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The SaaS Revolution Show
How AI is changing SaaS funding with Ventech’s Audrey Soussan
00:29:52
In this episode of The SaaS Revolution Show, Alex Theuma speaks with Audrey Soussan, General Partner at Ventech, about how the early-stage SaaS landscape is evolving and what founders need to understand if they’re looking to raise. Audrey shares insights from 15+ years investing across Europe, including: - Why AI is no longer a vertical but an expected layer in every SaaS product. - The difference between truly “AI-native” startups and mature SaaS companies adapting their stack. - What VCs like Ventech look for now at seed and Series A. - How founders should think about tech debt, market shifts, and timing. - Lessons from the InSided journey, from bootstrapping to acquisition by Gainsight. - How Ventech supports founders beyond capital, what collaborative board work looks like, and the importance of community. Audrey also discusses competitive dealmaking in AI, why expertise and unique datasets matter, and practical advice for founders raising in the current environment, and how...
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- [00:01]
A
Which good entrepreneurs would not look at AI at all in our world? No one. So I think AI is not a vertical in itself anymore. It should be within any company now.
- [00:16]
B
Welcome to the SaaS Revolution Show, a podcast by SaaS Doc. Here we interview SaaS founders from around the world who've been there and done that as they share the ins and outs of how they built their businesses, their operations and their path to securing investment and more. Our mission with the podcast is to help you, the founder, learn how to scale your SaaS, maintain your wellbeing and navigate the complexities of this ever changing industry. I'm your host, Alex Steamer, and together we'll explore the good, the bad and the ugly in the journey to SaaS success. Okay. Welcome back to the SaaS Revolution Show. I am your host, Alex Thumer, CEO founder at SaaS stock, also general partner at Back Future Ventures. Delighted to be joined today by Audrey Susan, who's general partner at Ventec. How are you doing, Audrey? Good to see you again. Although you may not have seen me at sasdoc, I think that was the case. But I was in the audience for your fantastic talk, an interview with Robin Van leeshout from insided. So I was there.
- [01:19]
A
Hello, Alex. Great to see you this time and not face to face, but at least be able to speak to you.
- [01:27]
B
Yeah, yeah, no. Well, I really appreciate that you joined us in Dublin for the last sasdoc Europe. It was a fantastic session that you had with Robin Van Lee Suit, who'd sold Inside it to gain sites and enjoyed that a lot. But Audrey, for our guests, the for our listeners, would love to, for you to share, you know, who is Audrey Susan to start with and we can then perhaps go on to a little bit about who Ventec are.
- [02:06]
A
So I'm Audrey and I've been working with Ventec for 15 years now. I'm one of the partners of Ventec. I'm based in Paris, investing from France, all over Europe. Because our Ventec fund is actually focusing on France, Germany and the Nordics. We have local teams on the ground for each of these geographies. But I'm personally based in Paris, so I'm covering France and some of the countries where we don't have anyone on the ground and that are adjacent to France. So it includes the Netherlands, where Robin and Inside it come from. So as I said, I've been there for 15 years. Before that I was working at Dien Capital, another venture capital firm based in London. And I'm also a mother of a.
- [02:55]
B
Daughter, Renaissance very, very cool. So 15 years, well 15 years at Ventec and I think a few years prior to that also in the, in the VC world. So you've been there for a while, probably seen you know, quite a lot and also quite a lot of shifts in, in tech and, and B2B software. We're obviously going through another big shift right now which we, we can touch on in a bit regarding Ventech itself. So you mentioned in terms of where geographically you're based but like in terms of where you invest, is it broad tech, is it a lot of B2B software now? You know AI.
