Showpad Co-founder Pieterjan Bouten Launches Entourage, Venture Studio and $30M Early-stage VC Fund

Showpad Co-founder Pieterjan Bouten has launched Entourage, a Venture Studio and early-stage VC raising over $30 million combined. Entourage aims to support the next generation of European SaaS founders.

Pieterjan Bouten, co-founder and former CEO of SaaS company Showpad, announced the official launch of Entourage, a Venture Studio and early-stage VC raising over $30 million combined.

Entourage is supported by a group of B2B SaaS scale-up founders, including Jason Lemkin (Saastr), Louis Jonckheere & Peter Minne (Showpad), Stijn Christiaens (Collibra), Jan Hollez and Zhong Xu (Deliverect), Joris Van Der Gucht & Tim Vandecasteele (Silverfin), Matthias Geeroms (Lighthouse), Ewout Meyns & Mattias Putman (Piesync, acquired by HubSpot), Gregory Blondeau (Proxyclick, acquired by Thoma Bravo), Jeremy Le Van (Sunrise, acquired by Microsoft), Jeroen De Wit  (Teamleader), Michiel Bearelle (Officient, acquired by Exact), and Piet Maes (Sofico).  

According to Pieterjan, Europe is in an exciting phase of early-stage investing, with many successful European SaaS entrepreneurs ready to pay it forward to the next generation of founders. The capital will be used to create and invest in a vetted approach to building new software companies with Entourage Studio. Additionally, it will be used for a targeted early-stage investment strategy to back the most ambitious European SaaS founders. Their goal is to build and fund the next generation of B2B-focused SaaS businesses, focusing on innovative products and services that drive growth and transformation in the enterprise category.

In The Pocket, under the leadership of Jeroen Lemaire, is the Studio’s long-term partner and primary supporter.

Pieterjan Bouten is co-founder and CEO of SaaS company Showpad from 0 to close to $100M ARR. He has experience investing in more than 30 leading B2B software scale-ups like Spendesk, Silverfin (acquired by Visma), Deselect, Swan, Growblocks, and Bitmovin.

Co-founders and partners respectively for Entourage Studio and Entourage Capital are Maarten Mortier, former CTO at Showpad, and Evert Beeckman, former Chief of Staff at Showpad.

Read more SaaS Booking Platform Planity Raises $48 Million in Series C Funding

Read more Heyflow Raises $16 Million in Series A Funding to Enhance No-code Platform

(Image Credit: Pieterjan Bouten)

The first company in the Studio is tekst.com, founded by Wouter Janssen and Tiebe Parmentier. This firm offers an AI platform that automates support and back-office tasks for large enterprises. They decided to partner with Entourage and made significant progress in building out their team, enhancing their product, and securing enterprise customers such as Becton Dickinson, Milcobel, Asteria, and Securex.

“With Entourage Studio we aim to build multiple high-growth B2B SaaS companies from scratch over the next couple of years. We have thought hard about how we can be the most constructive and founder-friendly partner, respecting the future-proofness of the cap table as well as the independence of ambitious founders. At Entourage founders will always be in the lead and in control. There is no single code to crack here, but we feel we have certainly cracked the mindset.” (Pieterjan Bouten, Founder at Entourage)

On the investment side, Entourage Capital has supported 3 high-growth B2B SaaS companies in its portfolio: Aikido (cybersecurity), Henchman (legal tech), and NineID (access control & contractor management).

The Studio aims to launch three to five companies in the next three years. Additionally, the fund plans to invest in 12-15 companies over the next four years, always reserving some capital for follow-on rounds.

“In some ways, Entourage is a big experiment yet we are confident that by being curious, staying true to our values, and putting founders first we will hit the landmarks we need and will be able to pivot around the challenges that will come our way.  We are ready to share the startup sweat with our portfolio companies, and relish in the anticipation of building new businesses and supporting great entrepreneurs and teams on their way to glory.” (Pieterjan Bouten, Founder at Entourage)

Read more SaaS Startup Pimberly Raises £4 Million in Funding

Read more B2B Commerce SaaS Platform Rupyz Raises $1.2M in Seed Funding