Drysdale Ventures Research
Overview
Drysdale Ventures is a Paris-based pre-seed and seed fund founded by Nicolas Essayan. It launched in January 2025 and describes itself as an angel fund backed by tech entrepreneurs, several family offices and international investors. It backs software companies from day zero, often before a product exists or the team is complete. The firm's website lists two vintages: 27 companies in the 2025 vintage and 18 in the 2026 vintage, 45 in total.
Investment Thesis
The fund is software-first and otherwise sector agnostic. Its portfolio skews heavily toward AI: agents (Clarifeye, Twin, Notte, Mendral), AI safety and guardrails (White Circle), inference and model infrastructure (ZML, Gradium, Vertical Compute, The Compute Index, Isara), frontier research labs (AMI Labs, Kairos) and robotics (Marso, Holos Robotics). A second cluster is security and developer infrastructure (Symbiotic, Arte Security, Plakar, Alpic, Blynt). Older third-party profiles describe Web3, gaming, e-commerce and fintech interests, and the portfolio still includes a gaming company (Lord of the Games) and fintech and data tools (Marble, Macrodata, Altertable).
Stage Focus
Pre-seed and seed, with a stated willingness to invest from day zero. Third-party profiles say it can reach as far as Series B in principle, but nothing on the site or in press shows that.
Check Size
Sources disagree. One profile says up to EUR 500,000 per startup; another says USD 300,000 to 3 million. We store a conservative maximum of USD 500,000 and leave the minimum unset.
Lead Tendency
Unknown. Public press shows Drysdale participating in rounds alongside other funds: Clarifeye's EUR 4M round (October 2025), Altertable's seed alongside 20VC and Kima Ventures, and MecAgent's USD 3M seed. No source says it led any of them.
Recent Activity
The fund has been deploying continuously since January 2025, with 18 additional companies in the 2026 vintage. Third-party aggregators count between 28 and 52 investments depending on the date of the snapshot. Fund size is not publicly disclosed.
Portfolio Highlights
The site shows 45 companies. Examples: Clarifeye, White Circle, Genesis, Notte, Topograph, MecAgent, Twin, Alpic, ZML, UMA, Gradium, Isara, AMI Labs, Arrakis, Polsia, Fundamental, Granit and Holos Robotics. No exits are disclosed.
Team
- Nicolas Essayan, Founder
- Vittorio Noury, Principal
- Dalia Mahfouf, Associate
- Xavier Fischer, Operating Partner
- Olivier Bonnet, Sparring Partner
- Claire Calméjane, Sparring Partner
Decision Process
Not disclosed. The firm is small and founder-led, so decisions most likely sit with Essayan, with the operating and sparring partners advising. This is an inference, not a stated fact.
Founder Preferences
Founders building software from scratch who benefit from early operational help. The firm positions itself as operator-led, with hands-on support on product, go-to-market, hiring and fundraising, and describes a broad network of entrepreneurs and institutional investors that helps portfolio companies reach follow-on funding.
Geographic Focus
France and wider Europe, centered on Paris. Portfolio companies appear to be mostly French or European, though some have US ties. The firm does not state a hard geographic limit.
The firm has not published a formal thesis page, a fund size or an investment memo. Most of what is known comes from its single-page website, its portfolio logos and third-party profiles, so confidence on check size, stage limits and decision process is moderate to low. The portfolio list is the strongest data: it is the firm's own, and it names 45 companies across two vintages. Companies were named only from the captions on that page, and domains come from the page's outbound links where one existed.