- [03:40]
A
Yeah. Ventech is a multi specialist fund in the tech industry so we've been there for 25 years. So of course the thematics changed. Indeed as you mentioned it already there has been a few shifts in the market since then so we've been always investing in the tech industry but currently we focus mainly on AI. Of course I'm sure we're going to spend a lot of time on that but also on digital health, industrial software, also on everything which is related to European sovereignty, cyber space, tech and so on. We invest at early stage so it's could be sealed or series A companies and our ticket size, usual ticket size are 1 to 6 million euros as a first ticket and then we can reinvest up to 15 million euros per companies. We've just raised our latest fund called Ventex 6 and so it's a 175 million euro fund. We're very, very glad we can now invest from this fund. It was a great fundraise with 95% LP RE up RA and yes we've already made 15 investments from these funds and looking forward to deploy more investing.
- [05:00]
B
At the early stage. So maybe just picking on again the inside sort of like use case was Ventec, the lead investor at Seed for Inside it. How did you find that deal? How did you meet Robin?
- [05:19]
A
Yeah, inside it was very specific because indeed we were the first institutional investor but the company had been bootstrapped for long. So indeed it was funded maybe five years before we entered but no one before us entered this cap table. We invested while the company was generating maybe 2 or 3 million euro ar. So it was already I would say quite developed but without any external. I know it seems very strange in today's world that some people prefer you know, going the bootstrap way but yeah, this company was, was bootstrapped for long before we we were the first institutional investor to co invest together with other local funds. As I said it's A Dutch company and we have no local presence in the Netherlands. We always prefer to have a local presence and to. Yes, to leverage our local presence in France, Germany and the Nordic. So in this case, we could not. That's the reason why we teamed up with local funds for this round.
- [06:32]
B
Was it through the local fund, to.
- [06:34]
A
Answer your question, sorry, more broadly speaking, yeah, usually we would invest at CIDA or Series A. We would be the first institutional investor in the company. We would lead or co lead the rounds.
- [06:44]
B
How did you meet Robin, though? Was it like in terms of sourcing the deal? Was it through some of the local funds and making an intro and you going over to the Netherlands and meeting him?
- [06:54]
A
We had an advisor as a common link, I would say one of his advisors. We knew him for long and so he brought the deal to us.
- [07:05]
B
So he bootstrapped for a few years. You did the seed round. How many years after was the acquisition from Gainsight?
- [07:15]
A
Something like five years after we entered, we invested in the company. It was quite quick.
- [07:21]
B
Yeah, yeah, quite quick. And I guess kind of with that as being the lead investor in the seed for the five years through that period. What did your engagement as a seed investor look like with Robin? Were you on the board? How regularly did you speak to him, support him? Sort of through the journey? And then how does the lead investor of a seed round get involved and support in the M and A, if at all?
- [07:53]
A
Well, again, very specific case, but that illustrates well the way we work with the CEOs. Of course, we were part of the board, so we had a board seat. We have a board seat in 100% of our investments and we try to keep it until the very last exit of the. Of the company. So even if there are more funds entering the journey, we, we usually keep our seats until the end. 95% of the case until the exit. And, you know, we. We have a 25 years of track record, so we have invested in 110. Invest in 10, 110 companies and 80 of them have exited already, more than 50% of them. So we have a bit of track record on how it went from the beginning to. From the investment to the exit. And in 95% of the case, we are still at the board at the exit. So it's very important for us. And we would have regular exchanges, of course, outside of the board. I like to have once every two weeks, at least, a call or Visio or any touchpoint with the founders for two reasons. Why, at the very beginning, they need to understand what we can Offer them. I like to say that we tailor our value adds. So I couldn't say, hey, here is the catalog of everyone we can deliver to you. It's very tailored to everyone and very, very dependent on our specific network of 25 years in this industry. So while letting the founders explain me their challenges, their current challenges made them be very operational. I won't be usually the one telling them what to do or how to solve this operational issue, but I will definitely be able to connect to the right person that could help. At the very beginning, it's important to have this regular code so that the founders understand what are our how this network look like and how much we can help on this operational challenges. Because I like to say that we invest in the best entrepreneurs, the one who should know their market better than us, who should know how to operate better than us. And I'm not trying to tell them I'm a better entrepreneur that you would be and I would do it better than you and I know how to solve all your issues. Not at all. We are financial investors and we can bring value by connecting people. So this network is giant again, 25 years in this industry. And so that my main role is actually to match this network with the main challenges of the CEO at a specific timing.
