The French startup FEVE (or Ferme En Vie by its full name) aims to accelerate the agro-ecological transition. She has just announced that she has raised nine hundred thousand euros in funds. We spoke with Vincent Kraus, co-founder and CEO at FEVE. The latter enlightened us on his projects!
Everything you need to know about FEVE
Who are you ?
I am Vincent Kraus, I trained as an engineer (Polytechnique) and my first experience was in finance, within Société Générale, for 5 years. In 2012, I co-founded Senioradom, a remote assistance company for the elderly with two partners. After several fundraising rounds and good development in France and a little abroad, we sold our company to the VYV group, a mutual insurance company.
Following this experience, I wanted to restart a project impacting the ecological transition. I quickly became interested in agriculture, which seems key to the transition since this sector impacts carbon, biodiversity, water management as well as our food and therefore our health… I met a lot of people before to meet and then get started with my two partners, Marc Batty and Simon Bestel, agricultural engineers who also have entrepreneurial backgrounds (respectively Dataiku and Promus).
What does FEVE do?
Bean aims to accelerate the agro-ecological transition by taking advantage of generational renewal to facilitate more environmentally friendly installations. We have thus created a solidarity land fund raising money from citizens (from €500) to finance land on which project leaders will be able to settle and develop their activity. We also designed a digital platform (the Barn) dedicated to people looking to settle down with content, tools and services to make the installation process easier and smoother. The objective is to limit failures upstream of the installation to help renew the generation of farmers retiring.
FEVE fundraising
Why did you raise 900,000 euros?
We have two main objectives: to accelerate the development of the real estate activity by deploying it more widely across the territory (today we are focusing on the western half of France) and to accelerate the development of the platform by creating more content and services while helping even more project leaders with the objective of setting up in agriculture.
Why did you choose to bring business angels into your capital?
We were looking for people who would provide us with both funds and skills to help us grow while understanding what a young company is. We therefore looked for business angels who are themselves former (or current) entrepreneurs and who are very interested in subjects with a social and/or environmental impact.
What will FEVE look like in five years?
In 5 years, we will have enabled the installation of 200 farms thanks to our land. La Grange will be the digital platform through which all project leaders seeking to set up in agriculture will go.
