Pauline Chau, who had been employed as a corporate lawyer in a leading French law firm for a period of 5 years, subsequently joined Breega. Her role at Breega involves overseeing all legal, regulatory, and financial affairs pertaining to the management company, its funds, its portfolio, and its subscribers. At present, she serves as the company’s chief financial officer.
Below are highlights of the interview conducted between World’s Leaders and Pauline Chau:
Describe your background and what did you do before you joined the company?
I started my career as a corporate lawyer in a tier-1 law firm, advising VCs on the legal part of their investments. I loved being in an expert position but I somehow missed a project of my own, since the lawyers’ job ends at closing one deal. After 5 years of practice, I have been recruited by one of them to serve both its legal and financial needs, at a time when Breega managed only 45M€. I was the third employee of an early stage VC co-founded by 3 entrepreneurs who I happen to share some strong values with, operating like a startup, but with very high financial expectations.
Now, after 6 successful years and 90+ companies financed, Breega manages 500 million euros split across 5 vehicles and operates across 5 offices. I am truly happy to monitor our financial performance and be in charge of operations, both on the finance part and on the legal and regulatory part. This double expertise is complementary, and I am convinced that having the legal and regulatory knowledge is not only a cost-saving feature, it is also helpful to setup funds, measure the technical constraints of some operations, implement divestments, distributions, etc.
My role in the success of this organization has been to act like the linchpin of this hypergrowth, being very pragmatic in the processes and execution that needed to be put in place and making them constantly evolve according to our needs and staffing. I see myself as a facilitator for the investment teams, and believe my job is done greatly when it is paradoxically not felt by the business teams or when I bring technical solutions to the table.
What are your responsibilities as the Broker / Principal of the company? What is the happiest part of your daily routine?
I don’t have a daily routine; I am lucky that my days are not the same. I like to start my day by checking my mailbox for new requests I have to handle and therefore reprioritize my day.
One of my great strengths is that I am naturally organized and in control, which is key for a CFO role. My other core values are reliability, transparency, consistency, and always going the extra mile—values that I instill within my team. I often say that it is not because we have never done something that we will not do it. I like to meet new challenges and build innovative setups that have never been tried before.
Give us your opinion on; do organizations rely heavily on individual heroics or team processes?
In my opinion, early-stage organizations rely heavily on individual heroics to build the first milestones, but when an organization reaches scale, it needs to rely on team processes to have sustainable growth. That is exactly the turning point at which we are at Breega.
Which are the major services of the company and how do the company to get ahead in the competition? What value-added services does the company provide?
Breega stands out among its competitors with a very entrepreneurial approach to the VC mission, all members of the investment team being former founders themselves. This entrepreneurial mindset has also pushed us to create, years ago, a scaling team, gathering experts in recruitment, marketing, growth, and business development, fully working for our portfolio and paid by our management company, without charging any fee to our portfolio. This positioning was very unique when Breega was launched 8 years ago, and now we see the benefits of this investment in the growth of our portfolio.
What are the most important aspects of a company’s culture? What principles do you believe in and how do you build this culture?
Our company’s culture is all about being very demanding, but with true care. All our investor actions derive from that: being founder-friendly, acting like a team and with transparency, being agile, and being solutions-oriented. We care a lot about these values when recruiting and promoting people, and try to illustrate them in every internal communication.
What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
My advice to someone going into a leadership position for the first time is: don’t be afraid, and don’t feel like an impostor. We all started somewhere. Just try your best, be humble, and always learn and improve. And try to attract talents, including people who can be better than you at what they do, because they are the ones that will build your company’s success for tomorrow!
