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Jeff Clavier

Founder of Uncork Capital, Uncork Capital

Search every verified Jeff Clavier interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Jeff Clavier, founder of Uncork Capital, discussed his approach to venture investing and fund management on the Trailblazers Podcast in September 2026. He reflected on his career, noting that he is now approximately 95 percent active with the firm as he considers a longer-term transition. Clavier described the challenge of raising his third fund in 2010, contrasting it with the relative ease of raising his earlier seed funds, and he emphasized that emerging managers must clearly articulate why the world needs another seed fund, given the proliferation of such firms. He also stressed the importance of returning actual capital to limited partners, prioritizing DPI over paper markups, and mentioned that secondaries can provide liquidity for investors. Clavier also commented on the impact of artificial intelligence, saying that while he sees positives, he believes there are significant guardrails needed to address concerns about models acting unpredictably. He noted that this technology scares many people, particularly those without deep technical understanding. Throughout the conversation, he highlighted his continued involvement in deal-making and sourcing, despite having communicated his thoughts on the firm's future to his team several years ago.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“You have to answer very crisply, why the does the world need yet another seed fund? Cuz there's what, 2500, 3000, god knows? Way back when in 2010 or whatever, when there were maybe 50 seed funds, I felt that the market was really well served. Then we went from 50 to 100 to 200 to like a thousand and I was like what the hell's going on? At the end of the day you need to figure out what your unique stickick is. What i”

“I think the hardest was when I tried to raise fund three, which was in 2010. I had, you know, the first fund was my own capital. So we call that SoftVC1. SoftTech VC2, which was one of the first kind of seed funds in history that I raised in 2007, was 15 million. And I raised my first fund like from institutionals in eight weeks, which never happens. And so I was like, well, you know, I'm good at this. And then I tri”

“The time to returns has doubled — you can barely hope to go public before year 13–15. That puts real pressure on GPs to monetize early through secondary liquidity, but the discounts on those secondaries are massive.”

“In 2005, we invested in a company called TrueVO, which was a search engine for video before YouTube. We invested in the company in January 2005, sold the company in December 2005, and we made 17 times the investment in 11 months and 3 weeks. And so thanks to that, the money came in relatively quickly and especially the track record. I built my track record very quickly, and thanks to that, in 2007 I raised one of the”

“In 2004, I saw this gap in the market where there was a need for a bit of money and a lot of help, and there were no financial products in some sense that responded to this need, and that's why I launched it. Before I created my company and my fund, and before one of the thousands of funds followed me, there was no organization in the world of Silicon Valley; it was basically angels, individual investors who did the ”

“Typically, we are the first check at the moment where a founder or founders have an idea and they come to pitch us the idea, and we say, well, this could be interesting, they are super smart, they have done interesting things in their lives, and we believe they have the possibility to create a super big company in 10 to 15 years. And so we give them a check for a few million dollars and then we work with them to help”

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