are there other subsectors you guys are particularly passionate about, either as individuals or as investors within Origins?

21:05Because you said, you named two really cool ones, education and mental health. So I'm wondering if there's something else or something behind that. Go, go, Blaise. No, I think we have the mental health. We have different answers, but go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I am in love with the mental health, Mocha.com, because especially for an athlete, but not only, the mental health is the best issue now. We had some person that have a lot of problem with the, you know, with the expecting about the hard work every single day, you know the pressure for some person has been difficult to to keep that in their in their mind and their body so uh i think to have some people to to be able to to help them to consider that and to to be close to them i think it's something something special and from already my myself i I had some difficult moments where I wanted to stop.

22:10I say it's very difficult for me mentally, you know, to be down and then to be able to go up. So when you have a company like Muka Care, I think it's amazing because people feel you only on the feed, but they see you on the TV, they see you on the feed, but sometimes they don't know what's happened behind. And, you know, when it's been 25, 30 years and you are every single day, you feel the pressure that you have to be at 100, 150, 100 % focusing in your bubble. It's hard. And sometimes you just want to say stop and you can get also crazy. So, and this is disregarding athletes. it but I feel also for some people who just work every single day in the office, it's never easy.

23:10So that's why for me, I get the chance to have some words on that and I think it's just amazing to have this type of company that can help these people. From that perspective, you have a lot of empathy with high performance and high ambition founders, right which has been a topic that our industry has been speaking about of the the mental health health issues that come from that like extremely high pressure date back back to back every single day dedication to to a startup that eight what is it 85 90 fail right and so that really creates that stress i imagine you have a lot of empathy with with them even though it's a completely different specific thing they're doing it's the same it's the same feeling right it's the same impacts the same mental kind of down downturn so to speak that you feel solomon what about yourself no and i was gonna say just to to to concur on what blaze just said for example just on that mental health topic the campaign that we helped mocha care so their mental health the campaign that we helped them was to basically interview create a podcast to raise awareness around mental health and help them interview super high profile athletes that speak about mental health right so So they're super exposed to mental health issues and pressure.

24:30And that podcast was, for example, elected number one for quite some time on the podcast in France in that department. So that was pretty cool. And what I was going to say was you were asking me about the different sector within consumers. So on the investment team were three people. So everybody, I would say, as we look at every possible sector within consumer, whether it's mental health, whether it's education, whether it's consumer marketplaces, whether it's consumer social, we invested in Ammo or some other. So I have the list in front of me. We have something like 20 categories. Everybody is assigned, I would say, to a consumer category.

25:13And then we also split in terms of geographies because we invest across Europe and the US. So some member from the team will cover the UK. Someone else will cover Germany, the Nordics, France. And that's kind of like how we split. But within consumer, and that's kind of like something that I want to make sure, we don't only look at consumer social rights because that could be super binary. We look at everything when it comes to consumer, from consumer marketplaces like Upway with e-bikes to consumer mental health solution like MochaCare and another company that we've done, ThrivePal, to consumer gaming with a company called Umon, consumer fintech with a company called Ugami.

25:55So we're really, I would say, very broad on that spectrum. So, Bles, I'd love to ask you to give a shout out to a co-investor, an angel, an LP, another athlete, whatever, that has helped you in this journey of going from athletes to becoming a GP at Origins. There is not a person or an entity to retain. I think all deserve to be retained because they give us the confidence. And, you know, regarding myself, I've been a model on sport and I wanted to be a model also in terms of entrepreneurship and to be a part of this journey with them, for me, is an amazing value that they gave me. and I think it came from the bottom of the earth, from some of them, and also because they know that I am an art worker.

26:57I give my best every day, and when I was with Salomon and Ilana, they know that I will let nothing pass. So it's beautiful to learn every single day for them, obviously, but also to give what I learned in my career. So I think, as I said in the past, in the artworks, the consistency, the vision also, because I think when you are an athlete, you have also the vision to be better every single day. and I think it's the same things in the term of entrepreneurship so that's why I spend this time all day and for me it's something that I want to do all my life and to do that with Orygine, with all these people together is just amazing.

