Virginie Raphael of FullCircle: Closing the incentive alignment gap and starting a perpetual fund

Episode Summary:
Virginie Raphael is the Founder and Managing Partner of FullCircle, a pre-seed fund focused on the structural changes required to create a better workforce and closing the incentive alignment gap.  In this episode, Matt and Marissa talk with Virginie about her path to venture, her motivation for starting FullCircle (first launched in June of 2021) and her passion for helping companies at the earliest stages with FullCircle’s perpetual fund structure.  

What is Uncovered: 

• Virginie’s unexpected journey to venture 
• FullCircle’s perpetual fund structure 
• The strategies and challenges with fundraising for a perpetual fund 
• What her first LP commitment was like 
• The parallels between fundraising for a startup and a venture fund 

Learn More About:

Virginie Raphael 

Virginie Raphael is obsessed with serving founders at the earliest stages and passionate about finding ways to better align founders and funders.

Virginie launched FullCircle to scale the impact of her work with a perpetual fund structure to invest in a better workforce.

Prior to founding FullCircle, Virginie was a Managing Director at Tusk Ventures where she was an early employee and spent eight years advising and investing in early-stage founders operating in highly regulated industries. Before Tusk, Virginie honed her analytical and financial skills as a banker at Lehman Brothers/Barclays. 

French born, she was swept away by New York’s resilient entrepreneurship culture and enduring optimism.  Connect with Virginie on LinkedIn and Twitter.

FullCircle: 

FullCircle is an early-stage venture firm investing at pre-seed out of a perpetual fund. We serve founders as trusted long-term partners with shared values and a startup mentality.

We invest up to $250k into initial rounds ranging $500k-$1.5M.

​We are highly collaborative and network-driven, co-investing with the angels and small early-stage funds you want around the table.

​We are passionate about the changing composition of the workforce.

​We see an overlooked opportunity to build technologies serving the needs of working caregivers, deskless workers in traditionally low-tech industries, as well as independent workers.

​We value trust and transparency above all else.

​We align with you right from the start as your most insightful, transparent and candid partner in executing your vision with clarity and focus.

Learn more about FullCircle on their website.

Quotes from Virginie: 

• “VC is a team sport, especially at pre-seed. Those rounds are going to be syndicated out, so if you want to be a repeat player, you have to be able to be collaborative." 
• “I love collaborating with other firms whom I know our values are aligned with and treat founders the same way I would want them to be treated.”