������̳

This initiative is an excellent opportunity for start-ups to accelerate their early stages of development and thus their access to greater funding or to bringing a product to market. Jérémie Weber, Head of Start-ups Division at Institut Curie

In order to support tech start-ups in their post-maturity or pre-seed stage, in June 2018 French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced the creation of a French Tech Seed fund endowed with €400 million from the French government’s “Investments for the Future” program. To be eligible, start-ups must first have been identified and assessed by BPIFrance-certified referrers. The PSL Tech Seed consortium, which is sponsored by PSL and includes Institut Pasteur, was one of the first grantees and became a certified referrer in January 2019.

"This certification brings recognition, visibility, and financial support essential to the success of a young start-up like Honing Biosciences, which aims to develop new cell therapies in areas including immunotherapy." Franck Perez, Curie unit director and Honing co-founder

PSL Tech Seed will be open to all PSL and Pasteur start-ups, across all disciplines and fields of application. It will serve as a force multiplier for the private funding obtained by these start-ups, with a major impact on their development.
In order to be eligible, the start-ups must:

• have been created within the past 3 years;
• offer a technology-intensive innovation;
• have completed within the past 3 months (or currently be running) a 1st round of fundraising of at least €25,000 from knowledgeable investors;
• be supported by referrers that (as of 2018) are certified or have won the "Investments for the Future” program’s I-Lab contest or national innovation contest.

BPIFrance is offering joint financing of between €50,000 and €250,000 intended to supplement equity contributions by one or more private investors at a ratio of up to 2:1.

Applications submitted to PSL Tech Seed are evaluated by a selection committee made up of independent experts chosen for their knowledge of the innovation, as well as the start-up’s support and funding. At a quarterly meeting, the board will give its decision on the opportunity to present a project to the French Tech Seed fund on the basis of its application, interviews with the project leaders, and evaluation reports provided by independent experts specializing in the relevant field and/or market.

Four projects have been certified by PSL Tech Seed for joint financing by BPIFrance as of January 2019, and interviews for a new selection of projects will be conducted on November 29.