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STEPHAN PATERNOT is the founder and general partner of the Actarus Funds. Founded in 2001, these angel investor funds provide seed capital to Internet 2.0 start-ups. Prior to this he cofounded one of the first Internet community sites, theglobe.com in 1994. The company set stock market history when it went public in 1998 with a record setting IPO pushing the company valuation to over $1 Billion. Over a six-year span the company grew to over 300 employees with the website becoming one of the top thirty sites in the world with over 17 million users. In 1999 Stephan won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and in 2001 published “A Very Public Offering”, a non-fiction business book detailing his experience at theglobe.com. Before founding the company Stephan attended Cornell University where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. Prior to this Stephan grew up in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and briefly the United States for the first eighteen years of his life.

Beyond his duties at the Actarus Funds, 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 aims of the foundations are to give financial support to educational, artistic, cause based and scientific non-for profit institutions. Stephan currently resides in New York City.