- [10:51]
B
When did the acquisition of Insider by Gainsight Happen? Was it 2023?
- [10:59]
A
No, it was 2022. Yeah, 2022.
- [11:02]
B
2022. So, so here's a question. If, if it was today, do you think that Gainsight would have acquired Inside It? Because I guess what, what we're seeing now is that yes, there is M and A, but companies the size of Gainsight are now all focused on acquiring or it seems, you know, AI, you know, enabled AI first companies. So obviously it happened and it was great that it happened. But maybe was the timing good and because would it have happened today?
- [11:38]
A
The timing was excellent. And to answer your question, well, indeed, I think that Gainsight as of today would not invest in a company with no AI native strategy. But I'm sure, because I know very well, Robin, that from then he would have shifted the product to a much more AI product because he's the. So Robin was the CEO and co founder of Inside it and really one of his main skills was his agility and vision. And actually already through the five years we had together, he shifted a bit the company so that it was more fitted to the market. And I actually participated to a pivot with him, together with him through Inside it. So I invested on another seam and another value proposition than the one that we sold to Gainsight together. So he already had the agility to shift a bit his value proposition so that it fits more with the customers first but also with the potential acquirers. So I'm sure that I agree, agree with you. Gainsight would, would not invest in a non AI company as of today, I'm sure. But at the same time I'm sure also that inside it would have moved from then and put much more AI.
- [13:02]
B
And with that I guess kind of segueing into just the, the general like B2B software sort of market and where, where VCs are investing now. So you're you know, fully focused on, on AI. So it like is, is investing in B2B SaaS or like traditional B2B SaaS dead. Is that over? If it is not an AI first AI native company, I mean, which good.
- [13:29]
A
Entrepreneurs would not look at AI at all in our world? No one. So at some point I think AI is not a vertical in itself anymore. It should be within any company now. And AI became a tool that any company could leverage to get more productivity, get faster and get more functionalities, even you know, provide more values to their customers. So a customer, I don't know any SaaS company that would not look at all at AI today and would just say okay, we have a, we had a product without AI, so let's not look at AI and pursue our past. I mean that doesn't exist. So, so there is no non AI SaaS companies anymore. I would just say that some of the founders are, have been more or less agile in the way they incorporated and they added AI functionalities. And I can see it already again, we have a portfolio of recent deals that are very early stage companies and less recent deal that actually are major companies. And these major companies, some of them, you know, they've been, they've reached a product market fit for five years, six years, seven years, they've reached some of them more than 50 million euros. And by the way in our portfolio we have company doing 800 million euro revenue. So large companies and I mean of course they have to rethink all of their positioning. Even if they are mature, they have customers, they already have reached a product market fit. We know that the whole market is shifting with AI and he's disruptive in a way for everyone. Not only for the large corporate companies, it's also for our major companies that we still call startups, but even them, they are challenged by AI. They are challenged and they find opportunities in AI. So of Course all of them leverage AI. So what is an AI native company and what is not? The main difference is that of course when you have the white page, the blank page and you start from scratch with knowing that all these tools are now available, it's a bit easier to get the agility to understand these tools and include them in your product. While of course when you have a bit of depth, technical depth in your product because you didn't start with rating this AI, sometimes agility is a bit less easy. And you, you, you, you need of course to push yourself to adopt this, this new technology. But you have to. So I mean there is no mature companies in our portfolio where we didn't challenge them to especially I mean the one that are SaaS companies where we didn't challenge them at board meetings to tell them okay, how are you shifting your value prop you leveraging internally AI, how are you competing against these AI native companies? So and the fight between, the fight between AI native companies and this, let's say major companies that are now leveraging AI to improve or adapt to their value proposition is not for sure won by AI native companies. I mean we have this portfolio company which is a great example called Botify Botif y it's, it started as an SEO company search engine customization solution. So basically it helps any e commerce and