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STEPHAN PATERNOT was born in 1974 to a Swiss/French father and American mother. He grew up in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and briefly the United States for the first eighteen years of his life. In 1992, he moved to America to attend Cornell University where he earned an Engineering Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. In 1994, while still a Junior in college he cofounded one of the first internet community sites, theglobe.com. By age 24 Paternot set stock market history when he successfully took theglobe.com public with a record setting IPO pushing his company valuation to over $1 Billion. In his six years as CEO, he raised nearly $200 million in capital and grew the enterprise to over 300 employees. His Company was frequently ranked as one of the top thirty sites in the world with over 17 million monthly users. In 1999 Stephan won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Shortly before the market bubble burst in 2000, Steph left the company and his fortunes behind to take some much needed time off. Upon leaving the company publisher John Wiley & Sons purchased the literary rights to Steph’s story and published his internet adventures in a tell all book called “A Very Public Offering”. Shortly thereafter, to capitalize on the resurgent growth in the internet Stephan launched the Actarus Funds, an ongoing series of small closed funds which invested seed capital in internet 2.0 start-ups including companies such as Zingy (a mobile phone ringtone pioneer in the US), OLX (a leading international personals site), DineroMail (a Latin American p2p payment platform) and several others.

Beyond his career endeavors, Stephan sits on the board of the Heineman Foundation, based in New York, and on the board of it’s sister organization the Heineman-Stiftung, based in Berlin. The aim of the foundations are to support charitable, educational, artistic and scientific institutions both at home and abroad. Stephan currently resides in New York City.