At EQT Ventures, we’re building the next global success stories through partnerships with ambitious and determined founders across Europe and the US. One European ecosystem continuing to gather pace is France, with its tech startups attracting over €11.5bn in investment in 2022. It’s clear that France is now one of Europe’s hottest tech hubs, with no shortage of ambitious world leaders in the making. As a VC built by ex-founders and operators, we also have strong ambitions, especially after the closing of our 3rd fund at over €1bn.

Today, we’re delighted to welcome Julien Hobeika as the newest addition to our rapidly growing Paris team. A founder and CEO of 2 B2B SaaS startups, Julien will be scouting out great investments across the French ecosystem and helping us back more and more tech-savvy founders in the B2B space.

Our fifth hire in Paris, he brings a wealth of first-hand experience as CEO in B2B SaaS, AI and Data. Prior to joining EQT Ventures, Julien co-founded and led Julie Desk, a Natural Language Processing-based Virtual Assistant. He then managed a distressed M&A by taking over Nimley, an outbound prospecting tool, and afterwards joined Dataiku to help them launch multiple new products, including their SaaS Offering.

“I’ve been building tech products almost my entire professional life and I know from many different experiences, industries and companies how hard it is to successfully build a wonderful product, sell it, make sure you have the right market fit and then scale it”, says Julien. “I’m excited to now be on the investment side, with colleagues who have not only been on their own entrepreneurial journeys but are also taking a strong data-driven approach to investment using proprietary AI platform Motherbrain. The French tech ecosystem is full of ambitious founders who are building amazing tech; I’m super excited to work with the future global winners and give them my unconditional support on their journey!”

Rania Belkahia and Laura Yao, Partners at EQT Ventures, are equally excited about Julien’s arrival. “Julien’s GTM experience, broad product and technical expertise, and deep understanding of highly complex / deep tech environments will make him a valuable addition to the Ventures team and to the french ecosystem,” says Rania. “On top of that, he is definitely the right shadow partner to help the next generation of global winners and category creators — thanks to his very pragmatic approach”. Laura adds to this, saying: “We were impressed by Julien’s experience, of course, but also, as we got to know him, by his intellectual curiosity, empathy, and willingness to push back — all attributes that make him a great cultural fit with EQT Ventures. I’m excited to work with him to find and support the best entrepreneurs globally.”

EQT Ventures has teams on the ground in five cities worldwide: Paris, Stockholm, Berlin, London, and San Francisco. With Julien on board, we can continue bringing our ‘locals with locals’ approach to the French ecosystem, providing the region’s founders with the radical support and advice needed to fast-track their ideas to scale.

Welcome to the team, Julien!