The Board
Dan Serfaty co-founded Viadeo with Thierry Lunati in 2004. The idea for Viadeo formed in 2000 when Dan and Thierry launched an innovative concept in the private equity world – Agregator, an entrepreneurs’ group which aggregates and values private company shares to fund the expansion of member companies. Agregrator was the forerunner of Viadeo. Prior to founding Viadeo Dan was involved in several entrepreneurial ventures including the turnaround of DIMO, a tourism company, and a start-up business specialising in the distribution of textile products from Asia.
Thierry Lunati co-founded Viadeo with Dan Serfaty in 2004. Thierry also co-founded TBX Trade, an innovative stock exchange online trading solution. He has been involved in several significant entrepreneurial endeavours, including founding a training company called Forlo, and the Lokace search engine in 1993 which became a benchmark for search engine providers and sold to Info Source within two years. In 1996, Thierry co-founded the online portal and webmail service Caramail, bought by Lycos in 2000.
Derek Ling founded Tianji.com in 2005. It quickly became the largest professional social network in China, and joined the Viadeo Group in 2007. Derek is an experienced entrepreneur with a strong background in corporate and start-up environments. A former Vice President at Sina.com, he has also held senior positions at Motorola and Apple Inc. Throughout his career, Derek has been a strategy consultant and advisor to key companies including Daren, the leading radio production and entertainment company in China; and mobile service provider, Beijing Mobiledata.
Yogesh Bansal is founder and CEO of ApnaCircle.com, an online social and professional networking site based in India and now part of the Viadeo Group. Since founding the company in 2007, Yogesh has been instrumental in overseeing all areas of the organisation, including business development, operations, finance and sales, and continues in this role today. Before starting ApnaCircle.com, he was a market researcher in business and social networking. A leading entrepreneur, Yogesh is involved in multiple Indian community-based companies.
Indian internet giant Sabeer Bhatia co-founded Hotmail in 1996 and then as President and CEO, guided the company to its acquisition by Microsoft in 1998. He became an ApnaCircle Board member in 2007 and then after Viadeo’s acquisition of the network in 2009, Sabeer joined the Viadeo Board of Directors. Sabeer’s success has earned him multiple international awards and accolades, including being named one of TIME Magazine’s People to Watch in International Business 2002.
Bill Melton is co-founder of Global Internet Ventures, a private equity firm specialising in new technology. A leading entrepreneur in integrating technology into the financial world, he has founded several companies including Verifone in 1981, and CyberCash in 1994. He also founded the Melton Foundation, an international community devoted to combining exceptional young talent with new technologies. Bill Melton is an active investor in and Board member of multiple young businesses in the ICT sector.
In 1998, Alain Caffi founded Ventech, a company dedicated to solving business problems using IT and is now a Partner. Alain has 18 years of experience working for a diverse range of private equity companies, in particular strong experience in the organisation of syndications, corporate governance and crisis management as well as organisation of mergers, sales and initial public offerings. In 1986, Alain was involved in the launch of the private equity firm NATIXIS Group. The Group soon became one of the leading private equity firms in France. Alain currently sits on the boards of many internet companies including Viadeo.
Dr. Benoist Grossman joined Idinvest Partners in 2002. He was appointed a board member in 2003 and operates mainly in the internet sector. Benoist is currently on the boards of Criteo, Viadeo, Dailymotion, 24h00 and is the president of Meetic audit committee. Before joining Idinvest Partners, Benoist worked for several venture capital funds for over 10 years. He was a partner at Viventures from 1998 to 2002 and worked as Investment Manager at La Financière de Brienne. He had previously spent over 10 years working as a laser systems specialist at EDF, NASA and Thomson-CSF Optronique, for whom he invented five patents and authored over twenty publications.
Philippe Chainieux is Agregator’s Permanent Representative on the Viadeo Board of Directors. Philippe began his career in 1994 by founding SC Multimedia, one of the first web agencies in France, which he sold in 1998. After managing the provision of internet access for the Pinault-Printemps group, he joined i(france) in 2000 as Business Development Director and was later promoted to Deputy Managing Director. Following the sale of i(france), he joined Cegetel as Director of Customer Relationship Management and Customer Marketing. Philippe has worked for Meetic SA since 2004. In September 2011, Philippe was appointed Meetic SA’s CEO and Director.
An experienced entrepreneur, Sebastien Brault founded a number of internet companies including G2 Communication, Webseduction.com and BeehiveCommunities. He served as CEO of NetClub.com before founding Unyk.com in 2007. Unyk is a smart address book service that allows its users to import, backup, connect with and synchronize their contacts across multiple platforms. Unyk was acquired by Viadeo in 2009. Sebastien founded Viralornot.com in 2011 and is currently the CEO.
