You already know many of the founders of our portfolio companies. Starting today, we invite you to meet the remarkable members of our investor community.

And it’s Jérôme Serre, one of our long-standing fellow travelers, who opens the series. A Mines Paris engineer, Jérôme belongs to that family of seasoned entrepreneurs who chose to cross the Rubicon and become investors alongside us.

Over my career, I’ve launched a dozen companies. I sold a quarter of them, and crashed the rest!

He says without flinching. Too modest, because his path is full of successes: the sale of a social network for children to Meta, and an exit at Bouygues with Météo des Chantiers (now Com’in).

In 2006, he founded ExploLab, an innovation strategy consultancy with a unique model: half advisory to executive teams, half incubation of projects designed for spin-out. A firm of entrepreneurs who roll up their sleeves, from strategy all the way to execution.

Between 2018 and 2020, Jérôme sold three companies. He faced a dilemma: head back into building? Devote himself to kitesurfing, his passion? He chose a third path: impact investing, while keeping his historical activities going.

I couldn’t see myself investing in pure digital. I was looking for something that could make the world a little better… And if I can, through my activities, offset my carbon footprint N times over, that’s an opportunity worth seizing!

But investing alone? Tricky, if only because of the difficulty of building quality dealflow on your own. That’s when he crossed paths with Asterion.

Stéphane and I clicked right away!

Jérôme recalls. What drew him in? A shared ambition to professionalize business angels, and a rare alignment between words and actions.

He has already invested in some of the strongest startups in our portfolio: Qomon, Yeasty, Aktio, Klaro, Ever Dye… But he goes further: he brings in deals and leverages his network to attract new executives, founders or LPs into the community.

For me, every person I bring into the Asterion galaxy is not only someone who’ll dedicate part of their wealth to meaningful projects, they’re also a sounding board… More than word of mouth: a butterfly effect!

He’s convinced: if you come to Asterion, it’s for the concrete impact of the startups we back and their potential to scale. Fund returns are not the primary motivation.

Outside of work, Jérôme also passes on what he has learned by teaching entrepreneurship at Sorbonne University.

It’s a way of giving back what I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way!

Between launching a startup, advising clients and two kitesurf sessions, of course.

Discover ExploLab

Founded by Jérôme in 2006, ExploLab is a hybrid consulting and incubation firm that supports executive teams in their innovation strategy and grows entrepreneurial projects out of large corporates.

To follow Jérôme and his next adventures, connect with him on LinkedIn.