“The Delivery Man” or Eminence Grise or Court Jester

There are some perks in enjoying being in the shadow of Greatness.

Now that the secret is out, let me share with you the story of how a Silicon Valley royalty mentored me for decades.

Jean-Louis Gassée just released is awaited memoir “Grateful Geek” and didn’t shy in thanking me (still blushing) for the help I humbly provided in getting the book completed and distributed.

Long story short, I was more than happy to help him for several reasons.

1-    Having completed my own book “The Delivery Man” few months before, I still had quite precise understanding of the pain and suffering Jean-Louis was going through. I could alleviate some of the anguish with putting together the step-by-step playbook I had just followed for myself.

2-    Being in a position where you can read something that almost no one has seen before and especially when it covers 50 years of tech history including some of the major pivoting moments in personal computing but also corporations like Apple and Be, is very exhilarating. And the sales numbers seem to confirm people are ready for the stories

3-    Giving back to Jean-Louis what he had gracefully done for me over many years. He helped me so many times during my career and solving professional problems, that it was peanut for me to do this for him. And he still does help!

But how did it come to this moment?

On Launch Day for Grateful Geek

Well, it was 40 years in the making. In 1983/84, I first met Jean-Louis when I was an acned prone teen who kind of understood computers but not much more. I didn’t know who he really was or care. Typical teen. My uncle was one of the super early adopters of Apple products and in these days, Jean-Louis had a tendency to deliver these himself for corporate accounts.  And over the following years, my uncle indulged me in using and abusing the always latest models from Cupertino. He was also the first to show me the Newton which Jean-Louis’s team has designed and brought to life, oh Figaro! There is a fun story when his jacket was stuck in an elevator door and his Newton, Montblanc pen and wallet got all torn off and dropped under the elevator’s cage. When the service crew recovered the goods from the bottom of the cage where the elevator just kept hammering on them, all were in working condition with barely few scraps. The jacket was not thought.

Time travel - My uncle Serge Yablonsky (aka La Moustache) and Jean-Louis at Buck’s of Woodside.

Then in 1996, I joined a company in Austin, TX called Metrowerks. They were the maker of Codewarrior, the first full IDE suite for developers. Besides being cool tools, the compiler (worked on by a Germany based genius name Andreas) was able to be adapted to different systems. This allowed to have the first developer programming tools for the new PowerPC used by Apple when they replace the 68K processors. With no developer tools nor compiler, you cannot have applications or software running on these. So, was it a big deal for Apple? Yeah. They could have failed miserably. Imagine your laptop running nothing but the desktop. Would be quite rapidly boring and not encouraging to upgrade to the next best desktop version of nothingness.

And with Jobs back at the helm of Apple then, it would have been plausible to have a ban in working with other PC makers. But the President of Metrowerks, Greg Galanos, had a good relation with Jobs and Gassée so Metrowerks was in a position to provide the same developer environments to both NeXT and BeOS.

What it meant was that I met Jean-Louis again at a professional level. I will always remember that first re-encounter. It was at Apple Expo Paris at Porte de Versailles. Be Inc was presenting its latest version of the BeBox. The demo station was overheating in the enclosed cabinet. As I was coming in to help set up the Metrowerks demo on Be booth, Jean-Louis popped from under one of the demo stations, a drill still spinning in his hands and covered in sawdust. Quite a sight. He was drilling holes in all the stations to create ventilation. I re-introduced myself and hoped by then he had all forgotten about that stupid teen he had met 10+ years before. His son Paul was also hanging around. Ten years younger than me but already with a Silicon Valley entrepreneurial fiber in him.

From that day, we stay in regular contact.

In 2002, I moved to California to work for a company who started in the BeOS ecosystem, Beatware. Jean-Louis was on the board and had also started at CATC as CEO. I had begged him for a job there so I could finally work with him.  He gently invited me not to apply. He knew he was not going to stay much longer and my bet is that he made sure I stayed where I was for a better future.

From there, our meetings became more and more regular. We had lunch at least once every quarter or 6 months or stayed in touch via emails. This is one of the aspects I mentioned in my book. On my personal board of directors, Jean-Louis was one of the most important voices. The fact he was willingly giving me his time (he was well established tech royalty then) and more importantly, sharing his experience and advice was more than any young Franco-American techie could dream of.

However, I also had made a rule for myself which was to never abuse of his time or friendship. So, I kept the fact I knew him very close to my chest. Few friends knew but almost none of my colleagues or acquaintances I was helping when I was consulting. What would have been their reaction if I had told them a Top Exec from Silicon Valley heydays was part of a decision process that involved them? Being discreet allowed me to meet the 2 Steves (separately), Guy Kawasaki and few other highly visible barons of Silicon Valley.  Talking about being schooled under the light of greatness.

Fast forward, in 2016, the connection became more visible between Jean-Louis and I. He was one of the main judges at 2 of Mastercard Masters of Code events. Some colleagues asked how he was brought on board and someone in our media team said he was a personal friend of Seb. Some clues had been put out over time, like when I was making intro on the behalf of start-ups to him. When sitting in the room for their pitch, Jean-Louis was much more mellow than his usual self and also willingly forgiving some mishaps by some founders, gently coaching them on what to do next time or for the next VC. And I was also invited to speak twice at an event he was hosting called DBF. But beside the friends who knew, very few outsiders were connecting the dots.

And then it all accelerated when he agreed to write a blurb for my book. I was stating he was of great help along my career in one chapter so it was now formally established we knew each other quite well. But despite a fair level of sales, the book was not widely connected to tech to be noticed or noticeable (well, it still got #1 Best Seller spots in Technical and Engineering Project Management).

So, what was going to be next? Grateful Geek. When the project started, Jean-Louis had already completed a massive amount of work. It just needed to be structured differently so to identify missing elements or connecting parts needing better transition.  And having known Jean-Louis for more than 40 years at that point, he had molded my mindset to be able to think like him (in a good way), to connect the parts with “his” words not mine. I tried my best to assure and re-assure him that most of the work was done and it would be easy to complete. While the operational parts were my cup of tea, Jean-Louis worked so hard to complete the book despite his own unjustified doubts.

Some moments were quite funny. For example, when working with the book designer, editor, web designer or formatter, I did the same as usual, and didn’t let them know who was the writer until when it was needed. The cover designer, Onur, was floored. He couldn’t believe he was tasked to do such a critical work for such an important person. He was in the same shoes I was many moons prior. I had to send him a photo for proof for him to believe it was true.

And being able to share this story, I hope to be able to mentor or advice many techies who may wonder how top tech executive veterans think and work. My consulting style is sometimes grounded in the many years of Jean-Louis storytelling and self-guiding style he inculcated in me by osmosis.

Finally, Jean-Louis was the easiest person to work with (including some of my past bosses) because we knew each other AND he had changed over the years. From his fast acting/solar temper of the drilling days at Apple Expo to the meditative grand-father, his journey has been the one of many unbelievable adventures. And I got lucky to be a companion for one of them and to be worthy of his trust.