Jean Schmitt is the President and Managing Partner at Jolt Capital. He has driven Jolt’s vision and led its development since 2012. The impetus behind the founding of Jolt was Jean’s realization that the best risk-adjusted returns typically come from late stage & growth rounds in companies that no longer face technology risk.

Prior to founding Jolt Capital, Jean was Managing Partner at Sofinnova Partners, running the IT practice with a focus on telecom and wireless markets. Preceding his career as an investor, Jean was the CEO and founder of 4 companies with successful exits, including SLP InfoWare, which he sold to Gemplus (now Gemalto, XPAR:GTO) in 2000 for $60m and then became VP Telecom Solutions & Applications for the larger group.

Jean graduated from Telecom ParisTech and has a post-graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence. He is a regular lecturer at Telecom ParisTech, Mines ParisTech and HEC Paris.

Jean is also Chairman of the Baroque Orchestra La Chappelle Harmonique (led by the internationally acclaimed conductor Valentin Tournet), an independent board member of Tech Premium (a French-led Caisse des Dépôts SICAV promoting technology IPOs), a former Chairman of the International Venture Club, and a former Chairman of the e-learning trade union CHANED.

Jean is currently a board member of NIL Technology (DK) and Virta (FI) representing Jolt Capital. Previously, Jean was a board member of Esmertec/Myriad (SIX:MYRN), Authentec (NASDAQ:AUTH) before its acquisition by Apple in 2012 for $356m, Heptagon before its acquisition by AMS (SIX:AMS) in 2016 more than $1b, FOGALE Sensation before its sale to a consumer electronics giant and Skill & You before its sale to Andera Partners and Verimatrix (EURONEXT:VMX) sold to One Equity Partner, where he stayed as an independent Board Member.