Romain Sautrau

Romain Sautrau is a French venture capital investor with more than a decade of experience across private equity, corporate strategy, and early-stage investing, concentrated in sustainable technologies, agri-food, and the low-carbon economy. He began his career in 2007 in mergers and acquisitions at Climate Change Capital in London, then joined the Large Venture investment team at Masdar — the clean-energy subsidiary of Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund — before working as a strategy consultant at Corporate Value Associates (CVA) from 2013 to 2016, covering the agriculture and energy sectors.

In 2016 he co-founded StartupFarmers, a Paris-based investment firm and advisory dedicated to AgriTech and FoodTech. As Founding Partner and President, he built the firm's seed-stage investment activity and advisory practice, coaching AgriTech startups and advising European VC funds and family offices on the sector. Through StartupFarmers and as an individual business angel he made a handful of early-stage investments in the space.

Since 2020, Sautrau has been at Supernova Invest — described as one of Europe's leading deeptech VC firms, managing roughly €800 million across cleantech, digital, industrial technologies, and healthcare. He joined as Investment Director and was promoted to Partner (alongside David Hansen and Grégoire Viot), where he leads investments in the Energy & Environment vertical.

Academically, Sautrau holds an MBA from INSEAD (Class of 2012) and a master's degree in economics/decision theory, and he is a CFA charterholder.

• Invests at pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages in science- and technology-driven companies within AgriFood Tech, biotech, cleantech, and the energy/environmental transition.
• Looks for breakthrough or "enabling" technology that can unlock scale and break cost barriers — e.g., on the Enduro Genetics deal he noted the company's technology "could act as a critical enabler to break the cost barrier of biosolutions for a massive application into the food and chemical industries."
• Sector conviction rooted in sustainability: his career and both firms center on agri-food and the low-carbon economy, so mission-aligned, impact-driven startups fit his mandate.
• Combines operator-style advisory (StartupFarmers coaching AgriTech founders) with institutional deeptech investing at Supernova.