Celebrated serial entrepreneur and investor Brian Caulfield, who heads up the Dublin office of Draper Esprit, has been elected chairman of the Irish Venture Capital Association (IVCA).
Caulfield replaces ACT’s John Flynn, who has completed his term of office.
The IVCA represents the local venture capital community in Ireland, which has invested €1bn in SMEs and which has leveraged an additional €1bn from international venture capitalists.
Irish start-ups raised €401m from venture capital investors in 2014, a surge of 41pc on 2013 when Irish firms raised €285m. According to the VenturePulse survey by the Irish Venture Capital Association, since the onset of the credit crunch in 2008 over 1,000 Irish SMEs raised venture capital of €2.1bn.
Caulfield has sat on both sides of the table on venture capital investment
Caulfield is an interesting choice for the role in that he has sat on both sides of the table when it comes tech investment in Ireland.
As well as being a partner with Draper Esprit, a subsidiary of the US$9bn Draper Fisher Jurvetson venture capital syndicate, Caulfield was a tech entrepreneur.
Caulfield worked in a number of indigenous financial technology companies, including Peregrine Systems and Trintech. He sold Exceptis Technologies, an electronic payments company, to Trintech in November 2000 for US$26m. Six years later, he sold Similarity Systems, a data quality company, to IT giant Informatica Corporation for US$55m in cash.
Caulfield also served as interim CEO of Belfast mobile cloud firm Aepona. Intel acquired that company for US$120m in 2013.
At Draper Esprit he has led investments in tech firms like Movidius and Datahug.
