French Blogger Tries His Hand As a Venture Capitalist

Posted by: Jennifer L. Schenker on March 25

French tech entrepreneur and blogger extraordinaire Loic Le Meur is adding another job title to the list: venture capitalist. Le Meur has agreed to work one day a month for Germany’s Wellington Partners, scouting for hot startups in Silicon Valley and Europe.

Le Meur is a seasoned business angel. He has already invested his own money in 15 technology startups, including LinkedIn, but this is his first time trying his hand at venture capital. He is a natural for the job since he is very plugged in to the tech scene on both sides of the Atlantic. (Here’s a link to his Twitter.)

But make no mistake about it, Le Meur says he has no plans to give up his day job, running a new Silicon Valley start-up called Seesmic, a cross between Facebook and YouTube. Users can post videos of themselves talking, then other users can pick up the conversational thread by putting up videos of themselves responding.

The company recently raised $6 million from big name investors, including AOL founder Steve Case, Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Martin Varsavsky, the founder of Wi-Fi sharing company FON and Ron Conway, a leading Internet business angel. Le Meur says he is more convinced then ever that Seesmic is going to be big: A new video is being posted every 60 seconds by people from 25 countries. Stay tuned.