Founding Partner of Uncork Jeff Clavier on Being the First Seed Investor, When Your First LP is Your Wife, Passing on Uber & LinkedIn and the ‘3 Asses’ Rule

Dec 17, 2025

01:01:23

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On this episode of Invested, Michael sits down with Jeff Clavier, the Founding Partner at Uncork Capital, a seed-stage venture firm in Palo Alto and San Francisco. Clavier founded Uncork Capital in 2004 (then called SoftTech VC) to provide active support and capital for companies in their first 18 months of life. Jeff has helped numerous companies reach successful outcomes, including Fitbit (NYSE: FIT), SendGrid (NYSE: SEND, Twilio), Eventbrite (NYSE: EB), Postmates (Uber), and Poshmark (NASDAQ: POSH). His current investments include ClassDojo, DroneDeploy, Shippo, Front, Loft Orbital, and Carrot Fertility.

Jeff was born in France and graduated from Université Paris Descartes with an M.S. in Computer Science. He was formerly the CTO and an early employee at Effix, a fintech startup that sold to Reuters. In 2000, he immigrated to the U.S. and joined RVC, Reuters’ $450 million corporate venture capital fund, as a general partner. He recently wrapped up his four-year term on the board of the National Venture Capital Association.

One of the early VC bloggers in 2004, Jeff is now a popular conference speaker and social media/TV commentator. When he is not spending time with Uncork’s portfolio companies, Jeff enjoys traveling, skiing, hiking, scuba diving, collecting wine, and hanging out with friends and family.

Please rate this episode 5 stars wherever you stream your podcasts!

KEY TOPICS

00:00 - Intro

03:52 - Is Seed Investing Just “VC Tourism”?

06:08 - Why Being a “VC Lifer” Matters

08:35 - How Uncork Wins 91% of its Term Sheets

11:59 - GP Fundraising is Harder Than Startup Fundraising

14:15 - Capital Bottleneck in Private Markets

16:38 - Now it Takes 15 Years to Prove You’re a Good VC

20:46 - The Real Choke Point in Venture Isn’t Seed

26:13 - The “Three Asses” Rule

29:00 - Gut Feel vs. Process