We are pleased to announce that two new investment professionals, Alan Fisher and Edgard Capdevielle, have joined iMinds Ventures in January. 
Alan Fisher joins as a General Partner. Alan has been a limited partner and member of iMinds Ventures’ Advisory Board since 1999.
Alan has had a passion for technology and entrepreneurialism from early on. After earning a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Stanford in 1982, Alan joined on at Bell Laboratories in a research position. Feeling the draw for more commercial applicability of his software development work, he worked with a number of successful enterprise software companies. Alan co-founded Ambia Corporation, now a division of publicly held Infodata Systems, Inc., a developer of electronic document management systems. As President and CEO of Software Partners, Inc., which he also co-founded, Alan was responsible for the creation of such innovative products as StreetSmart and e.Schwab for Charles Schwab and Company. Alan then co-founded online auction pioneer, Onsale in 1994. Onsale began prior to the days of dot-com investing mania and ironically, Alan and co-founder, Jerry Kaplan had difficulty raising venture funding prompting the two to bootstrap the company to profitability early on. In 1995, Kleiner Perkins realized the opportunity and the company launched a successful IPO shortly thereafter. In 1999, the Onsale merged with Internet software e-tailer, Egghead.com and Alan had the opportunity to look on to returning to his passion of working with early stage companies. Alan then co-founded Wingspring, Inc., a venture capital operating company focusing on early-stage enterprise software and eBusiness companies and assumed the role as General Partner.
Alan enjoys the role of working hands on with entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of a startup. Alan and his wife, Ann, have a 10-year old daughter, Kelly, and are expecting a son in March.
Edgard Capedeveille joins iMinds as an Associate. He graduated with a double major in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. Edgard joined Ernst & Young in South America and led a major effort to localize SAP products in Latin America markets. He also took an active role in a variety of Business Process Reengineering projects and implementations of Executive Information Systems.
Too many plane flights to and from Germany (SAP headquarters) and South America drove Edgard to Berkeley's Haas Business School where he obtained an MBA with certificates in Management of Technology and Global Management. Edgard has additionally served as a strategic advisor for eBay as the company evaluated entry into Latin American markets. He also held the position of Strategic Analyst at Sun Microsystems, focusing on a variety of businesses including Internet and high-end servers and microprocessors. In addition, Edgard advised IBM, HP and several start-ups in strategic and product management projects related to Internet initiatives.
Edgard has been married three months and lives with his wife, Maria, in Berkeley.
