Paul Chen (businessman)
Quick Facts
Biography
Paul Chen is the founder of two technology companies, FloNetwork Inc., and Fortiva. Based in Toronto, Canada, he is one of the country's leading "serial entrepreneurs".
Background
Chen earned his Bachelor of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto. In his early career, Chen held senior development positions with IBM, Honeywell Inc. and Bell-Northern Research Inc., the research and development subsidiary of Nortel.
In 1993, Chen founded FloNetwork Inc., serving as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer. After raising over $30M from high-profile venture capital firms such as McLean Watson Capital, Ventures West and the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan, Chen was instrumental in selling the business in 2001 to DoubleClick (now owned by Google) for $80M.
Following his exit from FloNetwork, Chen served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at McLean Watson Capital.
In 2005, Chen launched his next venture, the Software as a service based email archiving firm Fortiva. As CEO, Chen helped to establish The Electronic Communications Compliance Council (TE3C). Fortiva grew as a leader in the SaaS email archiving space before being acquired in 2008 by Proofpoint.