Welcoming Susan and Julien, our newest Partners
Susan Lin, Investor at Felix Capital is promoted to Partner, and Julien Codorniou, formerly with Facebook and Microsoft, and a long-standing Felix Advisor and Investor, joins as Partner.
As we often say, time flies. It’s only seven years ago that we were talking to investors about the project to establish Felix Capital (“Felix”) as a new player in the venture capital market in Europe. At the time we had an unusual set-up with a small team of 4 people (Antoine, Les, Phylia, and myself), supported by a great group of friends and supporters, our “Venture Advisors” who got quickly noticed as a tremendous asset for Felix when we launched in 2015. We were small, determined, and ambitious with a big vision and a very strong conviction about our thematic investment approach.
Since then, we have grown on every front, accessing more capital, enlarging our investment scope from early to growth, teaming up with more founders, and gradually establishing Felix as a credible investment partner for the best founders. We strived to operate with a thematic positioning around the emergence of a new digital lifestyle, at the intersection of technology and creativity and a passion for emerging branded products and services as well as the enabling technologies for these modern brands. I was lucky to team up with Antoine early on, who became a Partner in 2017, just as we closed our 2nd fund, as he embraced the Felix thesis and Manifesto and connected with a new generation of Founders. Over this period, the hardest aspect of growing Felix has been building a diverse team that would support and reinforce our thesis, share a common culture and work effectively and highly collaboratively as a team. While having diversity is essential, it’s also challenging as it may take longer for people with different cultures to bond and understand each other. Although when it works, it’s magical as the full force of human creativity can reinforce itself from everyone’s input and unique thinking. Gradually this is what we are aiming to do at Felix as we keep on learning from each other.
Today is a big day for Felix as we are enlarging our team with the arrival of Julien Codorniou, a long-standing Felix Advisor, and the promotion of Susan Lin who both become Partners at Felix.
Susan joined Felix three years ago and has had a big impact on our platform since then. When we first met Susan, we were struck by her energy and great presence, sharp intelligence with very structured thinking but also kindness and friendly smile. Always extremely well prepared, she has embraced our thematic thinking at full speed with the rigor from her consulting years and with the agility of her time spent within startups. Susan brought us her Chinese and Australian heritage as well as the learnings from Stanford and Silicon Valley, enlarging our horizons and sharpening our consumer lens, especially as we looked more at Finance or Health as opportunities for Felix. Combining the pressure and pace of the venture environment with the legitimate ambition to build a family and embrace motherhood is demanding, and Susan did it so well, with both determination and humanity, making herself increasingly essential to how we are shaping the opportunity and thinking at Felix.
Julien Codorniou has been a member of our Advisor group since 2015, acting as our most prolific source of deal flow, always so generous with his time and becoming a valuable partner to many CEOs in our portfolio. When the time came for him to move to become an investor, a process that matured over many years in his mind, it ended up being a short discussion with Felix. It just felt natural and the whole Felix team was delighted to add Julien to our ranks. Julien has managed to run a very successful career within two of the top tech companies in the world, Microsoft and Facebook, applying his energy and business acumen to various markets. In particular, at Facebook, he was the central pillar of the connection between the gaming community and the social media platform for several years, and then he switched to building Workplace, a very successful SaaS business at the heart of the “Future of Work” revolution. Beyond his remarkable professional achievements, Julien’s key strength has been to build a formidable reputation, connecting with and supporting many entrepreneurs, with his time and often seed capital and also in the eco-system where he is universally well-liked.
As we are starting to look towards 2022 and beyond, we can do it with an enlarged team that feels very “Felix”. As we all sat around the table with our enlarged team, it felt like a very natural evolution and we are all excited for the future for Felix, for our family of founders with extraordinary potential and market opportunities, and for our core investment thesis that feels more attractive than ever. We can look at the future with a stronger foundation with Susan and Julien. Once again welcome to the journey and thanks for your trust.
