“If you’re not taking wild bets, you should get a different job.”
Michael Jackson — tech investor, online provocateur, meme enjoyer — is telling me about his love of chaos. We’re sat in a restaurant on the northern edge of Paris called Rooster: an apt destination for someone who delights in making noise from the break of dawn.
Jackson, an American VC in Paris, is one of the most prominently online faces in European tech. A seemingly 24-hour opinion-haver, he’s accrued over 230k LinkedIn followers — more than investor-podcaster Harry Stebbings, Spotify boss Daniel Ek or any famous European techie you can name.
One consequence of Jackson’s prolific online tirades — often on the follies of EU tech policy; occasionally on more divisive subjects — is that many more people know what he thinks before they know what he does.
He’s a venture partner with Frankfurt-based fund of funds Multiple Capital, which raised €20m in 2021 to invest into early-stage startups. His dealmaking is low-profile and mostly done on behalf of secretive, super-rich families.
Jackson’s willingness to sound off on almost any topic makes him a good lunch companion. Matters currently on his mind include the state of freedom of speech in Europe, the societal upheaval caused by AI and the declining global population. (The summer heatwave has also left him railing against the lack of air conditioning in Europe.)
Over a freewheeling 90-minute brunch, I discover Jackson is many things besides a serial poster: a foodie, a bass player in a preposterously-named band and a keen storyteller, brimming with anecdotes on the quirks of the mega-rich.
About that name
Jackson arrives wearing a denim shirt with sunglasses hanging from the top button. In the few pictures I’ve seen of him, he’s often a bit scowly. Not so in reality: there’s a warm smile across his stubbled face. He looks vaguely like the LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy.
Sitting across from quite possibly the most famous Michael Jackson alive, I have to ask: How did he get this name?
“My mother and paternal grandmother did not get along whatsoever,” he explains. “So it was kind of a peace offering: my mom decided to name me after one of my grandma’s brothers. It came down to either Michael or Andrew and it was not the best thing to be named after a genocidal president [the seventh POTUS Andrew Jackson] who was exterminating Native Americans.”
Of course, the name “Michael Jackson” comes with its own baggage. “I love the guy’s music, so I think it’s been great. If you [need] a name for your daughter, go Beyonce, I think it’d be good for her.”
Our waitress arrives and Jackson orders the beef; I meekly explain that I don’t eat meat and am promised some assortment of vegetables. A journalist’s nightmare, I tell Jackson, is when the interviewee doesn’t order wine — so we get a glass each.
Social media bans
Jackson’s aware of his reputation for being incredibly online. “People are like, ‘Oh my God, how much time do you spend on social media?’ But it’s around 15 minutes a day.
“I read a lot. I get a couple of interesting things and set them up. There’s no ChatGPT, no AI. The only thing I do is automate the times I post.”
“Europe Europe-ing” is a recurring subgenre of Jackson posts, where he calls out some aspect of the tech scene (or life in Europe) that tickles or annoys him. Europeans’ capacity for self-flagellation is in full view here because a typical Jackson post can quickly gather hundreds, sometimes thousands, of likes.
“I’ll get messages from people who say ‘I work for government, I can’t like your post but I love it’. Or it’s entrepreneurs who are like, ‘Oh my god, I really want to like your post but I can’t because I took money from the EIC [European Innovation Council] or whatever and I don’t want to upset the government money people.’”
The depth of government money in European tech prevents honest feedback, he believes. “I don’t take government money, so I can say whatever the fuck I want. A lot of entrepreneurs in Europe are not in the same boat. They don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them.”
He’s bemused that it’s LinkedIn (which he calls a “shit product”) where he’s found fame. “There’s a type of user that you get on LinkedIn, particularly in Europe, that you will not have on [social media platform] X, right? I get bankers, I get government officials, asset managers, family offices.”
Jackson’s been banned from the platform, most recently in January. Following a disagreement over the UK’s approach to a notorious child exploitation ring, Jackson branded one fellow user a “rape gang apologist”.
Explaining the incident later on X, Jackson said the commenter had been trolling him. “I offered to pay for a therapy session. All trolls should be so lucky.” LinkedIn reinstated Jackson’s account one week later.
The investor is unfazed (my hunch is he somewhat enjoys the odd brief cancellation). “I get banned twice a year. If you have a big enough following, people just don’t like it, right? And it’s that sort of case where you just piss off a certain group of people.”
He feels more at home on X. “Having grown up in the chat rooms of the early internet in the 90s, I like the fact that X is just a fucking schoolyard. It’s chaos.”
His prolific posting has attracted interest from creatives far and wide; a writer for the hit TV show Silicon Valley even contacted him. “I’ve had a couple reach out to say they would like to publish the posts in book form. I don’t know if it really translates.”
With so many followers, surely there’s a podcast in the works? A newsletter? I’m surprised he has yet to monetise the attention.
“Yeah I mean I’d hate to do yet another podcast […] but it could be another podcast. If somebody will do the editing and all that kind of stuff, happy to do it. I just don’t have the time to fuck around.” 20VC podcaster Stebbings has a team behind him, he notes. “I need to talk to Harry.”
