The rest of the 100 (in alphabetical order): Olawale Ayeni, principal, Orange Digital Ventures
Silicon Valley-based Olawale Ayeni casts a wide net for startups in his role at at Orange Digital Ventures. The France-based mobile service provider launched a €100m fund earlier this year in an effort to hunt internationally for startups operating in a number of sectors, including big data, e-health, cloud, communications, connectivity, security, the internet of things, and any new business models emerging in those areas.
The intent is to invest €20m ($23m) each year for the next five years, he said.
Simultaneously, the Kauffman Fellow is also a principal at EchoV’s technology fund, which also operates in a number of sectors, including mobile, media, advertising, commerce and information and communications technology.
Ayeni came from an engineering background, starting his career as a network engineer for Cisco in Moscow. He moved into chip design, and had three engineering jobs with Motorola, Intel, and Qualcomm before moving into investment banking in 2010, working for JP Morgan.
Orange also maintains two other funds. Alongside advertising firm Publicis and investment manager Iris, Orange launched a $400m outfit in 2012. It is also in partnership with oil company Total and train firm SNCF on an entity called Ecomobilite Ventures, which is backed by €30m ($32m).
