This happened last week, but wasn’t brought to our attention until today (thanks Yakov): Marc Ingla, a Catalan businessman and famously former vice president (and in 2010 nearly president) of football club Futbol Club Barcelona, has joined early-stage investment firm Mangrove Capital Partners (Mangrove) as partner.
Mangrove, based in Luxembourg, has invested in companies like Skype (acquired by eBay, and later, Microsoft), Rdio, OpenX, Nimbuzz, Jolicloud, Wix.com, DailyDeal (acquired by Google), Seatwave, Soho OS, Evertale, Pops and Oktogo.ru.
At FC Barcelona, Ingla served as VP of Marketing and Media from 2003 until 2008 and was a driving force behind many major sponsorship agreements at the club.
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He was also a candidate for the position of president at the football club in the 2010 elections, but came in third after winner Sandro Rosell and Agustí Benedito.
This isn’t the first time he’s venturing into the world of risk capital. In the nineties, Ingla worked at a few management consultancy firms, founded his own, and went on to become a partner at VC firm Nauta Capital in 2006.
He will remain a member of the board at Nauta and also continue to do angel investments (some of the companies he’s backed are Siine.com and Wuaki.tv).
At Mangrove, he’ll be focusing on gaming, ecommerce, financial services, media content and messaging “with a bias towards Latin countries”.
Marc Ingla joins our firm: “Ex-Barca man goes talent spotting at Mangrove” bit.ly/I1JGHY
— Mark Tluszcz (@marktluszcz) April 5, 2012
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