Entourage, founded by Pieterjan Bouten, co-founder and former CEO of SaaS firm Showpad, has launched a venture studio and early-stage venture capital fund raising over $30 million.
Backers of Entourage
The capital came from B2B SaaS scaleup founders, including Jason Lemkin (Saastr), Louis Jonckheere & Peter Minne (Showpad), Stijn Christiaens (Collibra), Jan Hollez and Zhong Xu (Deliverect), Joris Van Der Gucht & Tim Vandecasteele (Silverfin), Matthias Geeroms (Lighthouse), Ewout Meyns & Mattias Putman (Piesync, acquired by HubSpot), Gregory Blondeau (Proxyclick, acquired by Toma Bravo), Jeremy Le Van (Sunrise, acquired by Microsoft), Jeroen De Wit (Teamleader), Michiel Bearelle (Officient, acquired by Exact), and Piet Maes (Sofico).
The capital will be used to create and invest, combining a vetted approach to building new software companies with ‘Entourage Studio’ and a targeted early-stage investment strategy that will enable ‘Entourage Capital’ to back the most ambitious European SaaS founders.
Who is behind this fund?
The founder, Pieterjan Bouten, has first-hand experience in building and scaling a successful SaaS company – Showpad, which has raised over $120 million in funding, and a track record in investing in over 30 leading B2B software scaleups such as Spendesk, Silverfin (acquired by Visma), Swan, Growblocks, and Bitmovin.
Bouten, who will serve as General Partner, is joined by Maarten Mortier (ex-Henchman, Robovision, Showpad) and Evert Beeckman (ex-Showpad) acting as Partners for, respectively, Entourage Studio and Entourage Capital.
“We aspire to be the builders and investors we dreamed of having by our side while building and scaling our companies,” said Pieterjan Bouten. “Our mission is to bolster the next generation of European SaaS founders to become even more successful than the previous one, by helping them make better decisions and shortening the timeline to achieve the next important milestone.”
Portfolio companies
The first company to be incubated by Entourage Studio is tekst.com, an AI platform to automate support and back-office for big enterprises. Founded by Wouter Janssen and Tiebe Parmentier, the company will team up with Entourage to build its team, enhance the product and sign enterprise customers like Becton Dickinson, Milcobel, Asteria and Securex.
Entourage Studio aims to build multiple high-growth B2B SaaS companies from scratch over the next couple of years. To achieve this goal, it will leverage its partnership with In The Pocket, one of Europe’s leading software development companies with over 200 experts in all aspects of building digital products, led by Jeroen Lemaire.
When it comes to investments, Entourage Capital has already backed three high-growth B2B SaaS companies in its portfolio: Aikido, Henchman, and NineID. As an investor, Entourage’s investments range from seed to Series A financing.
“Having In the Pocket as a long-term partner and important backer of Entourage Studio is a unique differentiator. Such a stellar team of more than 200 specialists skilled in every dimension of digital product creation allows us to move quickly and remain flexible when exploring en studio ideas and opportunities,” commented Pieterjan Bouten, who co-founded In the Pocket (prior to Showpad) with Jeroen Lemaire and Louis Jonckheere back in 2010.
