Boston, Massachusetts — Early-stage venture
Crossing the Atlantic is a second founding.
Pottier Invest backs early-stage founders building in the United States, and specialises in those arriving from Europe to do it. We lead or co-lead seed rounds, take a board seat, and do the unglamorous work of landing a company in a market that is not yet yours.
- ~20
- Investments planned over three years
- $1–1.5M
- Typical seed cheque
- 70%
- Of capital deployed at seed
- Board
- Seat taken in every lead investment
The crossing
Funding is the easy part.
A European company entering the United States is not opening a new market. It is founding a second company, with a different buyer, a different sales motion and a different idea of what good looks like. Most of what goes wrong happens in the first year, and almost none of it is about the product.
Structure
Entity, banking, payroll and the order to do them in — before they become the reason a customer cannot buy from you.
The first hires
Who to hire first in a country where you know nobody, what to pay, and how to manage them from six time zones away.
Selling to an American buyer
Positioning, pricing and a sales motion rebuilt for a market that will not simply accept what worked at home.
The next round
American investors read companies differently. We help you build the metrics and the story they recognise, well before you need them.
Where we invest
Four sectors we actually know.
Food platforms & marketplaces
Delivery and grocery marketplaces, ghost kitchens, direct-to-consumer food and beverage brands, B2B restaurant supply and payments, and the software that runs behind all of it.
Sports technology
Athlete analytics and wearables, video and computer vision, club and youth-sports operations software, fan engagement, and venue technology.
Logistics & operations
Routing, fleet management, supply-chain visibility and last-mile autonomy — the unglamorous infrastructure that decides whether a unit economic works.
Tech-enabled services
SaaS and B2B tools for operators, with selective exposure to artificial intelligence, financial technology and health innovation.
How we help
We have run the playbook, not just read it.
-
Building a commercial engine
Hiring, structuring and managing field and inside sales teams — work we have done directly, at scale, in a marketplace business.
-
Opening doors
Introductions that turn a market into a pipeline: customers, operators, advisers and the investors who will lead your next round.
-
Governance that helps
A board seat we take seriously: a real cadence, honest reporting, and pressure on the two or three decisions that matter this year.
Most founders don’t need more opinions. They need someone who has done the job.
Why us
We have run growth from the inside rather than read about it: scaling marketplace operations, building and managing commercial teams, and carrying profit-and-loss responsibility for market expansion. We have also built companies from nothing, which is why we are careful about what we ask of the ones we back.
That operating experience is paired with venture judgement. Our principal, Marc Fournier, is a co-founder and managing partner of Serena, a European venture firm with roughly $1.2 billion under management, and his network spans Europe and the United States.
Founders
Send it. We read everything.
No warm introduction required. Tell us what you are building in a few paragraphs and we will come back to you within ten business days — with a real answer, not a form reply.