Top 50 Rising Stars 2022 (in alphabetical order by CVC unit): Wendy Wattebled, partner, Convivialité Ventures
Wendy Wattebled is a Paris-based partner at Convivialité Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of France-headquartered liqueur provider Pernod Ricard, where she focuses on Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Latin America. She has been involved in the startup ecosystem as an entrepreneur, an operator and an investor.
Convivialité Ventures has a team of eight people based in San Francisco, Shanghai and Paris and is now venturing into India. The unit has made investments across the three geographies: 13 in the US, five in China and five in EMEA.
The unit targets series A to D-stage developers of technologies that are changing the way people socialise, entertain and share experiences together.
Convivialité Ventures’ EMEA portfolio companies are Spain-based on-demand florist Colvin, UAE-based business-to-business travel agency Dharma, Italy-based online grocery marketplace Everli, Spain-based delivery service Glovo and UK-based digital behaviour analysis platform Streetbees.
Wattebled had been an entrepreneur herself having co-founded online property development tool WLG Real Estate Network in 2012 before taking up a managing director role at another startup, entrepreneurial innovation support service Agorize, the year after. She then moved on to the venture capital industry at VC firm Breega Capital as a senior associate in 2016.
C.Entrepreneurs, the joint venture between insurance provider BNP Paribas Cardif and VC fund Cathay Innovation, hired Wattebled as head of startup investments in 2018. During her time there, she focused on backing and supporting financial and insurance technology developers including Curve, Kueski and Another Brain.
