Today, we’d like to introduce you to Stephane Nasser. Stephane was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Shaun Gold.
Stephane, thank you so much for joining us today. We’d love for you to bring our readers up to speed – can you introduce yourself and share your story?
I was born in France in 1990. Both my parents are immigrants (Egypt and Algeria) and small business owners. They had built their way up from zero to owning and running their own hotel in Paris. So I grew up in an environment where business and entrepreneurship were core values from a very young age.
After my studies, I started working at Microsoft Accelerator, where I got my first true exposure to tech startups and venture capital. I loved it, and when I got a work opportunity to move to San Francisco, I seized it. I spent two years in the Bay Area diving even deeper in that space. Once back in France, I launched a first deeptech startup, which failed, then a second startup, OpenVC, which is my current focus.
Please tell us more about your brand, OpenVC
OpenVC is a platform that allows tech founders to access tech investors. OpenVC is free and open – meaning that we don’t charge for access and we don’t charge for intros. Both sides can use the platform 100% free. Because of that, we drive a significant volume of deal flow – ranging from pre-seed biotech startups in Germany to Series A fintech companies in Singapore. In the long-term, we plan to monetize premium features while keeping the core value prop free as it is today. This “free and open” model is unique in an industry dominated by commission and success fees, intros and who-you-know. Thanks to that, we’ve garnered significant attention and support from the venture community. Founders and investors resonate with our ethos. They love and support the OpenVC brand and its mission. This has been our main source of pride for the past 2 years.
So, as we mentioned to our audience earlier, you were introduced to us by Shaun Gold and we really admire them and what they’ve built. For folks who might not be as familiar, can you tell them a bit about your experience with Shaun.
Shaun is a content and community wizard.
We met in a Slack group and immediately hit it off. Quickly, Shaun took over content and community for OpenVC, and today, he runs the machine that allows us to ship top quality blog posts read by 20k+ founders every week, a weekly newsletter with 30%+ open rate, and maintain relationships with dozens of accelerators and VC firms. On a more personal note, working with Shaun is a breeze. He is probably the most optimistic, positive person I’ve ever met.
In the past 6 months together, OpenVC has grown to a list of 5,000+ investors, complete with contact info, a deck hosting system, and a fundraising CRM. We have run 5 pitch deck roasts online with VIP speakers. And we’re now going beyond SEO posts with Venture city guides and Exited founder interviews. Exciting times!
Website: https://openvc.app
Twitter: @openvc_
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@openvc_
