ParisTech Review

BIO

As startup executive, strategy consultant, and venture capitalist over the past 20+ years, Amiel Kornel has incubated, advised, and funded over 20 startups and advised more than a dozen Global 2000 companies – including Coca-Cola, Lilly, Reed Elsevier, Sony, Daimler-Chrysler, Alcatel, FNAC, and Motorola.

He is currently San Francisco-based senior managing director of private equity venture capital firm Spencer Trask & Co., venture-capital affiliate of innovation consultancy Strategos, senior advisor at European investment advisory firm MK Finance in Paris, and serves as Board Director at crowdsourcer InnoCentive, software developer DFMSim, social web startup Metavana. He is also a mentor in the Georgia Tech Flashpoint Accelerator for startup incubation.

Previously, he led the New Venture Practice at The McKenna Group, a Silicon Valley based strategy consultancy founded by marketing guru Regis McKenna.

He authored a chapter on innovation for “MBA in a Box – The Best Brains in Business” (Random House, May 2004); other contributors included Akamai Chairman George Conrades and 3Com founder Bob Metcalf. A former journalist, he has reported and edited articles on business, science and technology for the International Herald Tribune, The Economist, Computerworld, and Le Monde Informatique, among other publications.

He received a BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, where he was Student Editor of The Sloan Management Review. Amiel and his wife currently divide their time between homes in San Francisco and France.