The con­fer­ence was intend­ed to put the posi­tions of the var­i­ous actors into perspective:

• Finan­cial funds that are look­ing for “nuggets” that can gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial returns,
• Cor­po­rate funds that aim to com­bine finan­cial suc­cess and align­ment with the strat­e­gy of their group,
• Star­tups seek­ing share­hold­ers who are flex­i­ble and com­mit­ted to their projects.

“This event gave us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet with the star­tups we invest in, but also with finan­cial and cor­po­rate ven­ture cap­i­tal funds,” said Gérard Mes­tral­let, ENGIE Chair­man and CEO, who also reaf­firmed the impor­tance of ENGIE New Ven­tures, which which enables the Group to be “a part­ner of the inven­tors and entre­pre­neurs who stim­u­late our institution.”

Sev­er­al peo­ple from the finan­cial sec­tor spoke: Nan­cy Pfund (DBL Investors), Véronique Jacq(BPI), Dominique Ren­curel (Orkos Cap­i­tal), Eric Mar­ty (Emer­son Man­age­ment), and Meier Uke­les (ICV). They stressed the impor­tance of projects’ finan­cial suc­cess of projects and how they affect star­tups’ eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. Many dis­cus­sions focused on the rela­tion­ship between finan­cial funds and cor­po­rate funds in the man­age­ment boards of star­tups, an area in which each actor has to play its role with great finesse.
Nan­cy Pfund has also not­ed that ener­gy will expe­ri­ence a rev­o­lu­tion sim­i­lar to the one that trans­formed oth­er indus­tries (tele­coms, auto­mo­tive) and focused on two promis­ing areas: micro-net­works and storage.

Cor­po­rate funds were rep­re­sent­ed by Sébastien Pail­lat (Ali­ad-Air Liq­uide), Ralph Schnell(Siemens Ven­ture Cap­i­tal), Fran­cois Badoual (Total Ener­gy Ven­tures), Hen­drik Van Asbroeck(ENGIE New Ven­tures). They empha­sized the com­plex­i­ty of their role: first­ly in a finan­cial sense, in mea­sur­ing star­tups’ suc­cess, but also in ensur­ing they con­tribute eco­nom­i­cal­ly to the devel­op­ment of their group. They must also ensure that two very dif­fer­ent cul­tures (hor­i­zon­tal cul­ture in star­tups and ver­ti­cal ones in large groups) get along and agree.

Last­ly, sev­er­al star­tups sup­port­ed by ENGIE were also present, with Susan Kennedy (AMS), Philippe Andreuc­ci (APIX), Yoav Zingher (KiWi), Olivi­er Pireaux (Pow­erdale), Ludovic Le Moan (Sig­Fox), and Adri­an Tuck (Ten­dril), who pre­sent­ed their work and met with dif­fer­ent funds in a mar­ket­place event after the conference.