Backed to the Future

From Relaying to Refunding

If Part 1 was about the who – Olivier Laplace as the “relay node” in a vast network -Part 2 is about the how. How does a conversation turn into a commitment? And what happens when the “honeymoon phase” of the investment ends and the real work begins?

The Second-Look Satellite: Picterra

In the venture world, timing is often confused with luck. For Laplace, the investment in Picterra, a Lausanne-based GeoAI company, was a lesson in patience and the value of a “long fuse” relationship.

Laplace first met the founders three years prior, back when he was building the corporate venture arm at Swiss Post. “I loved the technology, but I couldn’t tell a story that fit the strategic mandate,” he recalls. “If I had gone to my investment committee and said ‘Geospatial AI is relevant for the post office,’ they would have asked me what I was on.”

Fast forward to his time at Vi Partners, and the context had shifted. The cost of satellite imagery was plummeting, creating a flood of visual data that no human could analyze manually. Picterra’s AI – which counts trees for deforestation tracking or helps giants like Nespresso ensure regulatory compliance – was the missing key.

But just as the deal was coming together for a Series A, the market wobbled. The invasion of Ukraine sent shockwaves through the investment community, and a co-lead investor dropped out in the middle of the process. It was a moment that kills many deals. Instead, Laplace doubled down.

“We needed strong conviction. We decided to carry the investment and look for other investors ourselves because we believed in the case.” That grit paid off. Today, Picterra has proven itself as a market leader, validating that sometimes the best deals are the ones you have to fight for – twice.

The Bernese Gambit: Almer (now Realwear)

If software eats the world, hardware often eats VC returns – or so the dogma goes. When Laplace met the founders of Almer (now Realwear), an augmented reality (AR) headset company based in Bern, the headwinds were stiff.

“You had two founders under 30, building hardware, in Bern – not Zurich or Lausanne – in a sector where Google Glass had failed,” Laplace notes. “Most VCs looked at the complexity and said: ‘Too much uncertainty for too little experience.’”

Laplace looked past the sector bias and saw raw drive. But the real test of faith came when the founders announced they were exploring a merger with the American industry giant, RealWear.

The immediate reaction from the market was fear. Investors thought, “You’re going to be eaten alive.” While others backed away, fearing the small Swiss startup would lose its identity in the belly of a US corporation, Vi Partners stayed. They wagered that the Almer team was strong enough to not just survive the merger, but drive it.

They were right. The merger went through, but instead of being sidelined, the Swiss founders took the lead. Today, they are running the American market leader from Bern. A David and Goliath story where David didn’t just defeat the giant, but ended up wearing its armor.

Unique opportunities

Sometimes, the conviction isn’t about the product at all. It’s about the person. This was the case with Unique, an AI startup in Zurich founded by Manuel Grenacher.

The Vi Partners’m team  knew Grenacher from a previous success. Because of that history, Vi Partners initially wrote a small “observation ticket,” a check designed just to keep them in the loop. “It was early, pre-seed, and not typically our playbook. But we wanted to be part of the story because we knew Manuel.”

That story evolved dramatically. Laplace watched from a board observer seat as Grenacher navigated the company through a massive pivot – moving from conversational AI for tech scaleups to “agentic AI” for the finance sector. He executed the shift with such precision that when it came time for a bridge round before the Series A, Laplace saw what others missed.

“The existing investors were hesitant. But we felt the inflection point.” Vi Partners stepped up, leading the round when others were pausing. That bridge proved strong enough to carry heavy traffic: a year later, Unique closed a $30 million Series A with top European investors.

The Smarter-Than-Us Rule

“If we believe we’re smarter than the founders, we’d better run the company,” he says. “We should not invest, right? We invest systematically in people we believe are smarter than us, especially for the markets they tackle.”

Laplace sees himself in another role: pointing out the invisible for founders. Because he sees hundreds of companies and sits on multiple boards, he spots the blind spots that a founder, deep in the operational trenches, simply cannot see.

“We show the mirror and say: ‘Are you sure about the picture you’re seeing?’” Laplace explains. “We try to challenge them on the strategies, how they go to market, and especially how they hire people.”

Indecision stalls growth. So when founders are hesitant about hiring- or firing – Laplace steps out of the observer role and acts as a decisive partner: “If you have complained for six months about your head of sales, the decision is already made. You just haven’t admitted it yet.”