It’s all about people

We are grateful to share the Felix journey with amazing people, here is a little thank you note

As we built Felix from scratch, it was the opportunity to craft the best group of people we could, and build something unique, assembling our team, our advisors, our investors. And importantly Felix wouldn’t be here without the support of our industry friends, VCs and entrepreneurs, who helped and encouraged us along the way.

We are a team of four founding members, including three of us from Advent Ventures, Frederic, Les and Phylia, plus Antoine who joined us at inception. Frederic is the founder and Managing Partner, with nearly 20 years in technology, first as a tech banker with Lazard in London and NY, then as an Internet entrepreneur trying to build an online marketplace for the textile industry, and finally as a VC with Advent and now Felix. Specifically, Frederic and Les work together for 15 years at Advent, backing some great founders and companies including Farfetch, Zong, Dailymotion, Qype, Fizzback or Vitrue, all very relevant to Felix’s investment focus on digital lifestyle. Both Frederic and Antoine have also built a significant personal angel portfolio, some of it can be seen here. We will be enlarging our team very soon (yes we are hiring!), with great care, as people are our greatest asset.

Please meet our Venture Advisors

We are lucky to have assembled an exceptional group of advisors. They all invested in the fund and are part of the extended team. They are very experienced and successful operators and entrepreneurs who will support Felix through their industry networks, deal flow, operational skills (from product management to international expansion, etc.). They extend Felix’s reach from Silicon Valley to Hong-Kong, through LA, London, Berlin and Stockholm. Our Venture Advisors include:

• David Marcus, Palo Alto (VP Messenger at Facebook, previously President of Paypal, and Founder & CEO of Zong)
• Reggie Bradford, London (SVP Product Development at Oracle, ex Founder & CEO of Vitrue)
• Rene Rechtman, London (President Intl at Maker Studios, ex SVP Intl AOL, CEO GoViral)
• Jon Kamaluddin, London (Board member at Klarna , ex Intl Director and CFO at Asos)
• Sebastian Picardo, Hong Kong (Chief Retail Officer at Lane Crawford, ex MD Digital Commerce at Burberry, CFO of Net-A-Porter)
• Julien Codorniou, London (Director Global Platform Partnerships at Facebook, previously Business Development Director at Microsoft)
• Christophe Maire, Berlin (Top EU Seed investor, previously CEO Textr & Gate5)
• Lopo Champalimaud, London (Founder & CEO of Wahanda, ex lastminute.com)
• Pelle Tornberg, Stockholm (Senior advisor Ericsson, ex Metro, MTG, Kinnevik)
• Henri Moissinac, London (Mobile Partnerships at Uber, previously running Mobile at Facebook and eBay)
• Tom Ryan, Los Angeles (CEO Pluto.tv, previously CEO Threadless, VP Digital EMI)

They will also co-invest with us where relevant. We have to thank them for their amazing support during our fund raising, taking quality time to tell our investors why they wanted to be part of Felix, it’s so great to have them on board.

Our investors, partners for the long-term

While building Felix, the major challenge was to assemble from scratch a group of investors who would buy into our vision and agree to partner with us for the long-term. We were fortunate to be able to select individuals we liked and institutions that had the potential to be back us fund after fund. We initially aimed to raise $80m, the minimum amount for our strategy, but ultimately closed 50% higher at the Fund’s hard cap of $120m. We even had demand in excess of this figure. Our investors are mainly European and US institutions, including pension funds, endowments, foundations, fund of funds, plus some family offices, and a couple of groups with large retail assets, with well-established venture programs. In addition Felix also invited individual investors, mainly entrepreneurs with a background in technology and sectors which are relevant to the business. In the European market, a first-time Fund, with oversubscribed commitments, a differentiated thematic strategy and a founder-centric culture stands out and illustrates how the eco-system is rapidly maturing in the region.

So many friends to thank…

Felix would not have been possible without the support of our friends, entrepreneurs, operators, advisers and investors who are all key parts of our network. They offered to be references for us and dedicated some precious time to talk to our investors. We were even introduced to many of our investors by other VCs, who helped us get in busines. We are so grateful for this. So thank you Laurel Bowden and the team at 83North for hosting us in very cool office in Soho (we don’t want to leave!). Thank you Sonali de Rycker, Harry Nelis, Jonathan Biggs, Fred Destin at Accel for the words of support and incredible LP introductions. Thank you Danny Rimer, Bernard Dallé for opening up Index’s LP rolodex. Thanks Neil Sequeira and Adam Valkin at General Catalyst, Dana Stalder at Matrix, Fred Wilson at Union Square, Chris Olsen at Drive Capital, Jeff Clavier at Softech, Stacey Bishop at Scale Ventures, Victor Hwang at Industry Ventures, Mark Suster and Yves Sisteron at Upfront Ventures. Thanks Mikki Malka for being such a great sounding board early on and for making Ribbit an inspiration for Felix. Merci à Philippe Collombel chez Partech, Benoist Grossman chez IDinvest, Virginie Morgon chez Eurazeo. Thank you Robin Klein and Saul Klein, Alex Zubillaga, Francois Barou, Philipp Freise, Lars Langush, Ciaran O’Leary, Christian Leybold, Mike Risman, Peter Read, Michael Bornhauser. Thanks to our Advent partners Mike Chalfen, Peter Baines, Raj Parekh and Shahzad Malik for their support.

Thanks to the entrepreneurs who helped us with their precious time, support and advice, including Jose Neves (our number one reference it seems!), Imran Amed, Pau Sabria, Jose de Cabo, James Bilefield, Chris Gilbert, Marcel Reichart, Rob Keve, Xavier Niel, Yannick Pons, Oleg Tscheltzoff, Pascal Gauthier, Oliver Weyergraf, Stephane Kurgan, Carmen Busquets, Stephane Pictet, Yarom Ophir, Richard Chen. We must be forgetting people as we got so much help along the way!

And a special thank you to Sylvie Gabriel and Gabriela Hersham for their amazing support and patience…

We are lucky to do something we love and can’t wait to build Felix’s next chapter now that we are live!