ESCP Europe Alumni Magazine - n°146 - Janvier/Février 2013 - 15

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By Olivier MELINE (02 BE),
Delegate of the Business Angels & Investisseurs group

Get in touch!

Launched a few months ago, the Business Angels & Investors group
aims to help entrepreneurs ans gathers business angels among our
community. Olivier MELINE shares his experience as delegate.
Can you introduce us to your group?
Of course, with pleasure. Our group was
established early 2012. Its current delegates
are Amaury de BUCHET (93), Nicolas
HERSCHTEL (04), Pierre ROUSSEAU (04),
Nicolas SCHWINDENHAMMER (04) and myself.
We have a double objective of gathering business
angels -both beginners and more experienced
ones- to promote, learn and share best-practices,
and organizing regular pitch sessions for fundraising entrepreneurs to meet our members. We
pride ourselves on a successful launch over the
past year: 3 promotion conferences, 2 pitch sessions with 35 members at the latest one, 6 startups introduced of which to date one has raised
€130,000 from 4 of our members.
Why did you end up contributing? What
were your motivations?
The common driver for our group’s delegates
is to promote and facilitate entrepreneurship,
and contribute to the extraordinary dynamic in
the ESCP Europe ecosystem with the Chair
for Entrepreneurship, the Incubator, and the dedicated events all fostering a strong culture of
entrepreneurship. We have other motivations at
individual level: some of us are private equity or
venture capital professionals seeking to capitalize
on professional skills in a meaningful volunteer
experience; most of us also personally invest
in start-ups and seek to set up an organization
enabling us to become more seasoned business
angels.
What obstacles did you encounter and how
did you address those?
Our main challenge is to gather the experienced
or potential business angels of our network. This
is not straight forward as these profiles are feweven if we believe there’s a huge potential- and
potentially come from very different horizons. So
before actually kicking off we spent 12-18 months
testing the idea around us, presenting and refining
the project with the Alumni association, meeting
with other organizations and with our potential future members. We also kept away from imposing
a given structure and discussed this extensively

with our members even after launch, which we
believe proved key to our initial success.
What surprised you most in the process of
setting up the group?
An unexpected surprise was the discovery of the
Alumni Association’s platform, primarily its people
-and their patience, dedication and professionalism- but also the website and tools available. So
the highly feared logistics aspects turned out to
be the easy part. In short, we owe a lot to the
association’s employees as well as its volunteers
at Board level, who all do a fantastic job.
Could you tell us about one of your best
practices?
A permanent challenge of ours is to maximize
conversion of one-time participants into loyal
group members. To do so -in addition to generating the highest-quality deal flow for our memberswe strive to be a «member-driven» group, making
feedback one of our highest priorities, suggesting
questionnaires at each of our events, meeting our
members and getting them involved as much as
possible. So, if you are a member of our group
or plan to become one, expect to see us encourage full ownership of our initiatives by all of you.
So get in touch!
●

ESCP Europe Magazine N° 146 - Janvier/Février 2013 -

Table des matières de la publication ESCP Europe Alumni Magazine - n°146 - Janvier/Février 2013

Couverture
Zapping
Sommaire
BUSINESS
Personnalités du mois Nos 700 délégués : À nos ambassadeurs
Focus
- Get involved
- L'attractivité touristique
- Get in touch!
- Welcome to the club
- Partager son savoir
- Rendre ce qui a été donné
- Dynamism
- Un réseau de talents
- Create opportunities
- Get on board!
- Stronger together
- Dynamiser le réseau régional
- For a common success
- Be incentive!
- Be passionate!
- Ne rouillez pas !
- Expand your network
Itinéraires
- Deviens qui tu es !
- Practice of fine art
Entretiens
- Transports
- Conseil
- Agro-alimentaire
NEWS
Vie du réseau
- Adel FEKIH (MBA 09)
- Nouvelle rencontre
- Tour à Vaugaudry
- London Campus open doors & Carnet
- Filleul cherche parrain
- Escapade en Bourgogne & Agenda
- Nominations
Carrière Quand les délégués créent pour les entrepreneurs
Voyages De grands moments au pays des paradoxes
À lire
CAMPUS
École
- Blue Factory fait peau neuve
- Engagez-vous à nos côtés !
Fondation Les entreprises pour ESCP Europe
Vie étudiante
- ESCaPe
- Tout sauf la fin du monde…

ESCP Europe Alumni Magazine - n°146 - Janvier/Février 2013