Paul Morlet, 28
Opened a chain of opticians even though he didn’t have a high school diploma and knew nothing about selling glasses. Morlet trained as an electrician while working at state rail operator SNCF. Lunettes Pour Tous (Glasses For Everyone) is now a profitable business with more than 20 million euros in revenue last year and eight stores across France. “If Morlet had been an optician for 10 years, it would have been much more difficult to re-invent that market,” says Niel.
Octave Klaba, 43
Niel lent Klaba the money to set up data centers to rival Amazon.com Inc. in Roubaix, one of the poorest cities in France’s post-industrial north. Klaba’s OVH Groupe SAS was valued above $1 billion in its latest fundraising round and is expanding to the U.S. Niel says: “When I met Octave, he was carrying servers around in a van and literally sleeping on the floor in front of his machines.”
Jean de la Rochebrochard, 35
Runs a portfolio of Niel’s startup investments worth several hundred million euros. A self-described “troublemaker” at school who scraped through university and drifted between low-paid jobs and waiting on tables in his dad’s restaurant. Niel reads over Rochebrochard’s investment briefs several times a week and usually gives them the green light. One of those was Zenly, in which Niel invested around 4 million euros and was sold to Snap Inc. for $200 million last year.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.