In 2024, it’s hard to wake up without reading about another big round of funding in an AI startup. IntuitionHowever, a new Paris-based VC firm is doing something radical by betting exclusively on consumer technology.
Behind the scenes, Hugo Amsellem (photo left) and Etienne Bhutan (pictured right) will be the general partners of this new fund. Hugo Amsellem has worked for Jellysmack and written about consumer technology and influencers for the past few years — including this very interesting piece about loneliness and how it affects technology and consumer culture.
Amsellem is also best known as one of the first employees of The Family, which was an iconic startup accelerator based in Paris. More recently, Family has been the talk of the town because of the ongoing lawsuits against its co-founder Osama Ammar. He is alleged to have diverted millions of euros for his own gain.
Amsellem left The Family in 2019. When we spoke about this part of his career, he’s both disappointed to see how things ended and wants to move on.
As for Bhutan, he started his career as a professional basketball player. Before founding Intuition, he co-founded the AI startup Hex Technologies.
The duo teamed up to raise a seed capital of 15 million euros ($16 million at today’s exchange rate). They have already invested in a handful of consumer startups in Europe and the US after the first close, but are still actively raising revenue for the fund.
They also hired Axel Toupane (NBA champion), Eliott Kessas (Co-founder of Daring) and Erika Batista (General Partner at On Deck Runway Fund) as partners.
“Hugo and I have been among some of the most active early-stage investors in consumer startups in Europe, and with the addition of Axel, Eliott and Erika as venture partners we wanted to make sure we could expand our reach in the US into the heart of consumer technology in San Francisco and culture in Los Angeles,” Boutan said.
The investment thesis for Intuition is pretty simple: There’s a lack of investment in consumer technology right now. This is because investing in the consumer and culture has historically been a bit risky for two reasons.
First, it’s hard to monetize when you’re working on a fun mobile app or the next big social network. Sometimes you feel like you’re either working on the next unicorn or you’re going to end up deadpool.
Second, there are a few consumer-focused tech companies that just dominate, like Meta, ByteDance, and Snap. Sure, some big tech companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon bought consumer companies to turn them into big consumer platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Twitch. But it looks like that takeover window has closed.
“Working in consumer isn’t really cool these days because it’s been five to seven years of failures in the consumer industry and there hasn’t been much liquidity,” Amsellem said.
“All the funds that saw this underperformance and had a huge amount of money to deploy because they raised huge capital, they’re still saying ‘yes, I’m doing consumer deals’, but they’re not saying it very loudly,” he added. “Actually, this is our chance.”
At the same time, a lot of smart people are still working on consumer products — think BeReal, Amo, Retro, The Browser Company, etc. Innovation has not stopped and some of these companies will succeed.
And with the current pace of innovation in AI, Intuition expects to see new interesting things happening in the space.
That’s why Intuition wants to help the next wave of consumer companies. The VC firm plans to invest anything between €100,000 and €500,000 in the pre-seed or startup stage. It will invest in more than 40 companies with its initial capital.
“There’s only one thing I want to work on, and that’s the consumer and everything around the consumer — everything that changes the culture,” Amsellem said.
Intuition is VC + events
“I don’t think there is room for a 30 million euro consumer fund that will focus exclusively on consumer products,” Amsellem said. Adding events beyond investment will increase Intuition’s revenue, which will help the company when it comes to hiring a bigger team and making smarter bets.
So the company wants to create a community of people working on consumers and culture so they can learn from each other and find the next big thing together.
Intuition is launching a series of events co-hosted with other key VC firms, including Felix Capital (London), a16z (New York), Greylock (Los Angeles) and General Catalyst (San Francisco). Later this year, this tour will culminate with Intuition’s flagship event at Station F in Paris on September 20th.
This event strategy reminds me of Jason Lemkin’s SaaStr conferences. While SaaStr attracts 15,000 people for its main conference, Intuition is still at the beginning of its journey. The new company plans to invite a few hundred people to its first events. But it’s interesting to see a VC firm taking consumer tech seriously again.
