Stephane Gantchev

Partner
2013
LAUNCHub Ventures is a leading early-stage venture capital fund, investing in tech startups in the Seed and Series A funding stages. We invest in Southeastern and broader Central Europe (SEE & CEE), as well as in companies built by ambitious founders originating from that region who are based in the leading startup hubs such as London, San Francisco and beyond.

2009

Co-founder
2009
MobileMonday Sofia is a non-profit open forum of the local mobile industry community. It is an independent, non-profit organization of mobile industry professionals, entrepreneurs, developers, investors, universities and people with a passion for mobile technology. MoMo Sofia aims to be a regional hub for networking and business development, a knowledge center for local developers and an open stage for industry news and presentations of innovation from local university labs and start-ups. MoMo Sofia is part of the global Mobile Monday Community (www.mobilemonday.net).

2011 - 2012

VP Business Development
2011 - 2012
Backed by Neveq (New Europe Venture Equity) and private investors, Imbrica provides value added services for Telefonica subsidiaries in Latin America.

2009 - 2010

Business Development Director, CEE
2009 - 2010
Velti is one of the leading mobile marketing and mobile advertising companies. Responsible for Business Development and Sales for Mobile Operators in the area of Central / Eastern Europe (CEE). Focusing on following countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Moldova Extensive network in the region and successful projects and new deals with the majority of the mobile operators in the region, including Orange group, first ever deal for Velti with Telefonica group and many others.

2004 - 2009

Head of Value Added Services Innovation
2006 - 2009
Head of the Orange Trial Factory Innovation Program. Project Director role managing a team of project managers and external consultants; managing a dedicated innovation budget. Orange Trial Factory is Orange France's Value Added Services (VAS) Innovation program. It aims to discover and trial new innovative mobile and convergent products & value added services, with a view to commercializing them with Orange. The program is attached to Orange France's CTO Office. Orange Trial Factory develops a vast innovation network with partner companies, agent companies and Venture Capital firms. Working in Fast-track mode, for all discovered solutions, the program tracks-down a 'sponsor' within Orange business teams, runs the trial and then, if all is successful (according to well defined trial success criteria), commercializes the service with Orange France.
Mobile Email service Project Manager
2004 - 2006
In charge of Orange France’s Mobile email service, 1,5+ Million Orange France users. Leading the migration of the Mobile email service of Orange France to MDSP (Orange Group new centralized VAS platform, 60M€ project). In charge of functional and technical scope of the new platform as well as the migration & testing strategy; PMO role involving multiple internal teams and 2 subcontractors (IBM and Capgemini)

2000 - 2005

IT Consultant
2000 - 2005
IT Consultant for the Technical Risk Management (company group structure). Reporting directly to the Group's Chief Technical Officer. Participating in Group's Innovation Committee, instance in charge of the innovative projects. Involved in high visibility risky projects such as: - Olympic Games (Athens 2004, Torino 2006) - Other Major Events - Fifa world cup Korea/Japan, World Summits for sustainable development Involved in Telecom projects: - Semavision (CABS 2000) Billing Systems - Telecom's division bids Other expertise: - Security, PKI - Mobile/Embedded applications - In-memory databases - Web, J2EE - LDAP

1997 - 1998

Web Developer
1997 - 1998
Web developement (DHTML, Java, ASP, Mysql, Posgres) Corporate site maintainance

Partner at LAUNCHub Ventures, Co-organizer of DigitalK Conference