Yves Guiol

Yves Guiol is a Partner and the head of innovation/venture capital at NCI (Normandie Capital Investissement), a Rouen-based investment firm founded in 2000 that manages roughly €400M and has backed more than 300 companies. NCI runs two lines of business — a historical fund financing the development and transmission of regional SMEs, and, since 2005, an innovation-capital (venture) activity — plus offices in Paris, Lille, Rennes and Lyon. Guiol leads the venture side, which is now on its fourth generation of funds.

According to his Crunchbase profile, Guiol holds an M2 in Management of Innovation from École Polytechnique (2002–2006). Before concentrating on venture investing at NCI, his career included the strategy-consulting firm Advancy and the healthcare group ORPEA–CLINEA, experience that he has carried into an investor role focused on both financing and operational support of startup founders.

After several years investing in and supporting portfolio-company leaders, Guiol took over NCI's innovation-capital division and built a structured acceleration program around it. In 2018 he launched WaterStart Capital, a ~€39M "accelerator" fund; since inception it has invested about €30–39M into roughly 40 startups across ~70 operations (including some 30 reinvestments), and is now fully deployed. At the end of 2022 he launched NCITY, a fourth-generation venture fund dedicated to the "Ville de Demain" (City of Tomorrow), which reached a first closing of €38M (target €60M, hard cap €80M) with TIBI 2 accreditation and Article 8 SFDR classification.

• Fills the gap between angels and traditional VC. WaterStart is explicitly positioned between seed sources (love money, grants, business angels) and classic VC, covering the POC-to-Series-A phase.
• Small first checks, strong follow-on. Initial tickets of €100k–€1M with rapid reinvestment capacity up to ~€4M (WaterStart); €1–3M tickets for ~20 companies under NCITY.
• Hands-on acceleration, not just capital. The fund provides support on strategy, commercial structuring, recruitment, financial management, industrialization and web marketing.
• Sector-agnostic on WaterStart; thematic on NCITY. WaterStart backed startups across digitalization, Industry 4.0, agritech, proptech, foodtech and medtech; NCITY concentrates on ConTech, proptech, energy, land mobility and smart city, with a climate mandate (targeting ~300,000 tons of CO₂ avoided).
• Trust and transparency with founders. Guiol has stressed that mutual trust and transparency with founders are essential to weather startup difficulties, and that not every company will be a unicorn — strategic flexibility matters.
• From Normandy to national. Originally ~80% Normandy-focused, the venture activity has shifted nationwide, with roughly 70% of the WaterStart portfolio now Paris-based.