Today we're going to talk about Jeff's life and his journey from France to the United States. It's right now in the tech meeting. Hello Jeff, how are you?
Hello everyone. We are in the tech meeting and I'm going to let Jeff answer before telling you what we're doing today in this special episode. How are you? Are you in good shape?
Well, I'm in good shape, I'm doing very well. It's Monday morning, we're starting the week and it makes me very happy to see you and it's a great honor to be your guest because it's not the usual tech meeting. You know what? We have the pleasure of seeing each other because this is an exceptional episode, we see you on video, which is not usually the case even on video shows. And I realize that I can easily pause the recorded video. So if we need to take a bathroom break, we can. What's incredible is the magic of technology. I see you have a little Uncork Capital mug. That's great. You're always... perfect, perfect. Always.
So generally in this show what we do is cover the news and Jeff has been with me in this show covering the news since its very beginnings. We actually launched it together with Yan who we send a big hello and hugs to, in 2009. So that's a very long time and I realize looking at your journey that you had just arrived in the US, it had only been a few years and we'll come back to that but I mean we generally cover the news now every week but here we're doing something different. It's a portrait episode like we do from time to time and in these episodes we're going to explore the life, the journey, the youth of a person whose I think is extremely interesting. And today it's Jeff who's doing it. So a big thank you for being here for this exercise. You know what? I think we're going to get started right away. We'll talk about the launch of the tech meeting again I'm sure since it will have been a major event in your life, right? In 2009.
Oh, of course, absolutely.
But we're going to start at the very beginning, maybe not early childhood, but I'm even going to do something before that. Can you introduce yourself for people who might not know you, who might not really know your activity and where you are, what you do, listening to the show?
With pleasure. So my real name is Jean-François Clavier but because it's much simpler, I've been called Jeff for about thirty years. Well, we've used Jeff as my nickname for about thirty years. I was born in Tours 57 years ago and I'm a venture capitalist. So I invest in startups very early in their life. Typically, we're the first check when a founder or founders have an idea and they come to pitch us the idea and we think it could be interesting, they're super smart, they've done interesting things in their life and we believe they have the possibility to create a great company in 10-15 years. And so we give them a check for a few million dollars and then we work with them to help them build the company and for a large part of our investments, build a success. I'm not even really going to get into that completely because we'll come back to it, but this venture capitalist job at the very beginning of a company's journey, it's a job that I won't say didn't exist yet when you started but was brand new.
This kind of investment was rare if I understand correctly.
Yes, venture capital has existed for about 50 years but what didn't exist in Silicon Valley when I started, when I launched my own company Uncork 21 years ago, was what we call the seed stage, so it's early stage, it's having venture capital funds focused on one thing, which is funding companies at this stage. So before I created my company and my fund and thousands of funds followed me, there wasn't really an organized world of seed and it was basically angels, individual investors who did the early funding of companies and then VCs came to invest about 2 or 3 years later. And I saw this gap in the market in 2004 where there was a need for a little money and a lot of help and there were no financial products that answered this need and that's why I launched it.
Right. Well, we'll come back to that. But yes, so there was of course what's it called, love money, family money. So you give a few thousand, a few tens of thousands of euros to a friend, a family member who wants to get started. And then after, there were more traditional investors but between the two, there were Angel Investors who invest like that because they know someone they like who was doing the same type of investment you were doing but no real structure dedicated to it and no support infrastructure.
A team that I built over the years and so in 2004-2005 the very first seed funds were created in the Valley and then we had a lot of success so we raised bigger and bigger funds and then a lot of people plus it was the time when social media was launching so we were blogging because Twitter didn't exist yet. We blogged about what we were doing. And basically, we demystified the fact that it was super difficult to launch a VC company, to raise funds and basically we shared our journey saying well there you go, if you want to create a company like ours, if you want to raise funds, here's how we did it. And basically, tens, hundreds, thousands of other entrepreneurs followed us and we created this kind of stage in the VC rocket that we call seed which now represents billions of dollars in investment and billions of dollars raised from institutions to support these companies.
We'll come back to that as I've said three times already. It's funny to see that 20 years later now with a certain... well you're established now, your fund, you're on your 3rd, 4th... I think 8th.
