Team

François's early career included working at the French Ministry of Finance and in corporate functions at Casino, a French food retailer. 

He joined the VC world in 1999 and invested in CDiscount, Allociné, Direct Energie and Xilam Animation, among others. He launched Newfund in 2008 with Patrick Malka.

Favorite quote:

Honesty is a very expensive gift, don't expect it from cheap people.

Warren Buffet

Inspiring celebrities or characters:

André Citroën, Leo Perutz, Dagny Taggart, Nelson Mandela, Christopher Nolan, Charles de Gaulle, Bertolt Brecht, John Kennedy Toole, Katsushika Hokusai

Sectors of particular interest: 

Fintech, Health, Foodtech, Energy Transition

Patrick started his career as an auditor at Ernst & Young for five years.

He then worked for 15 years as CFO/COO in the entertainment sector, successively at Gaumont, Cryo, and then Xilam Animation.

Favorite quote:

If you want a nice house, dream about a castle.

Stomy Bugsy

Inspiring celebrities or characters:

Prince, Primo Levi, Barack Obama, Karl Marx

Sectors of particular interest: 

Entertainment, Real Estate, Pets

Henri started his career in investment banking at Natixis. He then moved to the US to pursue a MBA at Stanford, where he founded ModeWalk, acquired in 2014 by Moda Operandi.

Prior to joining Newfund, Henri was an angel investor and VP Strategy at StartX, Stanford’s accelerator, which he co-founded when studying at Stanford.

Favorite quote:

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Benjamin Franklin

Inspiring celebrities or characters:

Nelson Mandela, Elon Musk, Thom Yorke, Antoine de Saint Exupery, FDR, Naval Ravikant

Sectors of particular interest: 

SaaS, Marketplace, Health 

Trained as an engineer, Anne-Sophie started her career as a scientist in a biotech company, Cyclene Pharmaceutical, before joining Solvay’s polyamide team as an innovation analyst working with the marketing team.

Then she joined Bpifrance where she financed through loans and guarantees many start-ups in the Paris region.

Favorite quote:

In life, nothing is to be feared, everything is to be understood.

Marie Curie

Inspiring celebrities or characters: 

Simone Veil, Marie Curie, Coco Chanel, Rosalind Franklin, Frida Kahlo

Sectors of particular interest: 

Foodtech, Health, Deeptech, SaaS

Salim joined Newfund in February 2021. Prior to focus on investments, he helped portfolio companies raise $100m+ in Series A and supported M&A operations as an operating partner.

Before joining Newfund, Salim started his career in 2015 at JPMorgan in New York before moving back to Paris in 2018 to work for Roland Berger, primarily focused on tech due diligence deals for PE firms and Series A fundraising for startups.

Salim holds a Master of Science from CentraleSupélec and Columbia University

Favorite quote:

If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.

Peter Drucker

Inspiring celebrities or characters: 

Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Gandhi, Christopher Nolan, Roger Federer

Pierre-Jean started his career at P&G before getting his MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

He was CEO and co-founder of Spry Health, a digital health start-up focused on chronic care management that was acquired in 2021. At Spry, he led enterprise sales and product and raised $13M prior to exit.

He’s an active member and mentor at StartX, the Stanford-affiliated incubator, and is based in Silicon Valley.

Favorite quote:

Inspiration is found everywhere if you look hard enough.

RZA

Inspiring celebrities or characters:

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Miyoko Schinner, Steve McQueen, Greta Thunberg, Captain Paul Watson, Bruce Friedrich 

Agathe manages the development of Newfund NAEH, Newfund's fund dedicated to regional investment in “Nouvelle Aquitaine”.

Prior to this, Agathe managed the establishment of the group structure, legal and regulatory documentation / framework for Inverewe Capital (AIFM) businesses operations based in England and Ireland as General Counsel.

Previously she worked consulting to several law firms, as a lecturing university professor, in private practice specializing in corporate law and as a Mergers and Acquisitions lawyer.
 

