An interview with Jacques Tamisier, President of Les Business Angels des Grandes Ecoles (BADGE), the new Club member of Business Angels Europe.
Hi Jacques, so how did you start angel investing?
Initially in 2009 I was interested in angel investing because of the tax incentive instrument that was in place in France at the time.
But I also decided that investing in startups was a lot more interesting that putting my money in the funds that banks created for their customers to benefit from this measure as we could decide in which projects to invest.
As an alumnus of Ecole Polytechnique, I received information about the Business Angels Group that had been created and I joined this Group in 2009. From 2010 to 2016 I went to Spain, but still was able to follow the projects via our platform and kept on investing regularly. When I came back in 2016, I involved myself more directly in doing due diligence of projects and being Strategic Committee member representing Badge investors in several companies. Later, I was elected to join the Board of the association. In June 2019, the Board elected me in the position of president.
Can you tell us a bit more about BADGE?
Originally, this network was created by 3 groups of Alumni of French Grandes Ecoles in engineering, (Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Nationale des Mines and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées). Later, alumni of other engineering schools and Ecoles de commerce joined our association.