Barbara Belvisi, MSc

Barbara Belvisi, MSc is the Founder and CEO at Interstellar Lab and cofounder at Hardware Club, the first community-based VC dedicated to hardware startups. She is a French entrepreneur and investor, passionate about science, space, and artificial intelligence. Her current mission at Interstellar Lab is to design and build bioregenerative habitats for humans to live in sustainably on any planet.

She spent the first 5 years of her career as an Investment Manager where she was structuring and managing funds in Private Equity in London and in Venture Capital in Paris. She raised over $80M with public and private institutions, FoF, and family offices and participated in 40 deals.

She started her career in 2008 as Asset Investment Manager in the FoF (Fund of Funds) Management company Foncière Euris, with International and European Investment in LBO, Energy, and Real Estate.

Barbara then moved to Private Equity in 2010, with a focus on Brands & Retail at NEO Capital in London and in 2009 as Investment Manager at A Plus Finance in Paris.

At 28, she left Investment Management to focus on her passion for tech and science. In 2013 she helped launch TheFamily, a Paris-based incubator, and Hello Tomorrow Challenge, an event fostering scientific innovation to connect and empower young change-makers in Europe.

TheFamily is an incubator and accelerator, whose mission is to support early-stage startups through education & unfair advantages. She has been Partner & Godfather since then.

Barbara was for a year the Robotics and Hardware Track and Mentoring Lead at Hello Tomorrow Challenge, and then moved to its Advisory Board, where she continues to participate today.

Later in 2013, Barbara cofounded her own asset management firm Elephants & Ventures, an early-stage venture boutique based in Paris and NYC dedicated to hardware & software companies. In 2015, Elephants & Ventures gave birth to Hardware Club. This hybrid fund has offices in San Francisco, Paris, and Tokyo with a focus on robotics, hardware, and the Internet of Things. It has incubated 400 startups worldwide, has a total of 150 corporate partners, and has a $50M early stage fund.

She has been an investor for many startups, among others for Lima Technology with their personal, local cloud device; Prynt and their instant photo printing camera case for smartphones; iskn with their real-time digitalization of physical drawings; Keecker, who developed the first voice-enabled robot that moves entertainment, communication, and safety into every room of your home; Biscuit Labs, an AI-powered Building Automation company which enables tenants and building managers to improve their energy efficiency and well-being in real-time; Reach Robotics who is creating the future of gaming by fusing robotics, reality-bending / augmented reality technology, and competitive play; GROW Labs with their smart planter that enables users to grow their own organic vegetables and herbs in their home, and Aryballe Technologies that are, based on the combination of Nano, Biotech, IT, and Cognitive Sciences, developing Innovative technologies, databases, software, and devices applied to the identification, measurement, and representation of smells and tastes.

Barbara earned her Master’s Degree of Science in Management, Corporate Valuation, and Strategical Analysis from Ecole de Management de Lyon.

Barbara is the youngest women founder of a venture capital fund in Europe, she was considered by Forbes as “the future of VC” in Europe, and is among the Top-100 Forbes List Women to follow in Europe and the Top-10 Women to watch in Tech In France in 2018 acording to StartHer.

She was an invited Speaker at Sesam Summit, an annual event dedicated to the future of technology in Europe and beyond, held in Valencia, Spain. The title of her talks were From Space to Earth: building sustainable worlds and Solving Climate Change with Technology.

Barbara is also a member of The Society for Biological Engineering (SBE). A global organization of leading engineers and scientists, SBE is dedicated to promoting the integration of biology with engineering and realize its benefits through bioprocessing and biomedical and biomolecular applications.

Read an article about Barbara in Forbes (French).

Watch Barbara participating at the Hardware Roundtable, discussing The Internet of Things, and finally presenting herself for Leade.rs.

Watch her talk From Space to Earth: Building Sustainable Worlds at Startup Sesame Summit 2019.

Read about how Hardware Club raised $28M to invest in its startup community.

Visit her LinkedIn profile, Startup Ranking profile, and CrunchBase profile. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.