About

Jean Schmitt has driven Jolt’s vision and led its development since 2012. The impetus behind the founding of Jolt was Jean’s realization that the best risk-adjusted returns typically come from late stage & growth rounds in companies that no longer face technology risk.

Prior to founding Jolt Capital, Jean was Managing Partner at Sofinnova Partners, running the IT practice, focusing on telecom and wireless markets.

Preceding this, Jean was CEO and founder of 4 companies with successful exits, including SLP InfoWare, which he sold to Gemplus (now Gemalto, XPAR:GTO) in 2000 for $60m and then became VP Telecom Solutions & Applications for the larger group.

Jean graduated from Telecom ParisTech and has a post-graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence. He is senior lecturer at Telecom ParisTech and HEC Paris, Vice President of France Deeptech, and non-profit organization regrouping deeptech stakeholders in France and Board Member at Tech Premium, an IPO cornerstone investment SICAV.

Jean is currently a board member of NILT, Virta, and Bioserenity. Previously, Jean was a board member of; Esmertec/Myriad (SIX:MYRN), Authentec (NASDAQ:AUTH) before Apple acquired it in 2012 for $356m, Heptagon before its acquisition by AMS (SIX:AMS) in 2016 for close to $1b, Fogale Sensation before its sale to a consumer electronics giant, and most recently Skill & You before its sale to Andera Partners. Jean also led Jolt Capital’s successful investment and exit in Verimatrix.