European fascism
Where most interviewees tend to noticeably stiffen when the conversation gets political, Jackson is happy to go with the flow.
And what would this conversation be without reference to Donald Trump or Elon Musk? Jackson thought Musk did some good during his short spell as a ruthless budget cutter in Trump’s administration. “There is a lot of fat that needs to be trimmed. I think, directionally, that’s correct.”
Europeans meanwhile “overreact” to Trump. “I’ve been in meetings with Europeans and they’ve been in full on panic mode. Trying to say the US is going to devolve into fascism. There are better examples of fascism currently in Europe when you look at places like Hungary and Serbia.”
We discuss the withering speech vice president JD Vance gave to European leaders in Munich in February, when he accused them of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and shirking responsibility on defence.
“I was at a meeting in Brussels where Obama’s secretary of defense spoke, it must have been 2011, and he said the very same things as Vance […] He just said them in a nicer manner.”
A knife to a gunfight
We’ve been gabbing for an hour when I realise it might be wise to talk about his day job.
What deals get him excited? “I’ve always been on the deeptech side, it’s far more interesting than the fucking commoditised software plays.”
Is European tech in a good or bad place? “I’m very bullish on European entrepreneurs. I’m not very bullish on European markets,” he says.
“The quality of entrepreneurs is going up just because there’s so many more — whatever you want to call them — mafias or clusters who are able to pass on their knowledge. Silicon Valley is a state of mind , it’s not necessarily geographic today.
“But boy does Europe love to navel-gaze,” he adds. “Europe has to realise that it’s not gonna be the US, it’s not gonna be China, and that’s okay, yeah?
“I remember meeting with some senior French politicians last year. They were like: ‘Oh, it’s gonna be the US, China and France leading on AI.’ Guys, which one of these things is not like the other two?”
He recalls hearing former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, another Frenchman, talking on the radio about plans in Brussels to regulate AI.
“He said they had thought of every possible scenario. The hubris of that statement was mind-blowing. The whole AI Act was incredibly premature,” he says. Many would agree.
Europe will really struggle to compete with the US on AI, he adds. “When [French AI startup] Mistral raises a billion, its US competitors raise 5-10x that. Data centre capacity in the US is more than 3x that of Europe. So if you’re trying to, like, brute force compute, but you don’t have the GPUs [US company Nvidia is the overwhelming market leader], you don’t have the data centre capacity, you don’t have the funds.
“You’re essentially bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
‘I’ve been spectacularly wrong’
Old rich families make up most of Jackson’s key business associates. “If you make people money, they’ll let you do whatever the hell you want. I’ve been fortunate enough to make them money, and so I’ve had relationships for a long time.
“You meet a lot of people with inherited wealth in Europe. People who are not necessarily the most business savvy; a lot of quirky people. You’ve got to roll with it.”
Any examples? “There’s a guy in this neighborhood who is the heir to a big fortune. He’s obsessed with high-end audio and will drop six or seven figures easily on it. The last time I met him to talk about an investment, we just sat there for an hour in silence listening to Steely Dan’s Aja on this new Hi-Fi. Great album but, like, we had to do that.”
Has he ever regretted an investment? “If you don’t have write-offs, if you don’t have things that go to zero, then you’re not taking enough risks.
“I’ve been spectacularly wrong on a lot of things. I’m in a bunch of quantum deals at the moment that I have literally no fucking idea how that’s gonna go.”
Before meeting Jackson, I might have assumed he had reluctantly ended up in Paris. But for all the Euro-ribbing, he genuinely seems to love it here.
“There’s a lot of truth in the phrase: ’Make your money in the US and spend it in Europe.’ The quality of life here is amazing.”
He originally came here for university and then “three months became six months became a year became 16 years.”
France sparked his passion for cooking. “I’ve done classes at Ferrandi, Escoffier and Le Cordon Bleu,” he says. “It takes me a long time but I make a really good lobster bisque.” Can he tell me about some of the flavours we’re tasting right now? “I think this is, like, tapenade. There’s definitely the apple-type of thing going on too,” he says.
He recalls advice he got from one CEO after first moving to France. “He told me there are three things you need to know you’ve made it in France: a Haussmann apartment in Paris, a vacation home on the coast and a much younger mistress.”
What’s Jackson’s score on these metrics? “Two out of three.” (For the avoidance of doubt, he has two properties).
As for his band, Jackson plays bass guitar in a blues group on the weekends. The name? “We’re called 100% Elliotts […] I don’t know why because nobody in the band is called Elliott.”
As we’re wrapping up, I rack my brain for some final quickfire questions. Last Halloween costume? “Darth Vader”. Any pet peeves? After a brunch spent joking and lobbing verbal grenades, he shows me something tender.
“I don’t like boredom. I don’t accept the fact that people can be boring,” he says. “Everybody’s fundamentally interesting, if you actually figure out what interests them.”
The top image accompanying this article was created using ChatGPT.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/michael-jackson-interview-brunch/
