Margin Ventures launches €50m fund for 'overlooked' founders: ‘Frustrated with uniformity in VC'

Two French investors who climbed up the ranks of elite finance are launching a €50m fund to back the founders typically shut out of European venture capital.

Paris-based Margin Ventures, founded by Mehdi Belkahla and Anas Jaballah, is targeting entrepreneurs from the "margins" – socially, geographically, or academically – who are developing tools to address issues such as climate change, access to healthcare and education, and inclusive use of AI.

The fund is aiming for a first close of €30m this year, with a hard cap of €75-80m if demand exceeds expectations, the partners said. The firm has already secured commitments from family offices and high net worth individuals, and is in discussions with larger institutional investors.

"I became frustrated by the strong uniformity of founder profiles that we were backing," says Belkahla, who spent years as an investment banker at Rothschild & Co, and later as an investment director at French impact investor Citizen Capital.

The roots

The partnership began in 2022 with a cold LinkedIn message. Jaballah, an engineer who graduated from one of France's prestigious Grande École institutions before taking up senior roles at energy utility EDP and the Boston Consulting Group, reached out to Belkahla with a very vague request.

"I just said that I was thinking about a new project, something new I want to discuss," Jaballah recalls.

They met for coffee while Belkahla was still at Citizen Capital. The conversations turned into drafting ideas, which turned into the beginnings of a thesis to back underrepresented founders working in impact. They also made some small angel investments.

"We started to invest and to help some founders that were fitting these profiles," says Jaballah. "And we said, but okay, we can't invest in all of them because we're not millionaires.”

The pair initially considered a club deal structure. But when they mapped out the opportunity with minimal effort, they identified over 100 potential investments that matched their criteria.

"We said, okay, actually it's too big," Jaballah explains. "We need to have something really professional about it and to really build a whole thesis on the topic."

Like Belkahla, Jaballah is a second-generation French citizen who grew up in the Parisian suburbs and has seen first-hand how the tech ecosystem shuts out talent from similar backgrounds. After stints helping Tunisia's government nurture its own startup ecosystem, he returned to France convinced that European tech was leaving enormous talent untapped.

Building the pipeline

The duo began laying the groundwork for Margin Ventures in late 2024 while Belkahla was still at Citizen Capital, which in hindsight ended up being a crucial launchpad for the venture vehicle.

While Margin Ventures operates independently, it has leveraged Citizen Capital's GP legal structure and regulatory license – a setup that allows the pair to bypass the typical first-time fund administrative burden. Belkahla and Anas Jaballah said they have also received considerable support from Citizen's team.

The firm began fundraising at the end of Q2 2025, with commitments described as "highly engaged" coming primarily from family offices and angels.

A growing movement in VC

Margin Ventures joins a small but growing cohort of European funds explicitly challenging venture capital's diversity deficit.

London-based Ada Ventures has championed backing underrepresented founders since 2017, while Denmark's Unconventional Ventures and Impact Shakers have similarly positioned themselves around backing overlooked talent and impact-driven entrepreneurs.

But the challenge remains steep. Data consistently shows that diverse founders – whether defined by gender, ethnicity, geography, or socioeconomic background – receive a disproportionately small share of venture funding across Europe.

Funds like Margin Ventures argue this isn't just a fairness issue, but a massive missed opportunity.