Team
Sebastien Guillaud
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
I grew up in France and moved to Singapore 18 years ago. I started my career in the automotive industry and for 6 years worked for VALEO in financial controller roles mostly in Mexico and Brazil. In 2000, I joined my first start-up, a Paris-based e-commerce company as CFO and COO.
From 2002 to 2009, I worked as group CFO and then group CEO at Welcome Real-time (now part of Collison Group), a fast-growing fintech software start-up with clients in over 30 countries. I grew the company from 20 to 130 people, from US$1m to US$20m revenue and from heavy losses to US$3m Ebitda. I successfully sold Welcome Real-time to one of the largest European Private Equity firms for US$50m.
In 2010, I founded Soft Venture an advisory firm assisting technology companies accelerate in Asia, before co-founding Hera Capital, a Singapore-based Venture Capital fund management company in 2012. At Hera Capital, we raised around US$50m of capital, invested in 14 companies (from Seed to Series D rounds), supported various management teams, and led numerous fund-raising and full exit processes for our portfolio companies.
In 2021, I co-founded Shift4Good to exclusively invest in sustainable mobility start-ups.
What I love doing
I am a deal-maker, a passionate entrepreneur who loves meeting and supporting other entrepreneurs. I love fixing things which don’t work, and scaling companies. I believe I am good at defining strategies and I just love getting deeply involved in the execution and operations alongside the teams I am backing. I am highly experienced in dealing with complex boards of directors and shareholders’ structures. I am experienced at building and managing multi-cultural teams. I have accumulated 18 years of experience in fund-raising, either for my previous start-ups, my various VC funds, or my portfolio companies.
Education
Master in Management graduate from EM Lyon business school (Finance Major)