Eric Buatois has 25 years of active venture capital experience with BGV since 2013, and with Sofinnova Ventures as a General Partner from 2001 till 2013. He is a lead investor who truly enjoys building global companies and has demonstrated experience in executing spin-offs from large companies. He currently serves on the boards of several companies such Onymos, Madkudu, Platform.sh, Datawizz.ai and is an active investor of Firmly.ai, MindsDB, and German Bionic Systems. He previously served on the board of Profitect (acquired by Zebra Technology), lntellivision (acquired by Nortek), Identity Mind Global (merged with Acuant), Scalefast (acquired by ESW), and Zelros (acquired by Earnix). Eric served as Chairman of the Board of Upek from inception until 2009 including IPO filing in 2006 (and ultimate acquisition by Apple, Nasdaq: AAPL). Eric was instrumental in raising Sofinnova Ventures VI fund ($250M) in 2003, and Sofinnova Ventures VII fund ($375M) especially with international Limited Partners. As a venture investor, Eric Buatois participated in several M&A transactions, 2 IPO filings, and helped raise $1B of venture funds.
Prior to becoming a venture capitalist, he spent over 20 years in the Computer and Telecommunications industry. He held several senior management and operational roles at Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard and Ericsson. He also negotiated, created, and managed a joint venture in Sweden between HP and Ericsson. In his corporate roles, Eric pioneered and led the development of several very successful products such as Texas Instruments’ digital signal processors for the cellular market, Hewlett Packard’s telecommunications products Opencall and Openview, as well as Ericsson’s operational support systems for telecom networks.
Eric Buatois resides in the Bay Area with his wife and 4 children. He enjoys outdoor activities, such as fly fishing, scuba diving, hiking, skiing and golfing. Eric is a board member of the French Tech.
Eric received his MSc In Computer Science and Communications Engineering From Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications in Paris in 1982 and graduated from INSEAD Advanced Management Program in 1991.