Why Indico Capital Excludes France | Stephan de Moraes

Why would a Southern European VC deliberately exclude one of the continent's largest startup ecosystems? Stephan de Moraes explains why Indico Capital Partners has chosen to skip France despite its vibrant tech scene—and why pan-European strategies might be fatally flawed.

Stephan de Moraes is a founding partner at Indico Capital Partners, a firm he launched in 2017 that has since raised five funds in six years with a focus on Southern Europe. Previously a founder himself during the dot-com era in London, Stephan brings an operator's lens to early-stage and Series A investing across Portugal, Spain, and Italy. In this clip, he reveals the brutal filtering process Indico uses to stay focused: if an email doesn't come from a Portuguese, Spanish, or Italian phone code—or from someone named Pablo or Sofia—it gets deleted. He argues that France's market has been overheated with state capital, and that doing early-stage investing at a continent-wide scale is nearly impossible without massive local teams. Even Sequoia, he notes, spent only an afternoon in Portugal—hardly enough to see the ecosystem.

🇫🇷 Why Indico excludes France despite its strong VC ecosystem and state-backed capital
📧 The inbox filter: if it's not +351, +34, or +39, it's deleted
🌍 Why pan-European early-stage strategies don't work without deep local presence
🏛️ The Sequoia example: spending an afternoon in Portugal vs. truly seeing the market
🇺🇸 Why Silicon Valley's geographic concentration gives US VCs a structural advantage Europe can't replicate

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📺 Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/D4SMES7rKh4

About Stephan de Moraes [General Partner at Indico Capital Partners]:
Stephan de Moraes is General Partner and co-founder of Indico Capital Partners, a Lisbon-based venture capital firm focused on Southern Europe. Since founding Indico in 2017 with Cristina Fonseca (founder of Talkdesk) and Ricardo Marvão, he has backed eight unicorns and managed €240M+ across six funds. A Harvard MBA and former dot-com entrepreneur, Stephan previously served on the board of Caixa Capital, where he invested in many of Portugal's most successful tech companies between 2013 and 2017.

About Aulium:
Aulium is a video show exploring Innovation and Private Capital, hosted by Thomas Viguier and Markus Perkumas.

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