Eric Vezzoli

Transcript

Hi, I'm Eric Vezzoli. I'm the founder of GO Touch VR, and GO Touch VR builds haptics technology, which are technologies for digitizing the sense of touch. The standardization of haptics coding, like the MP3 for haptics, was based on our technology because we had the best and most performing compression technology for the sense of touch. I sold this company to Razer, which is dual-headquartered in Singapore and Irvine, California. Razer is a world leader in gaming peripherals, and we sold this company on May 31st, 2022. The investment bank who managed the transaction was Inflexion Point Technology Partners (IPTP). They were instrumental because they're the only French investment bank specialized in deep tech technologies, with the ability to position the strategic value of the technology to the buyer and with extensive international experience. Having an investment bank that understands the technology was the most critical aspect of our selection choice because the valuation of the company was literally done on the core technology. Without the capability to evaluate it, it would have been complex to assign a potential initial value to the company. It was critical for us to find the right acquirer because we wanted someone able to deploy our core technology to the market without denaturing it. IPTP has a large network of partners, and they introduced us to Philip Didier, a fantastic business lawyer who helped us manage the transaction and worked spectacularly well with IPTP. When starting the acquisition process, we wanted a partner that could deploy our technology at scale. We shared our dream buyer with IPTP, and we were able to sell the company to this dream buyer. We are really happy about it. My life changed after this transaction in fundamentally three ways: 1. It liberated me from the burdens of operationally managing a startup so that I could focus on what I love - the technology and its market capabilities. 2. It allowed me to take care of my loved ones thanks to the transaction. 3. It allowed me to expand within the acquirer company all the competencies to develop bleeding-edge technology and implement them for other business lines. If I were to do this company again, I would do it differently because I was a first-time entrepreneur coming from research. I would: - Hire much stronger talent early on to focus on core technology faster - Not onboard other co-founders, but instead focus on the strength of the employees and remunerate them handsomely with shares so they would be more like co-founders - Be much more careful about which investors I would bring on board