Articles
Great businessman and… completely eccentric
Published 2009-07-06
Descroix-Vernier, the new star of Internet businessHe does not quite look the part. For all that, Bernard Arnault and Jean-Marie Messier associate with him assiduously. It has to be admitted that, at 38 years of age, he has built an empire which is set to keep growing.
Il he has nothing against the suit-and-tie uniform of businessmen, it is simply not his thing. Neither are four-door saloons, purring in the hands of hurried chauffeurs. He also hates the “petty Parisian lifestyle”. With his dreadlocks, platform combat boots and black leather jackets, Jean-Baptiste Decroix-Vernier, chairman and managing director of Rentabiliweb – who for a long time used to wear kilts – is creating a stir in the boards of directors. “I look more like a geek than a Chairman and Managing Director listed on the Stock Exchange”.
“JBDV” has installed his post-punk wardrobe and Orwellian universe in a techno-barge in the industrial port of Amsterdam. At 38 years of age, he lives alone, surrounded by 30-inch screens. “I monitor everything: the Stock Exchange, my companies, my employees, with, in the background, a film with the sound turned off to keep me company since the death of my cat”, he says. He sleeps three hours a night. He does not have any business cards “so as not to kill trees”. But Rentabiliweb, listed on the Stock Exchange at the end of 2006, is today worth almost €100 million. His turnover bordered on €57 million in 2008, with pre-tax net profits of €10 million.
A Little Internet Genius
Of course, the smell of success attracted all of the sharks of finance. Bernard Arnault, the Chairman and Managing director of LVMH, snapped up 6.3 % of Rentabiliweb’s capital and Stéphane Courbit, former head of the Endemol France group, tore off 10.6 %. As for the board of directors, it counts in its ranks Jean-Marie Messier, the former Chairman and Managing Director of Vivendi, turned investment banker, and the former liberal Minister Alain Madelin. Is Peter Pan afraid of being eaten alive by the sharks he has on board? “Everyone stays in their place. As long as I have 60% of the company, I’m the one who decides” he declares, without a smile. On the Web, where he spends his life, his nom de guerre is Jocanaann (John the Baptist in Hebrew). He recruits his employees from among the best computer pirates of Europe, the East and Russia.
In the world of new technologies, these hackers “brought to heel” by Rentabiliweb are nicknamed “ninjas”. Atmosphere. It was they who invented the micropayment software that Descroix-Vernier provides to thousands of websites which sell products at less than €3, such as mobile phone rings and online games. Thanks to these solutions, Internet users pay for their purchases without getting out their bank cards: they send surcharged SMS messages or call 08 numbers. Rentabiliweb pockets a commission of 10 to 15% on every transaction. Quite a seam to be mined, at a time when everybody is trying to monetise the audiences of hopelessly loss-making websites. “What I find interesting is his technical side, he’s a little Internet genius. He is in a fortunate position: that of being tremendously skilled in a world that the CAC 40 [Paris Stock Exchange index] guys know very little about”, interprets Anne Méaux, Chair of the Image 7 communications agency, which is jubilantly opening its address books for him: “Messier adores his originality. He stands out, in a world of clones”
Since 2005, Rentabiliweb has also been running its own websites and those of its clients. Mainly video games, scratch cards and online lotteries, such as Dofus (a blockbuster amongst teenagers), Gagner du cash and Quiztel. “JBDV” also holds the adult websites of the Montorgueil group, which he bought out in 2007. Risqué addresses (striptease, meetings/dating, chats etc.) which are incomparably effective at boosting web traffic, according to the French audience measurement company Médiamétrie. The latter ranks Rentabiliweb in the top 6 of the largest French-speaking Internet audiences internationally, with 40 million visits per month, that is to say twice as many as the website of the French TF1 TV channel. Apart from the French Pages Jaunes (Yellow Pages) and the Skyrock platform, nobody else performs so well.
Except that, getting these golden hens to lay their eggs doesn’t look too good on the business card. “We don’t necessarily put it at the top of the annual report”, one of his press advisers confirms. Moreover, on Anne Méaux’s advice, he has decided to get rid of a large part of his striptease websites. “I have only kept 5 or 6 out of the 300 that I used to have” he recalls. In fact, the man declares his concern for ethics: He has opened a site christened “handicap-information.com”, a refuge for maltreated cats at Grenoble and a foundation which digs wells in Africa with the Hydraulique sans frontiers association.
Proof that the Amsterdam geek sometimes knows how to submit to the rules of the game of “high society”, despite management techniques that sometimes border on autism. “I never go out; I do my board of directors’ meetings via Skype [software making it possible to converse through the intermediary of computers]; 80 % of my 130 employees have never seen me”, he confides. But he never takes his eyes off them. “JBDV” observes his engineers based on the other side of the planet, by connecting to their PCs. He monitors everything and never lets up in the slightest, especially in a period of crisis: “Our rules of management are the opposite of my hairstyle I am totally mentally-rigid. ”
“Anarcho-conservative”
Rentabiliweb does not have a single euro of debt or any bank overdraft, and possesses more than €15 million in cash balances and €37 million in equity capital. A nest egg that makes it possible to anticipate the future and which reassures the former poor child from the suburbs of Lyons.
“I manage like my grandfather, who used to make preserves for winter”, explains the man who, after having taken his school leaving certificate at the age of 17, studied theology and law simultaneously. He became a specialist in rabbinical exegesis, spent some time in a seminary, met a girl… Since God had other plans for him, he became a business lawyer. He quickly realised that it really wasn’t his cup of tea. He was not yet 25 when he invested in a jewel factory nestled in the Golden Triangle, in the north of Thailand, a few kilometres from the mines of the Cambodian border. “I learned a few Asian languages there and how to eat a load of spicy crap”, he reveals, refusing to say any more about the twelve months that followed, his “Vergès year”, which remains blank on his CV…
Today, he goes to see Bernard-Henri Lévy and Jean-Marie Messier from time to time, in Paris and New York respectively. He is the godfather of the latter’s new-born baby and carries the infant’s photo with him everywhere he goes. With the former he has wide-ranging discussions about the world. He reflects: “I am left-wing [He voted Bové in the French Presidential election], but I only work with right-wing guys… ”, a situation which he finds surprising. One of his friends gets to the bottom of this mystery: “He is still open to all influences. He does not have any structured political ideas. He is an anarcho-conservative. ” In her opinion, his weaknesses, which he displays through his appearance, are an advantage. “His dress, represents the malaise associated with an outsider, it is very provocative and very good marketing. He must have been a bit autistic as a kid, he has made it into his signature.” »