Paris-based Teamstarter bags €7M for its intra-company crowdfunding platform

Paris-based Teamstarter, a platform for intra-company crowdfunding, announced on Wednesday that it has secured €7M from Odyssée Venture, Matters, and Financière Vecteur (an investment vehicle of the Banque Populaire group).

Several business angels also participated in the round. They include: 

• Benoît and Bertrand Leclercq (President of Créadev and Founder of Abor et Sens and Chairman of the Abilways group) 
• Nicolas Petrovic (former CEO of Siemens and Eurostar)
• Benoît Queyrel (serial entrepreneur and founding chairman of AptiSkills)
• Patrick Dixneuf (former Managing Director of Aviva Europe and Chairman of the Cercle Turgot) 

Fund utilisation

The French company aims to accelerate its annual growth and prepare for its international expansion. The company is developing new features to attract talent, engage employees and continue providing a unique, personalised experience for employees. 

With 45 employees, Teamstarter intends to recruit 40 more people to strengthen its product, marketing, and sales divisions.

Teamstarter: What you need to know

Ségolène Mouterde and Vincent Desmares founded Teamstarter in 2019 in Matters startup studio. 

It is a crowdfunding platform that allows a company’s (clients) employees to create or finance internal projects using a budget allocated to them by the company. 

The company aims to make humans the strength of tomorrow’s companies with the first intra-company participatory financing platform.

Teamstarter claims it is tackling Europe’s brain drain and talent war by enabling its clients to make their employees into actors and intrapreneurs within their companies. The company believes this will help them to move the lines at their level and create a more engaged workforce.

Ségolène Mouterde, CEO of Teamstarter, says, “Our tool enables employees to become active players in their company by allowing everyone, regardless of their job or seniority, to change things at their level by choosing and implementing impactful initiatives that they will carry out from A to Z, thanks to the trust placed in them by the company. The aim is to mobilise collective intelligence with employees working hand in hand to put their ideas into shape, make their project known in their company, and, once the funds have been reached, deploy the initiative themselves. So it’s not foosball that engages, and Teamstarter activates the right motivational mechanisms: taking the initiative, trust, empowerment, bottom-up, collaboration.”

Teamstarters: How does it work?

Companies allocate a monthly budget to each employee through Teamstarter. With this amount, employees can propose projects that are important to them and in which their colleagues can participate. 

According to studies carried out on more than 30,000 users, 82 per cent of employees say they are more committed, claims the company.

Over 3,000 projects with a societal, environmental, quality of life at work, customer, or employee experience impact have been carried out. 

The French company has witnessed an annual growth of 400 per cent and attracted hundreds of clients, including Sopra Steria Aeroline, Razel-Bec, Avanade, and Natixis Wealth Management, to attract, motivate and retain their talents.

“We are delighted to support Teamstarter, a company with which we fully share the desire to combine growth and positive impact. Teamstarter has already proven the relevance of its offer to deeply transform companies and involve employees more at a time of Big Quit and loss of meaning in work”, says Sébastien Sassolas, head of Odyssée Venture.

For Benoît and Bertrand Leclercq, “Teamstarter has a vision that we share and find useful in the business world. Companies that win in the long run are those where the employees seen by their customers are happy and thus give their best. Covid, yellow vests protests, working from home, and calls for a transformation of our business models to commit to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees … are all challenges to which Teamstarter and its teams respond. We are proud to support its development, which makes complete sense to us.”

“I am convinced that success can only come from a committed team culture, as I have experienced at Eurostar and Siemens. Therefore, I believe in Teamstarter, which offers a perfect solution for strengthening company commitment, focused on action,” says Nicolas Petrovic.