Right. And it's going to be interesting to see how you got to this stage because as you were saying, you were born in Tours, you grew up in France and you left here. And I also mention it, I think it's obvious, but you're in the United States and you intervene every month in the tech meeting of the United States, of Silicon Valley. So just that, you see, just the fact that we can do this show like this, it's not something we could have done when you started. Not long after, we started to be able to, but just that, it wouldn't really have been possible like that.
Well, podcasts didn't exist. The podcast didn't exist in 2004, it was barely a twinkle in the eye of someone.
Well, the very beginning, you were born in Tours. Did you have an environment that was conducive to familiarization with tech? Were there people in your family who were computer scientists, scientists, that kind of thing or did it come to you?
Well, that's the question. My father was an electrician so there was electricity at home, that's all. No, it's when I was in middle school that we had Casio FX 702P calculators which were programmable calculators with a very basic language and so with friends we developed games on them, even though they were supposed to just be calculators. And then we saw a French computer with a kind of French babasse, I don't even remember what it was. So you booted on a cassette and it was super basic, probably an MO5, a TO7, something like that.
No, no, no, it wasn't even that. It was something before so it was super basic but it was some kind of Bull but it was programmed in basic so we developed basic programs.
And I convinced my parents that I needed a programmable calculator because my normal calculator wasn't enough and so I bought a Casio FX 602P which was the smaller version because we could program games on it. And then after came the Amstrad, the CPC 464.
So you had a 464 with cassette.
Right, that's it. I had a 464 with cassette and then I thought damn, there's the 664 that came out with a disk. And I tried to resell my 464 to buy a 664 but no, it didn't work.
It didn't work. You know my first computer was a 664 and precisely the luxury of having a floppy drive on a home computer, it was something unattainable. Only Apple 2s had that, you see, the Apples.
Right. So I was super jealous that I had the cassette drive. Well, the advantage was that you could more easily pirate games with the cassette. So that's a bit what I did because games were very expensive. But so my first personal computer was the Amstrad which was a great machine.
Fortunately it was there because for many of us we started on that and then I moved to an Atari 1040 ST which had super high resolution and all that.
Yes, it must have been a bit more than 320 by 200, something like that. Right, it was incredible. And it's there in fact that I decided to try to do something in computer science. And at the time it was what? It was 1985. There wasn't much at school where you could take computer science courses. You had a bit of computer science in math and physics programs. So that's what I did. And then after my bac, I spent like a week in preparatory class and I didn't like it at all. So I left.
A math-physics degree at the University of Tours and then I had decided to do a computer science school, there weren't many at the time and I had several choices and my two choices were Nice and then a magistère in Paris. In Nice, they showed you the golf, the beach, the football fields and you thought if I go there, it's not going to go well. And so I made the serious choice. I said well yes, the school choice, I made the serious choice. The campus was absolutely incredible but I thought it was at the GE I think if I remember correctly. And so it was literally next to the golf, you were just next to the beach. Well, I thought it would be super nice but I'm not sure I'd do much. So I went up to Paris. I was at Rue Saint-Père for 3 years. So in the heart of the Latin Quarter, it was absolutely incredible.
Yes, it's also let's say there are distractions in Paris too, even if there's no beach.
Right. So we were in the middle of the medical school so it was super nice. And I did a magistère focused on computer science. We had courses at Paris 5, Paris 6, at X, at Pont. And basically it was a kind of Frankenstein program where they took courses from different schools, different structures to create something specialized in computer science and it was super nice. We learned a lot of things. At the time, you really went very deep into the code. So programmed in C, in assembly language.
Right. You were doing machine language.
Right. We did machine language. So it was things because at the time today you have tons of high-level tools and things whereas at the time I mean you were really typing, it was raw foundry stuff.
Right. And so it's super nice. Before we continue, first the microphone is rubbing a bit on your clothes. Can you... Yes, you can open it. Yes, absolutely. Yes, if you can take off the jacket, I think it will rub less. There, super. We saw, we have a hello there, a little electric shock.
Right, OK. I'll resume the audio.
