Brigitte Baumann, founder of Go Beyond Early Stage Investing (GBI), named European Business Angel of the Year by EBAN
On Thursday 7th May 2015, EBAN (the European Trade Association for Business Angels, Seed Funds and Early-stage Players: www.eban.org) presented Brigitte Baumann, a serial angel investor, the 2014 Business Angel of the Year award. Candace Johnson, President of EBAN, comments on Brigitte’s nomination: “We’re proud to give the award to Brigitte. Brigitte is a role model for cross-border investing, an inspiration to many novice angel investors and a thought leader in the industry. Her vision and contribution in establishing angel investing as an asset class has been instrumental in the industry’s growth. ”
Brigitte Baumann began angel investor while in business school. She was able to participate in the family and friends’ pre-IPO round for Expedia. Their success contributed to her decision to become a full time angel investor in 2003. Currently Brigitte holds a portfolio at GBI of 28 early stage companies in different countries (US, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, India, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Spain), in different sectors (ICT, Industrial, Finance, Impact, Sharing economies) and has had 2 successful exits in the last 12 months. Sensima in July 2014 and Lemoptix, acquired by Intel in March 2015.
As CEO and founder of GBI, Brigitte has been active in all aspects of the investment process, often as a deal leader representing other investors. She has also developed and delivered training programs for both novice and experienced investors.
Brigitte is President Emeritus of EBAN and since 2006 chairs the Young Presidents Organization’s Global Angel Investing group. (www.YPOWPO.org). In 2014, Brigitte and her team were the subject of a Harvard Business School Case study on Angel Investing.
Brigitte has been active in promoting women investors and serves as a “diversity expert for CTI” the Swiss Agency for Technology on Innovation. She led the writing of a paper published by EBAN on how to get more women enrolled as Business Angels. GBI exemplifies gender diversity as 1/3 of its investor community is comprised of women, which is a much higher ratio than in any other Business Angel platform in Europe.
Go Beyond Early Stage Investing will shortly be issuing its first Go Beyond Investor Report, which is a comprehensive analysis of the portfolio performance of each member of its investor community. It shows that angel investing can be an asset class for all investors.
Brigitte Baumann said:
“It is a great honour to be recognised in this way by the leading angel organisation in Europe. This award is not just for me, but also for the many entrepreneurs I have backed over the years whose inspiration and hard work I respect very much and for my fellow investors at GBI. I would also like to thank the team at Go Beyond Investing who have been instrumental in helping me to find deals to back, support and make a financial return.”
