Benjamin Chemla

Benjamin Chemla is a French entrepreneur and business angel. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Shares, a European investment platform.

Background
In 2010, Chemla obtained his first master's degree in business law from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. A year later, he obtained a second pro master's degree in business law with a specialization in e-commerce and the digital economy. In 2012, Chemla obtained a specialized master's degree in entrepreneurship from ESCP Business School. This same year, he was admitted to the Paris Bar School. In 2013, Chemla obtained the Certificat d’aptitude à la profession d’avocat (CAPA) at the Paris Bar School. He is also an Ambassador of Epic Foundation and Institut Curie.

Career
In January 2012, Chemla co-founded Citycake, a Paris-based online delivery business, with Ralph Guyot-Jeannin, an ESCP Business School graduate.

In 2013, the startup succeeded in raising funds from a network of business angels, Investessor, to expand its team and strengthen its capital. In 2014, the startup was bought by Resto-In and Chemla was appointed to manage Resto-In operations in France and Belgium.

In January 2015, Chemla and Clément Benoît launched Stuart, now the leading European last-mile B2B delivery platform. Four months later, the startup raised 22 million euros and started to hire people in 3 countries.

In 2017, Geopost, a subsidiary of La Poste, bought Stuart, and the two founders left after a short transition. Later in 2017, Chemla and Clément moved to the US where they founded Fithouse, a chain of gyms in New York. Despite the success of the first openings, they decided to stop the activity at the end of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In April 2021, Chemla partnered with Harjas Singh and François Ruty to create Shares, an online investment platform. In August 2021, Shares raised a $10 million seed round before officially launching its product.

They raised $40 million dollars in Series A, and the same amount in Series B within just a few months. Shares launched in the UK during summer 2022, then entered the French market in July 2023.

Investments
As a business angel, Chemla has invested in startups and companies active in different sectors including,
 * 2016: Everoad (acquired by Sennder), Cultur'In The City (acquired by Wonderbox), Virtuo, Molotov TV (acquired by FuboTV), Epicery (acquired by Stuart)
 * 2017: PayLead, Hugging Face, Whoz, Relationship Hero, Cosmo Connected.
 * 2018: Fumé (Fumé).
 * 2021: Pokmi, Timeleft, Pallas Paris, P00LS, PaySika.
 * 2022: Kinetix, Delta Business School, Origins Fund, Pixmania, Flowdesk, Gekko, MetaFight, Formance.