Eric Buatois has 12 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 in the US and in Europe, including Crestatech, Crocus Technology and IdentityMind Global. 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), Chairman of Crocus Technology from inception until January 2010, Chairman of Laszlo systems until its merger with Critical Path, Inc. 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 3 M&A transactions and 2 IPO filing , and helped raise $529M in venture financing.
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 and Ericsson’s operational support systems for telecom networks. Eric has also driven several acquisitions and major partnering activities in addition to having managed large organizations in different locations such as Japan, Singapore, USA and Europe as well as managing sales forces on a global basis. At the joint venture between Hewlett-Packard and Ericsson, Eric built a software business of several hundred millions dollars in the management of telecom and networking infrastructures on a global basis.
His investments include UPEK(AAPL), Cortina Systems(INPHI), Hellosoft(IMG) and Laszlo Systems(Critical Path).