27:59Yeah, David, this is such a blaze answer and that's why I said earlier it's such like it's not like he doesn't like the light but he's such a midfielder in the way he approaches life and in the way he works with entrepreneurs and in the way like i know when like each lp that committed whether it was from his journey in paris or juventus or after it was like a form of wow like i can't believe you're building this like i'm with you and you know it's like it's like me starting a fund and having my old boss kind of like giving me a check i think it's like the biggest kind of send-off present that you can give someone.

28:37So that was definitely pretty cool. You enjoyed that reply. Cool. Solomon, a question for you now about consumer. We've done, what is it, like 300 episodes with investors or so, right? In the last almost three years now. So roughly 100 on average per year. Consumer is oftentimes not the sector we talk about. It's oftentimes enterprise, SaaS, more deep tech these days lately. But consumer is often the one, yeah, we don't do consumer. And often we shrug it off with, yeah, we don't understand it. And that's typically the reply. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing or a good thing. It's just it is what it is.

29:29However, you are a consumer-focused fund. from an opportunity standpoint, so the opportunity that Origins is tackling, but also almost like an LP kind of expectation standpoint. How do you talk about consumer? How do you express the opportunity? Because the fact that Origins can seize it is for me at least quite obviously what we spoke about, but that doesn't mean that the opportunity is good enough, right? It's a different topic. Yeah, so it's really funny because there was this tweet, I think, that I read like four or five days ago that was saying, it was this guy that tweeted, when I first started in venture, a legendary VC told me that being a consumer investor is the best way to have a short career in the industry.

30:17And I thought that tweet, I sent it to the team. I thought it was really cool. Look, hardware is really hard, obviously, and consumer is also really hard. And we are aware of that. And that's why, given the high profile of our LPs, right, we have myself, Ilan, Yo, Blaise, the entire team has an immense amount of pressure of not only returning the money to our LPs, but returning with like really high values. And because we have this pressure, the way we kind of like structuring the portfolio is to de-risk what consumer means. and we are going to take the problem with consumer and the reason why it's hard, it's just so binary.

31:00I just looked at a company literally 30, 45 minutes ago. They have crazy numbers when it comes to retention. It's consumer social. Insane numbers when it comes to retention. But I'm like, what is this company looking like in six months? Or is it going to be another clubhouse? Is it going to be another company that just like with downloads that just fall not to cite any other names? but I think that's a problem is a lot of those consumer companies are really binary and the way we're building the portfolio is you're risking those binary bets so we already have binary bets by being in the game of venture just always and that's the power of law but by doing consumer marketplaces or by doing consumer fintech or by doing consumer B2B SaaS like B2BDC like MochaCare or by doing other things within consumer, when we make a bet on AMO, which is consumer social, we've de-risked already the entire portfolio with previous bets, right?

32:03And that's kind of how we are comfortable today to stay a consumer investor. But that's why also kind of, that's the way also I started when we pitch consumer, we say we invest in companies where the end user is Mr. and Mrs. Everybody. So the end user is a consumer, but it doesn't mean necessarily that if we have a portfolio of 25 companies, all 25 companies are going to be binary bets on consumer social just because they had incredible day 30 retention. And that's why I think there's a massive gap for consumer companies in France, in Europe in general. We're not as good as the US. story. But at the same time, because there is a massive gap, you need to de-risk and to build a portfolio that is diversified enough to be able to have still a good return to your health.

33:00Before I start wrapping this up, I need to ask this question. So scared about what you're going to ask right now. Not often. No, it's not bad. It's not often we have athletes on the podcast. I think we've had low profile and that's not a critique at all but low profile athletes in the sense they stopped soon because they weren't top level so they changed career right we've never had I think we've never had a professional athlete on the podcast which professional athlete do you look up to Les? I'm not looking sorry on a special professional athletes I think I'm looking of people who are able to bring value whatever the type of level in professional world.

33:45I've been in touch with a lot of people in terms of athletes, people who didn't become professional as well. And they have also the mind that they can do also something amazing and have what they get in their world of sports and bring that in the world of entrepreneurship. So I think for Origin, obviously we want the value on social media, but also people who are ready to not only give their money, but be able to help Origin to go forward. and for us is the most important. And as I said, I've been a work artist, so I need people who want me that are on the same page. No role model. But then I have to ask the other one.