Venture capital is filled with investors who claim they have 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 is not a Y Combinator company, he will not invest in it.
That discipline pushed Jarrosson from filming scrappy venture explainers in Paris to managing more than twelve million dollars in assets at Lobster Capital. A larger second fund is already in the works according to recent SEC filings.
His logic is simple. He believes Y Combinator’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 thirty-six million dollars into startups, mostly Y Combinator alumni. That track record paved the way for Lobster Capital, which closed its debut fund at twelve million dollars, surpassing its eight million dollar target.
Jarrosson’s reasoning for backing only Y Combinator startups rests on probability. Reports indicate roughly four and a half percent of Y Combinator companies become unicorns, in contrast to the two and a half percent outcome for other venture-backed seed-stage startups. Around forty-five percent of Y Combinator companies go on to raise a Series A, which is higher than the thirty-three percent average. Similarly, Y Combinator has funded more than ninety unicorns, with roughly a quarter of those growing into decacorns.
That is why the premium for Y Combinator deals, where valuations are often multiples higher than non-Y Combinator peers at the seed stage, does not deter Jarrosson.
He stated that if you think about the venture capital math and the returns, these outcomes are obviously great for your portfolio. As investors, you have to ask yourself if a company can become the next unicorn. If the answer is yes, it is often okay to invest even at a slightly higher valuation, whether twenty million, thirty million, or even forty million. Some investors will pass and that is fine, but he chooses to invest.
Lobster Capital, like most early-stage investors, has ridden the surge of AI-first startups dominating recent Y Combinator batches. Jarrosson points out that three cohorts in a row have shattered revenue growth records within the accelerator, with companies reaching millions in annual recurring revenue within months.
There are reports that some of that annual recurring revenue traction globally looks fragile, inflated by pilots or churn-heavy annual contracts. While Jarrosson admits the risk, he insists that early revenue remains the hardest hurdle to clear, and for most of these startups, retention can be fixed.
More broadly, the biggest question around Jarrosson’s thesis is access, as Y Combinator demo days draw hundreds of funds chasing the same companies. Jarrosson credits his edge to his reputation inside Y Combinator’s network, visibility from his content, and his own founder background. Y Combinator founders rate investors on Bookface, the accelerator’s internal platform, and Jarrosson claims strong reviews help him land allocations.
Similarly, his podcast featuring Y Combinator founders and his over forty thousand LinkedIn followers, where he shares his investment journey and insights on Y Combinator, also serves as ongoing marketing. He stated that he tries to do well by founders. People also hear about the firm from social media, and as a former founder, they know he can help them because many funds are built by people who have not been operators before. Jarrosson has in the past launched several startups and had some exits.
Jarrosson is part of a growing list of investors building funds on the back of personal brands. He cites Harry Stebbings, the podcaster who raised a four hundred million dollar fund this year, and Garry Tan, who co-founded Initialized Capital and grew it to three billion dollars in assets under management before becoming Y Combinator’s CEO, as inspirations.
Like both investors, Jarrosson treats social media, YouTube, and podcasting as community tools and deal engines. That content strategy also helps pull in limited partners who often discover him through videos or podcasts before seeing a fund deck.
The managing partner has made more than one hundred investments through his syndicate and Lobster Capital’s first fund, launched in 2023, which has backed nearly thirty startups in B2B SaaS, fintech infrastructure, and AI tools. He counts two unicorns and several soonicorns across the syndicate and the fund, including Jeeves, Baubap, Flutterflow, Metriport, Alinea, and Jiga.
Jarrosson said that Y Combinator has the track record, having been around for more than twenty years. He believes it backs the best founders and creates the best founders. He argues that the results of Y Combinator in the future are probably going to be even better, but even if they stay what they are, it is a very good bet.
Investing solely in Y Combinator-backed companies is not an entirely new concept. Other venture capital firms, including Initialized, Pioneer Fund, Phosphor Capital, and Rebel Fund, also started with the same strategy.