Sorry for the low blogging in the past few days (many of you have emailed me to ask for the Rodrigo Sepulveda Show episodes 
), I’ve been doing some other stuff… But just for you to know, whenever I shoot a video, I have to edit it to add the final music and titles, ask for permission from the interviewee to post the video on line (they have ALL cleared everything you see), and then sit down and figure out what to write about each interview. That is the most difficult and long exercise, and somehow I’m glad I’m not a journalist: imagine being a blogger (hum: professional writer) for a living ? Too much work 
So I’ve been running a small experiment in the past few days: on thursday morning (2,5 days ago), I added the small video of Benoît Bergeret on the right column of this blog. As it happens, the layout of my blog on the columns is not advertised on my RSS feed, so only people that come to my site would have a chance of noticing it. By the way, please do not forget to upgrade my RSS feed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/rodrigo. All instructions here.
Well, over 650 of you have already watched the video in thumbnail format. Interesting: you don’t mind the size? Good because that’s the size you’ll be getting for these videos on your phones… *bip* no more comment on this :D The bad part, is that you couldn’t leave a comment if you wanted to: I’ll corect that in the upcoming feature release of our little tool.
So! Today I bring you a curious man: Benoît Bergeret. I first mentionned him on this blog, when he got another round of financing from Atlas Venture about 2 months ago. I had the opportunity to talk about him with the partner from Atlas who invested in his company, Fred Destin. He had nothing but praise for the man, describing him as a visionnary and a very experienced manager. I have that discussion on tape, but the sound is pretty bad, so I haven’t posted it yet (so if you want me to release an interview with Fred Destin with very poor sound quality, press [Post a comment] ). My post on Benoît’s company, Realeyes3D, got me also a call from him, and an invitation to lunch.
So there I go, expecting to find a serious businessman in his 40s. To the contrary: I had one of the best lunches in a long time: Benoît is not only a very experienced manager (20 years working in tech as an artificial interlligence researcher, a product marketing manager, a negotiator, a sales executive, a consultant…) but a very nice and lively person. And as a very passionate entrepreneur, he went on to demo all his products to me (he didn’t have time to finish as I had to rush to another meeting). In a nutshell his technology allows anybody to write something with pen and paper and then take a picture with it with a phone. Nothing new? Well he does some kind of line recognition, and extracts and purifies the drawing so that you can embed it onto a picture you’re taking. The picture of me above was done with a regular phone. Here’s a video that shows with more detail how it works. And go back to the press release I commented, for some of my thinking into his company.
I took the opportunity here to ask him how and why he chose his new VC. Benoît said that the first reason is that Atlas gave him a term sheet Indeed, you can’t really choose when there’s no choice. Although the press release said “oversubscribed”, Benoît acknowledged there weren’t that many offers after all. More seriously, the team at RealEyes3D wanted to find a very specific and targeted kind of investor. They used the services of London-based private placement specialists Go4Venture to narrow the list down. What made the difference ?
Benoît says he really appreciated the skill set that Atlas brought to the table, characterizing them as very sharp and energetic; their commitment in the negotiation talks and the due diligence process; and overall the common trust they built for the long term success of the company. He even goes to say that “you need to be challenged to move forward”.
Atlas also offered it seems a good economical deal (I guess the 7,5m euros at a fair valuation).
In this episode, Benoît also discusses his views on being a successful entrepreneur: he strongly believes that having the right idea is not enough, and that building experience along a solid business career only help you succeed in the end, when you start your company. Well, his personal story definitively shows he follows his own values.
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