Marie Fauroe Lambert

Marie Fauré-Lambert is the driving individual behind Olbia Invest, a private early-stage investment fund founded in 2016 and based in Hyères, in the Var department of southern France. The fund finances and accompanies entrepreneurs, investing or co-investing in the equity of young French companies at the seed or startup phase, with an evaluation approach that emphasizes innovation, growth potential, and — distinctively — the positive impact and human capital of the teams it backs.

Her path to investing is unusual. She trained in law and, earlier in life, was a competitive sailor who worked briefly as a nautical journalist before moving to Nice and into event management. She then spent roughly eight years at the Incubateur PACA-Est in Sophia Antipolis, accompanying startup founders through the earliest stages of building their companies — experience that directly informs how she now evaluates and supports entrepreneurs.

Alongside Olbia Invest, she founded and runs La Belle Place, a co-working space in the center of Hyères housed in a renovated 19th-century bourgeois apartment overlooking Place Clémenceau. The space attracts creative and knowledge-work professionals (film production, journalism, luxury consulting, tourism, coaching, cognitive-science research) and even serves as an exchange point for the local complementary currency, "La Fève." Colleagues describe her defining trait as connecting people — bringing together individuals with complementary skills and interests.

At the time she was profiled, Olbia Invest backed around 13–14 regional companies, including several in the Toulon area, reflecting a deliberately local, hands-on investing style rooted in the PACA startup ecosystem.

• Invests at seed / company-creation stage in young French startups, typically co-investing alongside other early backers.
• Prioritizes people over paperwork: she stresses listening to entrepreneurs and understanding the founders rather than performing rigid business-plan analysis.
• Weighs positive impact and human capital heavily — the fund explicitly evaluates the social/positive impact of a project, not just its financial upside.
• Sector-agnostic but with demonstrated appetite for enterprise software/EdTech, HealthTech, VR/AR, and deep/agri-tech, mostly within France and especially the PACA/Var region.
• Values her ability to connect complementary talents — being networked into the regional ecosystem is part of what she brings beyond capital.