IT Addict, "High Tech made Simple" / This blog has moved to www.jeremyfain.net

Monday, July 10, 2006

JeuxVideoPC.com buy out - What will be Emmanuel´s next step?

Emmanuel le Sellier de Chézelles founded JeuxVideoPC.com, the leading French-speaking website on PC Video Games matters (tests, new releases, tricks, trends, etc.), in 2000. At that time (he was still a high-school student), he already knew he was, and was all the more becoming, a true entrepreneur.

But instead of dropping out (like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. - nice comparison, don´t you think?), Emmanuel went on to French preparatory classes to business schools competitive exams. In other words, hell! I can tell you from undergoing preparatory classes myself, it takes more than a three-figures IQ to study like a Japanese in these extremely intensive environments, and develop your own Internet-company AT THE SAME TIME!!

Emmanuel not only managed to make of JeuxVideoPC.com the leading PC games website in the French-speaking world, he also succeeded in passing the competitive exam of the most selective business university in France. Do you think he then started to look down on his friends?

Not at all. Emmanuel and I are classmates at HEC Paris. Could you believe that it took me several months to get to hear (not from him) about his venture? Emmanuel is extremely humble, and at the same time terribly effective, driven, and learnt. Having employees and managing a very profitable website never changed his tremendous people skills. On the contrary, Emmanuel still believes he has a great deal of things to learn about entrepreneurship, Internet technology and management. And he keeps spotting new trends: his team recently launched a website dedicated to booming Flash games: JeuxVideo-Flash.

Last week, Emmanuel finalized his exit from JeuxVideoPC.com, sold out to Groupe Best of Micro, a top-50 Internet media company in France (bestofmicro, presence-pc.com, infosdunet.com). Well done Emmanuel!

Though Emmanuel´s now on the map, bets aren´t opened regarding his future projects: Emmanuel shows his long-term commitment by staying more involved than ever in JeuxVideoPC.com. Emmanuel believes synergies between Groupe Best of Micro´s hardware sites and JeuxVideoPC.com are tremendous and potentially provide room for two-digits growth.

One thing that´s certain is that Emmanuel belongs to the forthcoming generation of French entrepreneurs, knowledgeable of the extraordinary buzzing opportunities of the Internet, and ethically-minded.

If you´re a VC or a business angel, I advise you to watch ITaddict carefully to be able to jump on Emmanuel´s next venture financing bandwagon. I´ll make sure I keep you posted.

posted by Jeremy Fain at 3:10 PM

8 Comments:

  • ça suffit un peu cette propagande HEC !!! comme on dit chez nous: HEC, E....éééééésssss!!!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7/10/2006 06:07:00 PM  

  • It´s a pity this comment was posted anonymously...

    By Blogger Jeremy Fain, at 7/10/2006 06:12:00 PM  

  • Clair... je pencherais pour PM duché... mais c'est pas trop son genre en même temps! :)
    sympa ton blog Jeremy!
    et sympa l'histoire d'Emmanuel!
    A plus,

    Yassine

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7/11/2006 05:08:00 AM  

  • Non, c´est certainement pas PM - pas du tout son style. Trop cool et trop sympa pour ça. Ca fait plaisir de te voir sur mon blog Yassine!

    By Blogger Jeremy Fain, at 7/11/2006 10:25:00 AM  

  • I unfortunately couldn´t make it to the exit celebration event in Paris, since I´m currently in Barcelona. I´m glad to hear you had a lot of fun altogether.
    It indeed looks as if Emmanuel worked like a Japanese to make things happen.

    By Blogger Jeremy Fain, at 7/12/2006 11:22:00 AM  

  • As for all exits, what matters most is price. You don´t mention valuation in your post - which is a shame. But I believe the valuation´s pretty low since market trends in video games are bearish.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7/13/2006 03:22:00 PM  

  • The video games still enjoyes a tremendous potential; and you tend to forget that what Emmanuel was running was more of a media company than a video games one.

    Furthermore, not only am I not aware of the valuation of JeuxVideoPC.com, I would have obviously not displayed it.

    By Blogger Jeremy Fain, at 7/13/2006 03:40:00 PM  

  • this is getting a bit off-topic, but i think video game industry right now is hollywood at its worst. huge /(marketing) budgets, sequels, no innovation... i'd like to believe that we're hitting the wall soon. look at the responses to playstation 3's recent announcements or the strategy of nintendo with wii.
    it's intolerable that you need the latest hardware to play the latest yet another shooter, which has only merits in technological advances than gameplay.
    ...but this is just from my perspective, the industry from business perspective is hot and full of money. (for all the wrong reasons... grrr...)

    By Blogger Kari, at 7/15/2006 01:12:00 PM  

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