Alain Azan is the Founding Partner of Sofinnova Ventures. He joined Sofinnova SA in France in 1983 and relaunched Sofinnova Inc. in San Francisco in 1987. During his 25 years as a venture capitalist, Alain has made over 50 investments in the information technology sector, resulting in over 25 IPOs and trade sales. Most notable are his investments in Phone.com (Nasdaq: OPWV), Premisys (acquired by Zhone Technologies), Tumbleweed (Nasdaq: TMWD), Element 14 (acquired by Broadcom), Ray Dream (acquired by Fractal Design), and DataMind (acquired by Epiphany).
Prior to beginning his career in venture capital, Alain was an executive in the oil and gas exploration and machine tool industries, where he held a variety of operational roles based out of several countries. He has also received the national honor of “Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur” in 2006, as published in France’s Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise.
Alain studied Mechanical Engineering and Economics at the Marseilles-Luminy University in France, and received an M.B.A. from the INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France).