But before we continue, so you still chose to do computer science studies. I imagine it wasn't just because you had programmed three games on a calculator which by the way I also had, a calculator on which you could program games and an Amiga. Me, you see, I went the right way rather than the Atari side. I was on Amiga.
But retrospectively, you're right. Ah, super well. I was expecting to launch a fraternal battle.
But you still had a love, a passion for computer science at some point. Well, I imagine you're going to tell me maybe no, it was simply utilitarian and you thought there are things to do there. But at a time when it was completely anonymous, computer science was a bit abstract. It was big companies with big mainframes, but personal computer science was so much the very beginnings that it was abstract.
It was abstract. But for adults, I mean, not for people who had friends. Well, at the time I was 19-20, I was asking myself the question of what am I going to do? And in terms of career, I thought that doing something in computer science, it wasn't super clear what the opportunities were. Well, clearly, you could either do development, or project management, or sales. And it was the career that seemed most interesting or least uninteresting. So basically, as I say in France, when you don't know what you want to do, anyway, you're going to do math, physics, German, English and Latin.
And like generations of students in France, I was a super good student. And so they told me well, you're going to do math, physics, you're going to take German as first language, you're going to take English as second language, you're going to do Latin and you say but wait, German and Latin are useless, I should take English and Spanish would be more useful and actually they didn't even offer Spanish in my middle school. So I did like everyone else and at the moment when I had to make a choice, OK. Well I did math, physics, German, English and Latin for... well I got kicked out of Latin so I stopped Latin and at some point I had to make a choice of what am I going to do? Basically, either I was going to continue, I liked math a lot and so I was going to do a license, master's and DEA and a doctorate in analysis and it's useless. It's not a job.
For people who choose to do that, I respect them but it wasn't the kind of thing I saw myself doing for the rest of my life.
And so you see, I decided to take... well I did this first pivot. Basically, that's what happened in my career, is that I found myself doing things I had never planned thinking well, this could be nice and in the end it worked well. So I made this first pivot towards pure computer science thinking I would always find a possibility, I would always have a job probably more interesting than if I continued doing math and physics.
It's funny this moment you evoke in the life of all French students and maybe the world and which at least speaks to me because we're more or less of the same generation, let's say and which is probably still the case today but I know less. It's this moment after high school, after the bac where you have to make your choice and you don't know what. You're too young. Obviously, I understand why at some point you have to choose, you have to do something. But even 10 or 15 years later, you realize how much it's really... I'm sure there are people who have vocations and know what they want to do and do it and are very happy, but I imagine for a large part of us, well you throw a dart, you throw it at something and you say well OK, I like this, I'll do that and then you go. You don't know what, it's so complicated this choice.
In France, you're going to do the grandes écoles. So it's a way of not making a choice. And you're going to do these grandes écoles which will be preparatory classes... well you're going to do preparatory classes for the grandes écoles and you're going to choose I think you say either I'm going to do something technical, or I'm going to do something business or even not, you do a preparatory class. So the way of not making a decision is to do a preparatory class. In the United States, it's not really like that because after your high school graduation, you have to choose a college, a 4-year college and a university and you're going to have to make a choice about your major. Well, it's not super... you're going to choose your college more than the major initially, but often depending on your major, you're going to want to go to this college or that college. So at minimum, you have to start making decisions, but at some point or another, you have to orient yourself. And that's what I did thinking I'm going to do computer science.
Right. Well in France, you can orient yourself too. I mean, there are people who want to do law, medicine, you can orient yourself or simply do... I don't know, humanities, all that. But in the United States, there's another thing, it's not necessarily the subject here, but in the United States, you choose your major and your minor which are subjects you're going to focus on a bit, but at least the first two years if I'm not wrong, you can tell me, the curriculum has a huge common core and the major and minor are things on which you're going to spend I don't know but like a quarter of your time.
Actually, it's not at all the only thing with the American curriculum, is that you have a huge choice on the types of courses you can take. It depends obviously on the university you go to, but you can choose to do a concentration. So you're going to go do computer science, you're going to go take computer science courses, you want to do only computer science while doing a minimum of required electives, so math, physics, English, etc. But it's much more flexible, you compose your curriculum at university a bit like a menu, a buffet.
