Episode 5 by Eric Buatois (French language only)
This episode of the Cross Border Playbook, “A Passion for Venture Capital and Technology Across Cultures,” is republished from “Experiences” with the express written consent of Julien Rigal-Dupont. This special french language episode delves into the personal and professional journey of BGV General Partner Eric Buatois.
Eric has 19 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 serves on the boards of several companies such NGD Systems, Scalefast, Onymos, Madkudu and Platform.sh. He recently served on the board of Profitect (acquired by Zebra Technology), Intellivision (acquired by Nortek), and Identity Mind Global (merged with Acuant). 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.
Eric Buatois has extensive experience as a private company director, having served 3 times as Chairman of the Board and participated in 4 corporate spinouts.
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 is a French citizen and 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 led BGV to be a founding member of the Extreme Tech Challenge (extremetechchallenge.org). It is a non-profit devoted to elevating next generation entrepreneurs creating new technologies and innovations to benefit human kind in line with the United Nations 17 sustainable development goals.
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.
His past investments include Profitect (ZBRA), Intellivision(NSC), Identity Mind Global (Acuant) UPEK(AAPL), Cortina Systems(INPHI), Hellosoft(IMG), Laszlo Systems (Critical Path) and Scalefast (ESW).
