Partner

Olivier Sichel is a Partner and invests in the technology sector at Sofinnova Partners since 2006. He joined France Telecom in 1998. Two years later he was named Chairman and CEO of Alapage.com, which he positioned as a leading operator in French e-commerce, growing sales from €21 million to €43 million in 2002.  He was then named Chairman of Wanadoo, a European leader in Internet and directories and a publicly traded company with a stock market value of €6.5 billion. Olivier restructured Wanadoo’s activities in Spain, the Netherlands, and the U.K. and developed the company’s on-line Yellow Pages directory. Less than two years later, Wanadoo’s operating profit had quadrupled and its value increased to €13 billion. Following the integration of Wanadoo into the France Telecom group, Olivier took over the fixed-line and internet activities, merging the former fixed and Wanadoo teams throughout Europe. As a result, between 2003 and 2005, France Telecom moved up from 9th to second place worldwide in ADSL. At the same time, Olivier oversaw the launch of numerous innovative products breaking with the operator’s traditional lines of business, such as Livebox, VOIP, and broadband multi-service offerings.
Since joining Sofinnova Partners, Olivier has invested in OpenERP, Solutions30, Taptu and Twenga of which he is a board member. He has been a board member of Streamezzo (sold to Amdocs) and Sprice (sold to TravelPort). He also seats on the board of Mydeco and blueKiwi. Olivier has a graduate of Essec, a French business school, ENA (the Ecole Nationale d’Administration), and is Inspecteur des Finances.