Villa Blu Newsletter #1
Regular updates on a unique hub in the historical heart of Grasse dedicated to accelerating natural innovation 🌱
For Villa Blu, 2023 was a year dedicated to building. Building a project, a community, a vision and a place. But most importantly, we were focused on building a strong ecosystem to support entrepreneurs innovating in the natural world. The year went by lightning-fast, so for those who missed parts of our 2023 adventure, here’s where Villa Blu stands after 10 months of existence :
10 startups joined our pre-acceleration program in 2023 with a focus on Health & Wellness, AgriTech, Petcare & FoodTech with a few highlights 👇
In September, Lisa Schino announced a fundraising round of €600K to take her natural hair care company Lao to the next level with big pushes on hiring, product development, marketing and R&D 👏
Farm3 had a fantastic year as well, pitching their project at the UN in July, building a 500m2 phenotyping center in Besançon, growing their team to 12+ people and are now raising a Series A 🌱
Three startups from Batch 2 are raising seed rounds after an intensive six-month acceleration where some reinvented their identity, designed new products or completely pivoted their business to find the right market-fit.
Now, we believe that Villa Blu has strong roots and all the tools necessary to look forward into 2024 with confidence. And our Q1 was a perfect way to start off the year, coming to a close with our selection for the next Batch.
Villa Blu News - March ‘24
On March 20th, committees from Villa Blu and Robertet Group as well as an exceptional guest jury heard 12 pitches and selected 5 new startups (to be announced in the next newsletter) to join our 3rd Batch and begin our acceleration program in April 🎓
We were extremely proud to present 12 startups coming from a wide variety of industries like AgriTech, Mushrooms, AI & Functional Ingredients as well as from all around the world like South Korea, Belgium, UK, New Zealand and Singapore 🌍
Finally, we’d like to extend our warm thanks to the many people who took time off their schedule to provide invaluable insight and support to the entrepreneurs who pitched.
Finally, a big thank you to Marie Nghiem and her fantastic team from Le Village by CA in Sophia-Antipolis for coming over to Villa Blu and hosting their legendary Sales Bootcamp, a skill every founder in any industry needs to thrive.
As a bonus encounter in March, our B2C startups had the chance to pitch their products to a leading global travel retailer (cosmetics, beverages, food supplements) to be referenced in the new Duty Free shops coming to Aéroport Nice Côte d’Azur, showcasing Grasse’s finest products.
Thank you to Filip Soete for organising this moment with Christophe Ricard and his team.
Portfolio News
One of the first startups to join Villa Blu was Farm3, an agronomic data expert developing a soil-less technology that enables them to control up to 80 different conditions for plant growth (climate, light, aeroponics). Their aim → to ensure secure supply and plant production despite climatic change 🌎
This February, they were voted regional winners at the Tech for Future awards in the Environmental & Energy category.
Meanwhile, the trio of founders at Jane have been hard at work with Robertet Group to design and develop a new range of functional & floral beverages. They’ve now presented their brand new design and announced over 10 unique recipes leveraging efficient and natural active ingredients ; stress-relief, aphrodisiac, beauty, vitality. With very strong traction on the beverage market and a powerful floral-focused brand, Jane is positioned to become a go-to healthy, functional and natural alternative to sodas, juices and alcohol.
In the world of beauty, Yahn & Olivier have, after piloting the Groupe Ales for decades, dedicated the past years to developing IUM Paris, a new brand of natural facial cosmetics using oligo-elements and pure water from la Mer d’Iroise. Their Energising Eye Balm won the Victoire de la Beauté prize for Virtuous & Organic products in February ‘24 🏆
This is the second time a Villa Blu company wins a Victoire de la Beauté after Holite’s In-and-Out serum + food supplement duos.
Investment Opportunities
At the moment, three of our startups are currently raising funds, with more preparing themselves for a Q2 round.
Farm3 is raising a Series A round 👉 if you want to know more you can reach out to Romain at romain.schmitt@farmcube.eu
Our one-of-a-kind beverage company, Jane is raising a seed round of €500K with Business Angels 👉 if you want to know more you can contact Alexandre : alexandre@jane-store.com
Finally, our naturally effective & adorable petcare startup, Truffe & Moustache is raising a seed round of €800K with Business Angels 👉 Thomas would be pleased to share his story and pitch deck : thomas@truffe-moustache.com
Final Notes
We’d like once more to give a warm thanks to all the amazing entrepreneurs, investors and partners who helped us make our Selection Committee for Batch 3 a powerful moment.
A particular shout-out to Jin Bae, founder of Selvatico for flying out all the way from Seoul, South Korea to pitch your impressive company 🇰🇷
See you all next month 👋