Stephane Longuet is a managing director at Convivialité Ventures, France-headquartered liquor group Pernod Ricard’s US-based venture capital arm. Before this, he had worked with the group for two decades across Europe.
Longuet’s posts before his CVC appointment were chief financial officer and managing director at Absolut after Pernod Ricard acquired the vodka brand. After that, he spent six years running a brand company in charge of all vodka brands in the group, handling innovation, new brands, businesses and entrepreneurial responsibilities.
He said: “In 2017, I was tasked to create the new CVC activity for the group, based in San Francisco, to invest in business-to-consumer startups in the conviviality space. Becoming a VC investor was completely new to me. I started by hiring a team and crafting a strategy that could pave the way to a long-term return on investment for the group, both financially and strategically.”
So far, the unit has made several series A to C investments, mostly in US-based startups as a strategic co-investor, but no rounds have yet been led and the startups have not been named publicly.
A DJ in his spare time, hosting parties for friends, Longuet is well-versed in mixing different elements – he strives to connect startups with the corporate ecosystem, identifying “the perfect match in terms of business development opportunities that can be mutually beneficial to the startup and the corporate, with two different cultures”.
