Jeff Clavier

Jeff Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of Uncork Capital, one of Silicon Valley's original seed-stage venture capital firms. Born and raised in France, he earned a Master of Science in Computer Science and a degree in Distributed Computing from Universite Paris Descartes (Paris V). He began his career as an early employee at Effix, a French fintech startup, where he rose from developer to CTO over five years. When Reuters acquired Effix, Clavier transitioned into product development and leadership roles across the company's European and American operations, giving him broad exposure to enterprise technology and global markets.

In 2000, Clavier moved to Silicon Valley to serve as General Partner of Reuters Venture Capital (RVC), the $450M venture fund affiliated with Reuters. Managing a portfolio of technology investments at the institutional level gave him firsthand insight into early-stage opportunities that larger funds routinely overlooked. In 2004, he left RVC to found SoftTech VC (rebranded as Uncork Capital in 2017), initially investing his own capital into the nascent wave of Consumer Internet startups. He was quickly recognized as one of the original "super angels," and in 2007 raised one of the first micro-VC funds -- a $15M Fund II. After 60+ solo investments in three years, he built out a team and raised a $55M Fund III, firmly establishing the firm as a top-tier seed investor.

Over more than two decades, Clavier has invested in 280+ companies at the earliest stages and has developed a well-known evaluation framework he calls the "Three Asses Rule": he looks for a smart-ass team, a kick-ass product, and a big-ass market. He served a four-year term on the board of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and is a frequent conference speaker and media commentator on seed-stage investing. He resides in Palo Alto and is personally known for his love of wine and skiing.

Uncork Capital invests exclusively at the seed stage, typically writing initial checks of approximately $1.2M with roughly 12 new commitments per year. The firm's core thesis centers on backing exceptional founding teams during their first 18 months of company-building, providing not just capital but active, hands-on support. Key focus areas include:

The firm also manages opportunity/breakout funds (the "Plus" series) to make follow-on investments in its highest-performing portfolio companies as they scale beyond the seed stage.

• SaaS / Cloud Software -- Enterprise and SMB cloud applications
• Developer Tools & Infrastructure -- DevOps, data infrastructure, APIs
• AI & Machine Learning -- Applied AI, multimodal data stacks, AI-native applications
• Marketplaces -- Two-sided platforms across verticals
• Consumer Services -- Mobile-first consumer products and community platforms
• Frontier Technology -- AR/VR, autonomous systems, space tech, digital manufacturing, material science, biotech-adjacent technology
• Connected Devices / Hardware-Software -- IoT and hardware with strong software components