The rest of the 100 (in alphabetical order): Guillaume Dubray, Alex Fries, Polytech Ecosystem Ventures

Alex Fries and Guillaume Dubray are the men tasked with building a bridge to Silicon Valley for European technology startups through the $40m Polytech Ecosystem Ventures fund.

Created as a partnership between Polytech Ventures, based at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and California’s Ecosystem Ventures, the fund was created in 2016 and also offers seed funding to US-based businesses looking to expand across the Atlantic. It focuses on sectors such as fintech, insurtech, digital health and retail.

Fries has been president of Ecosystem Ventures since 2005 and is also a partner at investment firm Alpana Ventures. Dubray is managing partner of Polytech Ventures and also the founder of Fusion, Switzerland’s first fintech accelerator.

One of Polytech Ecosystem Ventures’ earliest investments was BlueFox, a developer of customer-engagement services for the retail industry. In 2017, the company raised $7m in a series A round also backed by the fund.