Joyance Partners Europe: Our First Year
As the first venture fund centered on “delightful moments” — those small quanta of time that bring greater joy, confidence, calm, control, and absence of anxiety or pain — Joyance Partners works with entrepreneurs ready to replace today’s syndrome-centric approach to human health and happiness with something more personal, preventative, predictive, and ultimately, more powerful.
Joyance was founded in the U.S. in 2017. In response to a highly successful launch, Joyance expanded to Europe at the beginning of this year, led by Managing Director Paolo Pio. In June, Paolo was joined by Principal Neha Tanna in London, Venture Partner Julien Tizot in Paris covering France and Romandie, and Venture Partner Julius Bachmann in Berlin covering DACH. In November, the Joyance Partners team almost doubled in size, with the addition of two new venture partners, Samir El-Sabini and Evan Castiglia, and a strategic advisor, Jason Foster.
Venture Partner Samir El-Sabini is also Chief Operating Officer at Findity, a high growth fintech company providing expense management and digital receipt infrastructure to partners that want to enhance their customer offering. Samir has a Master of Laws from the University of Gothenburg. He has been awarded Sweden Top Talent and Swedish Business Law Student of the Year, and is ex CEO of SUP46, one of Sweden’s top accelerators. Samir covers the regions of Nordics and Baltics.
“I’m very enthusiastic about helping the Joyance Partners team find the best startups striving to enhance the health and happiness of humankind, and support them in their mission.” said Samir.
Venture Partner Evan Castiglia is also a Senior Manager at Philips Health Technology Ventures, the corporate venture capital group of Philips. Previously, he was Chief Business Officer at RareCyte (a venture-backed life science tools company based in Seattle) and a portfolio manager for Isis Innovation Ltd. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Gonzaga University and his MBA from the University of Oxford.
“There is a huge opportunity at this time to back emerging startups in health and happiness,” said Evan. “I’m very much looking forward to exploring this exciting ecosystem of companies in Europe, and backing them with the power of a worldwide seed fund and diverse and talented team.”
Strategic advisor Jason C. Foster is the Managing Director for Health Equity Consulting, a global healthcare technology consultancy, and a Board Director of several venture-backed healthtech startups including Ori Biotech, Dr Focused, Salve Technologies, GripAble, and Auxita. Jason also mentors for various startup accelerator programs, including Entrepreneurs First, StartupBootcamp and Techstars. Jason holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
“Advising the Joyance Team has been great as we share a vision for a healthier, happier future which can only be affordably achieved by leveraging technology to advance truly proactive health care versus what we practice today in most of the world which is reactive sick care,” said Jason. “It is the most exciting time in history to be looking to fund innovations that can positively influence the health and wellbeing of billions of people.”
To date the fund has invested in eleven companies supporting the creation of delightful moments across Europe:
Caura’s advanced sensing technologies enable painless and real-time monitoring of biomolecules to help people train smarter, optimize their diets and improve their lifestyle. (London, Seed).
Empathic Technologies brings together embodied cognition science and haptics to create our emotional second skin. Their first product is a wristband that reduces stress on the spot. (London, Seed)
Elma is a neo-insurer focused exclusively on healthcare that places people at the center of the system and puts the power in their members’ pockets. (Barcelona, Seed)
Gourmey is developing delicious and 100% ethical duck meat from duck cells, first reinventing France’s most iconic delicacy: foie gras. (Paris, Seed)
Limbic is bringing better data to psychological therapy. Their AI — packaged as a friendly mobile chatbot — is bridging the information gap between patients and clinicians. (London, Seed)
Mushlabs is a biotech company using fermentation to create the next generation of sustainable foods from the roots of mushrooms. (Berlin, Seed)
Planted is developing all-natural plant-based meats. The first product, planted.chicken™ made from peas, has both the texture and taste of poultry. (Zurich, Series A)
Peace of Meat is developing top quality cultured meat products for the food industry, focusing on flavor first while gathering valuable IP in food science. (Flanders (Belgium), Seed)
Sigrid’s first product is a breakthrough medical device for the safe reduction of blood sugar levels with the potential to prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes. (Stockholm, Series A)
Speechly is building next-generation real-time spoken language understanding APIs for developers. (Helsinki, Seed)
WholyMe offers highly effective, purely organic remedies to improve the wellbeing of people with muscle and joint pain. (London, Seed)
“We are proud and still incredulous of what we have achieved in 2019,” said Paolo. “Joyance Europe launched as a trial to see if the old continent would have the scientific, technical and entrepreneurial talent to produce Delightful Moments startups of worldwide level and ambition; we discovered a buzzing tech scene, thriving academic institutions with deep roots into all aspects of science, and hungry entrepreneurs ready to hustle to achieve their goals. Here we are, nine months later, with a portfolio of eleven amazing companies and a team of seven incredibly talented investors and advisors. 2020 couldn’t be starting under a better premise, and we believe it will take us one step closer to our vision: building a home for all entrepreneurs operating in the field of Health and Happiness, wherever they are in the world.”
