Yellow Research
Investment Thesis
Yellow is a pre-seed venture capital firm launched in November 2023 by Oscar Pierre and Sacha Michaud, co-founders of Glovo (the pan-European delivery unicorn sold to Delivery Hero for approximately €2bn in 2022), together with Adam Lasri, a former investor at Atomico. The firm's stated philosophy is that "it's less about the vertical and all about the people" — during the earliest "0 to 1" phase of a company, founder quality and resilience matter more than sector-specific expertise, because the challenges of that phase look similar across industries. Yellow positions itself as "Day Zero" capital: often the first institutional check a founder raises.
Sector Focus
Yellow is explicitly sector-agnostic. Portfolio and homepage references span:
- AI (business applications, infrastructure, and industrial/physical AI)
- Fintech
- Healthtech
- Consumer
- Manufacturing
- Real estate
- Logistics
- Insurance
- Legal tech
Rather than filtering by vertical, Yellow evaluates founders on ambition, execution speed, and global orientation.
Stage Focus
Yellow invests exclusively at pre-seed, positioning itself as founders' first institutional capital before a formal seed round.
Check Size
Ticket sizes range from roughly €200,000 to €500,000 per company (the website advertises "€500k tickets" as its headline check). Yellow explicitly avoids taking the lead position in rounds, instead aiming to actively collaborate alongside other European pre-seed and seed investors.
Lead Tendency
Yellow follows rather than leads. Press coverage of the firm's launch states it "aims to actively collaborate with other European VC funds, rather than taking a lead position in funding rounds." This is consistent with its participation (rather than lead role) in Afori's €4M pre-seed round in October 2025, which was led by General Catalyst and BOOOM.
Recent Activity
Yellow closed a €30 million debut fund in November 2023, raised from Southern European family-business entrepreneurs and more than a dozen unicorn founders across Europe, closing 100% of the fund within weeks. As of late 2025 the firm had made roughly a dozen tracked investments, with several occurring in the trailing twelve months, including:
- Afori (Berlin, AI for insurance brokers) — €4M pre-seed, October 2025, participated alongside General Catalyst and BOOOM
- GoCanopy — Seed round, January 2026 (most recent tracked investment as of this research)
Public data suggests the fund remains in active-deployment mode roughly two years after its 2023 close.
Portfolio Highlights
Yellow's portfolio spans a wide range of AI-native and vertical software companies, including Wordsmith.ai, Alpic.ai, Gonativ.ai, Goclicks.ai, Humalike.ai, Flyboard.ai, Opereit.ai, Contextfab.ai, and Cepter.ai, alongside industry-specific bets such as Conlio, Zenline, Paladin, Kiku, Davis, Canopy, Livo, Certalis, and Emma (a tutoring app). Earlier portfolio companies referenced by the firm include Autone.io, Rollstack, Exoticca, Fullview.io, Tl;dv, and Allgravy — several of which (Exoticca, Tl;dv, Rollstack) have gone on to raise substantial follow-on rounds from later-stage investors, evidence of the fund's ability to pick pre-seed winners that graduate to institutional Series A/B capital.
Team
- Oscar Pierre — Co-Founder & General Partner. Co-founded and scaled Glovo across 26+ countries to its ~€2bn sale in 2022.
- Sacha Michaud — Co-Founder & General Partner. Co-founder of Glovo, operating partner experience across hypergrowth logistics and marketplace businesses.
- Adam Lasri — Co-Founder & General Partner. Former investor at Atomico, bringing pan-European growth-stage investing experience to the pre-seed fund.
- Victor Navarro — Principal, based in Barcelona. Previously covered Southern Europe for Spain-based fund KFund.
- Camille Cros — Principal, based in Paris. Joined as part of the firm's expansion of its investment team into the French market.
Decision Process
Yellow operates as a partnership among its three General Partners, with principals in Barcelona and Paris sourcing and supporting portfolio companies regionally. The small, six-person team structure suggests a fast, high-touch decision process typical of first-check pre-seed funds.
Founder Preferences
Yellow looks for founders with "bold vision and global ambition," prioritizing resilience and execution quality in the 0-to-1 phase over any particular sector background. The firm's value proposition leans heavily on operational pattern-matching from the Glovo scaling story, commercial introductions via 20+ scale-up founders and 25+ entrepreneurial families across Europe, and storytelling/narrative support drawn from the founders' own €1bn+ fundraising experience.
Geographic Focus
Yellow is Europe-wide but places particular emphasis on Southern Europe — especially Spain, Italy, and Portugal — historically underserved markets relative to the UK, France, Germany, and the Nordics. The team maintains a physical presence in both Barcelona and Paris.