The rest of the 100 (in alphabetical order): Christel Piron, CEO, PreSeed Ventures
Christel Piron joined PreSeed Ventures, the university venture fund of Technical University of Denmark (DTU), as CEO in May 2017, when the fund – which used to be called DTU Symbion Innovation – spun out of VC firm Seed Capital.
PreSeed’s history traces back to 2000, so it is not surprising it has 375 businesses in its portfolio. Over the past five years alone, these have attracted more than $590m in funding.
Despite being owned by DTU, PreSeed invests in spinouts from all Danish research institutions.
Piron took on a big job in 2017, but with 12 years of experience as chief executive of venture capital firm Pharmavie, she was well prepared to help build successful companies.
She has been a board member at more than 25 companies throughout Scandinavia and if that was not impressive enough, she is also an external examiner and teacher at Aarhus University’s board program.