Right, that's it. OK. So... Listen, it turns out it has changed because it was... so you do computer science so you thought OK at least I should find something that should displease me less than elsewhere. You finish your school and you become a computer scientist, you become an analyst, you do what then? And what year is it also?
So I start school... well wait, I start school in 1987. So I do the first year in Paris and there, well I learn because I had never really... I had done a tiny bit of computer science courses, you see, programming in Fortran and things like that but I didn't know system architecture. No, I had... no, but yes, yes, it's good. You're going to talk to us about COBOL next and we'll be perfect. Ah, I had a COBOL course but I quickly forgot. And so I really had basic computer science courses on microprocessors, systems, operating systems, how it works, etc. So really how to interact with the machine. And at the end of the first year, well I was in Paris on a student budget of 60,000 francs to live for 3 years in Paris. So it wasn't much and so I was looking for an internship to make some money and it was late one evening, a Saturday, I was with a friend hanging out and one of our professors passes by and says well, I have a friend who works for a brokerage firm and he's looking for two interns to develop programs for their back office. Are you interested? And we say is it well paid? He says well it's finance, it's well paid. So we say yeah. And so we end up doing an internship in finance in a brokerage firm to develop simple programs for data transfer. And that's how I got into the finance world completely by chance because I was there on a Saturday evening in a computer room and it pays to stay in a computer room on a Saturday evening.
Exactly. Do your projects on Saturday evening rather than going out.
And so I did that, I did my internship, I continued working part-time and completely by chance this brokerage firm was looking for a new computer system because at the time on trading floors you had TV screens. They weren't computers, they were TV screens, so Bloomberg, Reuters etc. with video matrices and basically it was a super mainframe. And they were moving to the next generation which was either Unix workstations or PCs. And PCs at the time ran on Intel 286s. So they weren't big machines. And I met this company called Efix which was one of the first companies in France to develop under Unix, real-time data management systems. And so it was super nice and I met all the people on the trading floor for this kind of tender and I handed in my CV saying well, looking for a 6-month internship in second year. If you're interested, I'd be super interested. And the boss saw me for 5 minutes, he says yeah, yeah, great, we need help, you come? And then he says well, show up. So April, so it was 1989, you show up, it's in the 17th in Paris. And it's that day that I met this team of developers who were super good with a guy from Santa Cruz who was the CTO, an American who spoke terrible French and I really didn't speak good English at the time. And so I show up and he says who are you? Well I'm an intern. And the boss had forgotten to tell his technical team I was coming. And so between two 'what the fuck' and 'what's this guy doing here?', he says well what's your name? Jean-François, he says too long, what's your nickname? JF too short, we'll go with Jeff. And that day, in April 1989, Jeff Clavier was born, Jean-François Clavier disappeared.
Did you officially change your name on your civil status or not really?
No, no, I just registered in the United States using an alternative name Jeff because I receive a lot of papers addressed to Jeff Clavier but my real name is Jean-François. But you have compound names... right, compound names don't exist. They think Jean is my first name and François is my middle name. And so everyone calls me Jean and it's a mess. So for that Jeff is better.
OK. So we feel the beginning was a bit rough, but from what I understand, you settled in well at Efix and I think you stayed there until you left for the United States more or less.
So can you tell us how that happened? If I'm not saying anything stupid, almost ten years, a little more.
Right, I stayed almost 12 years. So I came in as an intern. Actually, it wasn't an internship at all, it was to work as a developer in the team. So I was paid as an intern to develop normally.
Right but no, it was well paid.
It was... I don't even remember anymore but it was... no no it was very well paid for an intern, it was super well paid and especially well it wasn't an internship. I wasn't doing something that didn't matter. Basically I developed, they gave me products to manage. Basically they threw me in the pool to see if I could survive. And in a few months I had become one of the main developers of the company. And then 2 years later I was replacing the CTO.
Right. But wait, on the replacing the CTO of the company, as you said there was a team of developers. I know computer science was a bit rough. Personal computer science with PCs was a bit rough at the time but there was still a team in place. How did it happen that you moved to the CTO position? Chief Technology Officer. So it's the person in charge of all the technological aspect of the company. It's surprising for a guy who came in as an intern.
