Venture capital is filled with investors who claim they’ve got inside access to the next big thing. Meanwhile, Gabriel Jarrosson, a French engineer-turned-YouTuber-turned-investor, has built his VC firm around a single filter: If it isn’t a Y Combinator company, he won’t invest in it.
That discipline pushed Jarrosson from filming scrappy venture explainers in Paris to managing more than $12 million in assets at Lobster Capital, with a larger second fund already in the works, according to recent SEC filings. His logic is simple: He believes YC’s track record of producing billion-dollar companies beats chasing startups elsewhere.
In 2017, frustrated by the lack of access to promising French startups, Jarrosson launched a YouTube channel to share his investment journey in French.
The channel grew a loyal following and evolved into one of Europe’s largest angel syndicates. Since 2020, it has deployed $36 million into startups, mostly YC alumni. That track record paved the way for Lobster Capital, which closed its debut fund at $12 million, surpassing its $8 million target.
Jarrosson’s reasoning on backing only YC startups rests on probability. According to this report, roughly 4.5% of YC companies become unicorns (in contrast to the 2.5% outcome for other venture-backed seed-stage startups), and around 45% of companies go on to raise a Series A (higher than the 33% average).