Favorite quote:

Successful investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

Warren Buffet

Inspiring celebrities or characters:

Simone Veil, Warren buffet, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Elon Musk

Julie started her career in private banking and then moved to London to pursue an EMBA at ESCP Business School.

She then worked for 9 years at Arkadin, a French Telecom company acquired in 2017 by NTT. She was involved in rapid growth: first in the US managing the customer operations department and integrating 3 acquisitions, then in London in charge of M&A, internal audit and procurement.

Favorite quote:

The real journey is not to seek new landscapes, but to have new eyes.

Marcel Proust

Inspiring celebrities or characters:

Richard Branson, Joséphine Baker, Jean d’Ormesson, Steven Spielberg

Sectors of particular interest: 

Fintech, Deeptech, B2B Software

Garin is responsible for implementing newfund's ESG policy and CFO.

Garin started his career in Finance at BNPP Wealth Management. Then, he joined PwC where he worked for eight years.

Specialized in financial services, he led the audit of large listed groups and participated in various structural transactions, valuation assignments and regulatory consultations.

Favorite quote:

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King

Inspiring celebrities or characters :

Nelson Mandela, Xavier Niel, Elon Musk, Neill Blomkamp, Mike Horn, Zinedine Zidane

Adama started her career in auditing in 2014. She initially specialized in projects funded by the United Nations and Unicef and joined Newfund in 2019.

Adama grew up in Senegal, then continued her studies throughout Morocco and France in accounting and finance.

Favorite quote:

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Anaïs Nin

Inspiring celebrities or characters: 

Nelson Mandela, Lionel Messi, Anaïs Nin, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Rafael Nadal

Graduated from EFREI Paris, Timothé started his career at Evaneos as a full stack developer before co-founding a startup where he developed a SaaS chatbot solution and constituted the company's technical team.

Timothé joins us to further improve our own internal tools.

Favorite quote:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Inspiring celebrities or characters: 

Johann Sebastian Bach, Steve Wozniak, Richard Stallman, David Heinemeier Hansson, Magnus Carlsen, Lewis Hamilton

Vera is responsible for federating the Newfund community around innovative startups of international scope and CMO.

Prior to that, she was the head of marketing and communications at a Fin/HR Tech startup.

She was also CEO and co-founder of O'ju, a juicing and healthy nutrition company.

Favorite quote:

It always seems impossible until it's done.

Nelson Mandela

Inspiring celebrities or characters: 

Simone Veil, Gisèle Halimi, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Simone de Beauvoir, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks...

Ieva started her career as an entrepreneur at the age of 21. After founding a reverse mentoring startup, she co-created Unfair - an online brain analysis for entrepreneurs and investors to best tap into the potential of their brains for better performance.

She joined Newfund to reunite a community of investors around one strong belief - our brain is our most powerful asset, and knowing how to heal and develop it is the key to healthier, wealthier and more accomplished lives.

Favorite quote:

The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships

Tony Robbins

Inspiring celebrities or characters: 

Brian Chesky, Elon Musk, Michelle Obama, Nelson Mandela, Tony Robbins, Yuval Noah Harari

After a first experience in France, Julien worked at Microsoft before taking on Growth / CMO roles in various Startups in the US and Brazil. Touching everything from dating to Fintech through ride sharing and sustainability, Julien Co-founded Noverde that sold in 2022 to Dotz (BVMF: DOTZ3). He joined Newfund as an operating partner, helping the portfolio companies on growth marketing related matters.

Favorite quote:

Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and be smart enough to know the difference.

Wally Lamb

Inspiring celebrities or characters: 

Yvon Chouinard, Sir Francis Drake, Vladimir Nabokov

Favorite quote:

Those moments when we dare to aim higher, break barriers, reach for the stars, make the unknown known.

Cooper in Interstellar

Inspiring celebrities or characters:

Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, Emmanuel Macron, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan (Interstellar, The Dark Knight), Mike Horn, Laird Hamilton, Cyrano de Bergerac, Malcom Gladwell (The Tipping Point), Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code), Marguerite Yourcenar (Mémoires d'Hadrien)