media companies to be found within Google. And of course a year and a half ago they launched their geo solution which is hard to be found now within ChatGPT, perplexity and all the LLMs. And of course they had to be agile enough to understand that the market was moving even if today the maturity of the customers are not yet on you and much more on SEO. And you know, this company of course is competing now with many startups, native AI native companies that saw the geo thing appear and decided to build a product for jio. While Botify launched the JIO product without knowing that JIO was the new term. You know, they, they, they, by the way the product was not named like that before. They just understood from their customers because they were already on the market because they knew their customers very well. They understood that something was happening and that their customer would need very soon a product like that. And so of course they, you know, they added this new, this new product to the market. And yes, they have this challenge that they have to adapt the product and change the products compared to this native company which start from scratch but at the same time they have already access to customers that could upsell and that they know from, from Long that, that, that they have, I mean the customers have trust already in Botify. They, they are already using their SEO solution. That makes sense to have only one supplier offering both solution SEO and Geo because as of today Google is still owning maybe 90 or 92% of market share in the search even is challenging a lot and very quickly replacing them. But you know, having the trust of the customers and being able to offer both products to let's say the old product and the new generation of product is also an asset. So even if I'm investing in early stage startups, I mean I think it's our role as well to consider the incumbents, especially the major scale ups as potential competitors, direct competitors to these AI native companies.
- [19:44]
B
Yep, no 100% and great points there and maybe just on the picking on the legacy tech debt point. So just anecdotally and I think it was in March of this year and we're in a very fast moving world, everything's moving so quickly. But I was having dinner with a bunch of SaaS founders. One of them, their company's at 10 million ARR. It's growing, right? I don't know what the growth rates are but I think they were like 5 million probably a year or two years ago. And he said to me this founder, that he's got so much legacy tech debt that he's not going to move to AI and rebuild it at the time, I don't know, I should probably check after this if, if he's changed his mind. One would hope so. But do you think in that instance, and let's say if he hasn't changed his mind, right, and that he's at 10 million ARR and he's still growing and he hasn't moved, you know, has been dynamic as like Robin and you know, agile as other founders that you know, he can sustain his business and continue to grow his business or do you think that it's going to be a big mistake and in 12 months or 24 months, you know, this, this company could be in, in real trouble.
- [21:01]
A
It's an odd question because I mean there is no standard answer to this question. Depends on the market, depends on the motion of the company. But I would say yeah, a good founder should definitely be able to adapt and maybe he thought about adapting and decided that the cost of adapting was too large compared to what it could provide him. And then that makes sense that it doesn't go there or that he says okay, let's wait, let's wait a year more or six months more to see what else we can do. Because also rushing into every new trend is not a good thing for, for a CEO. So saying that rushing into AI is not great. But yeah, I think totally depends on what he's rational for not going now into this new direction. I mean, killing the product and starting from scratch is not an answer either. So maybe he thought about, okay, let's acquire an AI native company to complete my offer or you know, change my redesign, my product. Or maybe he thought, well, in my very specific vertical, we've very specific sensitive data. I mean, no AI player could compete, so let's not go. But even if that's the case, I mean I would expect from him that he would leverage AI at least for more productivity internally, even if it's not changing his own products, but for his sales department or marketing department or tech department. I mean whoever can now use AI for more productivity, even if it's not to implement AI in the finalized product.
- [22:47]
B
And maybe then just sort of shifting into now like where you're investing in AI, it's a very competitive space, so you've got to deal with the competition. Prices are, you know, pretty punchy. And so we'd love to know like how, how it is for you as an investor, you know, to, to, to, to win a deal today, you know, given the, the competition, what do you need to do, you know, how fast you need to move, you know, and maybe also then what you're looking for.
