Shapr Ventures

Shapr Ventures is the venture capital arm of Shapr, the Paris-based professional networking app launched in 2015 by Ludovic Huraux and co-founders that has raised $16.5 million in total equity across three rounds. Founded in 2020 and led by Managing Partner Ludovic Huraux, who remains Co-founder and CEO of Shapr itself, the fund operates with an explicitly operator-friendly philosophy — a startup financing startups. It targets French and European tech companies at seed stage, across any sector except biotech, and invests only in post-revenue businesses. Shapr Ventures leads rounds and writes checks from EUR 300,000 to EUR 1 million, with a pre-negotiated follow-on clause into the next round, giving founders continuity of support across stages. The portfolio of six disclosed investments includes Wegrow — a workforce best-practice sharing SaaS where Shapr Ventures participated in a Series A closed September 2024 — Finovox (document-forgery detection, EUR 2.8 million round in June 2024), and Jeudimerci (an HR platform that raised a EUR 3 million Series A in October 2022). A distinctive element of Shapr Ventures is the non-capital value-add available to every portfolio company: unlimited access to Shapr Talent (the platform's recruiting tools) and entry into the Shapr Founders advisors community, a curated network of senior French tech entrepreneurs. This embedded recruitment and networking advantage is difficult for conventional seed funds to replicate, and it reflects the fund's core conviction that the right connections accelerate company-building at least as much as capital.