Cécile Tirbonod
CFO & Partner
Our team
We’re lean and flexible, like you.
Education
Vincent holds a MSc in Engineering from Mines Paris PSL and certificates in Private Equity and Venture Capital from the London Business School and the Haas Business School of UC Berkeley. He is involved in academia and regularly shares insights on Venture Capital in leading business schools or engineering schools.
What I love
As a father of four, I love hiking in the French Alps, sailing and swimming in the fresh waters in Brittany. Curious and eager to learn new things, I love discovering how entrepreneurs rely on innovative technologies to make an impact.
Deploying innovative technologies at scale
Over the last 25 years, Aster has been committed to grow startups on the feet of industrial giants, to deploy their innovation at an industrial scale, to make a very large impact. After 20 years as an entrepreneur and in a regional VC, I decided to join Jean-Marc and his team for that specific reason, to leverage an existing infrastructure bringing together industry leaders, capital providers and bold entrepreneurs for accelerating a new generation of deeptech startups.
Backing deeptech and industrial startups
Since 2022, most of the capital available to startups has shifted from digital to deeptech, including AI. Besides, all investors now expect their founders to make a triple impact: economic, environmental, societal. I have witnessed those shifts as a VC, backing more than 44 startup companies, in various sectors: future of compute, space tech, novel energy, robotics, medtech, new materials, defense… with entrepreneurs willing to grow performing and responsible companies.
Those deeptech companies have specific needs: building a product from a validated technology; engineering demand before building a factory; providing finance when working capital is crucial; building an industrial capacity to manufacture those product at scale in a replicable and reliable way; building the adequate supply chain to grow throughput velocity; managing growth and reaching profitability; targeting €10M in sales…
I want to address those specific needs by raising a new VC fund, dedicated to backing startups which have embedded a deeptech technology into a hardware product, growing them from €1M€ to €10M in sales.
- High Gross Margin Startups: We will back startups whose customers acknowledge the superior tech and pay a high price for their products, generating a high gross margin, enabling those startups to manufacture in France or Europe. We help those startups engineering demand, growing sales, building their first industrial capabilities. We help them generating recurring revenues from the tech equipments they have deployed on their customers’ premises. We grow those startups fast, finding the right balance between growth and profitability, while managing significant capex.
- Lead Investor: We will invest as lead-investor at pre-Series A (€500k) or Series A (€2m) and stay fully committed until Series B (€5m), with the possibility to fuel sales in-between Series A and B by covering working capital needs (€2m) when bankers are not confident enough to do so.
- Making an impact: Through the companies we are to back, we want to make a significant impact, at scale.
Building winning teams
Education
Vincent holds a MSc in Engineering from Mines Paris PSL and certificates in Private Equity and Venture Capital from the London Business School and the Haas Business School of UC Berkeley. He is involved in academia and regularly shares insights on Venture Capital in leading business schools or engineering schools.
What I love
As a father of four, I love hiking in the French Alps, sailing and swimming in the fresh waters in Brittany. Curious and eager to learn new things, I love discovering how entrepreneurs rely on innovative technologies to make an impact.