- [23:24]
A
Interesting. Well, I mean we are seven partners at Ventec and we don't all have the same investment within the AI area. My main angle would be actually to find experts in their specific vertical with specific barriers to entry that are not linked to the tech itself, but that are linked to either the expertise of the founder or their access to specific data. This is what I'm looking for. And then I would expect that they leverage AI to leverage this expertise or this specific data. So even if they are not, you know, like the guys coming from Google or from OpenAI or from Mistral or whatever that are, these are not the founders I'm looking for personally. Of course, Adventec, there are other partners that are specifically focusing on this tech oriented entrepreneurs. Myself, I'm more focusing on these expert guys that know their market very well. And my goal will be to help them get surrounded by the people who know everything about AI so that they can mix their great expertise with great AI expertise. So that's a bit what my, my, let's say beauty. What I'm looking for Bas and what.
- [24:52]
B
About Advice for founders that are raising in, in this current climate, you know, is it a great time to raise and you know also what, what should they be doing? You know, what is your advice?
- [25:03]
A
Good question. Basically everything which is not very AI related is, I mean it's very hard for them to, to raise money right now. You know, we are also operating, creating a sustainability and resilience fund and well, not all of them are focusing a lot on AI and when they go to the market with their marketplace business model, well it's hard for them to find you know, generalist or AI funds getting interesting to their product. But you know, I think there is no real, I mean whatever you're doing which is doing great should get interest from the investor. So I would, I would still go to the market if I, if I were a founder and if I you know, if I was going into the right direction with my company growing well and you know, with a sustainable growth and really answering your market demands or clients demand and finding traction in a way. Yeah, I mean then you have to add a bit of equity story to it so that again you, you show that your vision is maybe to move to the market which is currently booming and getting the excite the excitement of everyone or at least taking advantage of this market which getting so much excitement. But yeah, I mean even if you're not in the, in the pure scope, I would tell you to raise money and try and just adapt your roadshow to the right investors.
- [26:41]
B
What about yourself personally? Like what AI tools are you using on a day to day business to help you be, you know, a better investor, more productive or yeah, be curious to know what tools you're using.
- [26:56]
A
Well, I'm like everyone, I'm using chat, GBD a lot for, for many things, for gaining productivity, to write my emails, to write on the social media, to score my emails, to basically get the better understanding of the markets, to get summaries of, of deals that are presented to me to ask the right questions to the founders. So basically yeah I'm leveraging LLMs to yeah get sharper and crisper in understanding faster the deals. And yeah I'm using, I mean we are on teams basically we are on the Microsoft suite. So everything is including we can leverage many agents that are already let's say not tailor made. But then we also have a team internally at Vendec which is developing specific tools for us. So there are two developers working full time on tailoring being it the existing products or rebuilding products specifically to us and mainly for sourcing for you know, managing the deal flow, these type of things.
- [28:20]
B
Finally, Audrey, are you bullish on the B2B software market, you know, over the next 12 to 24 months?
- [28:26]
A
I am bullish on the B2B market, but I am bullish on the B2C as well. I think we should not put it aside. I think of course now it's not to the moment when everyone get excitement about it, but at some point, you know, if agents are spending a lot of, I mean if agents are getting so productive that we have more time for ourselves, maybe we will spend more time on B2C tools and, and then there will be a new, new trend for me to see. We've been in the market for 25 years, Adventec, and we know that technology is all about trends and cycles. And when cycles dies, another cycle is born. And so basically we stay open to any new innovation and any great founders supporting this new innovation.
- [29:14]
B
Awesome. Well, Audrey, thank you so much for joining as a guest on the SaaS Revolution Show. I'm glad we got to do this. Really appreciate it. So thank you so much, Audrey. Susan, general partner at Ventec. Thanks for listening to the SAS Revolution Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and follow the show. It helps more SaaS and AI founders to discover the podcast and keeps us bringing you the leaders who are shaping the future of the industry. For more insights and to join the Sastock community, head to sastock.com.