The Chief Financial Officer at Breega, a prominent venture capital firm, Pauline Chau comes with a strong foundation built on five years of experience as a corporate lawyer at a leading French Tier-1 law firm. Gradually, she transitioned into her role at Breega, where she is responsible for overseeing legal, regulatory, and financial matters related to the firm, its funds, portfolio, and subscribers.
A graduate of HEC Paris, Pauline brings a wealth of expertise and strategic insight to her position, contributing significantly to Breega’s growth and operational success. In an interview with Business Frontier, Chau discusses the evolving VC landscape in Europe, strategies for team motivation, emerging industry trends like AI and climate tech, the importance of flexible investment strategies, and key advice for entrepreneurs on sustainable growth and real market needs.
Q. Give us a comprehensive overview of the business landscape in your region. What unique opportunities and challenges does it present?
The VC market in Europe has been marked over the last three years by a drying up of sources of financing, which led to lower valuations and smaller rounds. It can be seen as the “end of playtime”, but also as a unique moment to invest at a more reasonable price, with lower risks and higher returns to expect for our LPs. Entrepreneurs are being more cautious with cash too, and realize that not all companies are VC compatible. This can provide interesting build-up opportunities.
Q. As a business leader, what are the core strategies you employ to keep your team motivated?
My goal when recruiting and training a member in my team has always been the same: find and grow someone who can be better than myself in their role. It implies someone who will do their tasks with ease and passion by design.
Another key to grow their motivation is to grant them early with real ownership and a strong sense of responsibilities. Today, collaborators want to have an impact, sooner, and younger. Therefore, the best response to this demand is to let them take the ownership that they aim for. It is good for them, and it is also good for the company because with the right people, we can grow faster. That’s how Breega was able to grow its AUM by 12x in 10 years without hiring 12x more people!
Their job and missions also have to renew over time. It can mean an expansion of their missions and diversity of tasks, an expansion of their team, the exploration of new tools and new ways to deliver their missions, or more structurally in the case of Breega an expansion of our activities.
Q. What, according to you, are the emerging trends that will reshape your industry in the coming years?
AI is definitely a game changer in all industries. It has become a systematic component if not the core of most technologies in our dealflow – although the reality behind it can be blurry sometimes. All services jobs will be impacted and we have to integrate it in our usage and way of operating.
Climate tech is also a sector to be prioritized due to the worrying climate crisis we are going through. This industry is vast and can go from R&D deeptech solutions to scalable softwares for energy efficiency or water management. At Breega we firmly think Climate mitigation and Impact investment in general shall be embedded within the investment strategy of all our funds, and not reserved for one Climate fund or one Impact fund only.
Working in VC, we are extremely lucky to place bets anticipating the future and finance the world of tomorrow. We must continue being visionary with the immeasurable support of our entrepreneurs.
Q. How do you keep your strategies aligned with varying target industry’s requirements?
It is crucial to maintain a flexible investment thesis that can adapt to emerging tech trends and industry needs. This argues for relatively open investment policies, because funds which are too verticalized or dedicated to too narrow industries end up being harder to deploy or forced to make investment decisions with lower returns expected.
We also need to continuously tailor both our dealflow analysis and portfolio monitoring. At Breega we monitor our portfolio closely in order to adapt to changing industry dynamics and to help startups pivot when necessary.
Q. What advice do you have for budding entrepreneurs? What kind of roles should future leaders of the industry play while accessing new opportunities?
Build solutions that address real market needs, not just nice-to-have. A solution solving a fundamental need will scale faster and safer than one just improving convenience – plus you will contribute to make the planet and society a better place.
Think about ESG and grow sustainably. ESG may not look like a priority for Pre-Seed companies which prefer to focus on growth and build fast. But in tomorrow’s world, non-sustainable businesses will not survive, because they will not be able to convince talents or clients. So, make it an early priority.
As we say at Breega, future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one!
