HCVC

HCVC (Hardware Club Venture Capital) is an early-stage venture capital firm which funds hard technology companies globally. Beyond the fund, HCVC supports these companies and their founders through the Hardware Club, a community of startups with dedicated resources, partnerships, and events. The firm offers financial services and support, and sets up a scaling platform to provide support on strategic hardware issues to help those funded startups grow their businesses revenue.

HCVC was originally founded by Alexis Houssou, with his idea to develop a community of hardtech startups. Hardware Club, or HCVC, was officially launched in 2015 through a blog post by Alexis Houssou. The history of the idea started with a dinner in May 2014 during which hardware entrepreneurs were brought together with Alexis Houssou to talk about their experiences as hardtech startups. Since then, HCVC has grown to include offices in Paris, San Francisco, and Tokyo. Further, Hardware Club events and dinners have been organized in other cities, including Berlin, London, Shenzhen, and Las Vegas.

HCVC is a global venture capital firm investing in hardtech and full-stack companies. The firm partners with founders whose technologies offer an opportunity to automate and digitize physical processes. The firm focuses on early-stage companies, from pre-Seed to Series A rounds, and ranging from $250,000 to $2.5 million per investment.

HCVC's definition of a full-stack startup as a technology company with a vision to build an integrated system, including developing its own hardware, the associated firmware and software developed in-house, a cloud platform, and some kind of artificial intelligence or machine learning system to drive evolving data analytics and machine sensibilities.

The firm invests in specific verticals:

• Machine learning
• Computer vision
• Enterprise
• Consumer
• Robotics
• Health
• Aerospace
• Supply chain
• Infrastructure
• Mobility

Based on the original desire to develop a club where hardware technology company founders could come together and develop a supportive community, HCVC has continued its Hardware Club, which maintains the select community of those companies worldwide in order to mutualize the experience, knowledge, and network. This is intended to help members learn from each other, avoid costly mistakes, and scale faster. Membership in the Hardware Club is free of charge, without fee or equity deal, and only requires acceptance from HCVC to join. In 2022, the community boasted more than 550 members, in over forty countries, and including over 1,500 founders, with an acceptance rate of around 4.4 percent.

Stated benefits of being part of the community include access to the Hardware Club Private Platform, which brings together over 200 manufacturers, component suppliers, distributors, corporates, and other service providers. Access to a private Slack channel with over 1,500 members. And involves member-only community events to help members engage with each other and the larger Hardware Club community. Partners of the Hardware Club include Amazon, Arkea, Affirm, Flex, Honda, Jabil, Qisda, SoftBank, Target, and Foxconn. While some members of the Hardware Club have included

• Analytical Space
• Compology
• Eight
• Voi
• Elroy Air
• Arch
• Leia Inc
• Lightform
• Nanit
• Nanoleaf
• Neo Sensory
• Proglove
• Stanley Robotics
• Oura
• Luko
• Siren
• Tacterion
• Sunfolding
• Wayray