I haven’t done this game in a while, but you guys usually like it – and I enjoy writing the post as well by the way. I guess the four first ones were too easy (to retrieve it, perform a “guess who” search in the right column), so this one’s a little trickier. Good luck in your search, I won’t post anything until you find out so you know what to do if you want “Tech IT Easy” to die));

“I was born and raised in Paris. Trained at elite research school Ecole Normale Supérieure in physics, I then moved to MIT in Cambridge; a time in the Boston area during which I met my wife who played an important role in my next to be set up ventures (she set up everything alongside with me, and her father had lent us his garage). I came back to France and worked as an account manager for a major software corporation. After a few years, I was sent to the corporate headquarters of the very same company in the Valley, where I fine tuned my already not bad programming skills. The Internet bubble came along, and I started up a first company that went bust (with all the others) in 2001. I was broke, and so were my friends, family and fools who had invested in my venture.

California had become too expensive, so I moved with my wife to Atlanta where I took some time to think. But I needn’t wait for so long: I got a call to give a lecture on an open source application server…That’s how it all started. In March 2006, I sold my company to a big player in the industry. Now, not only do I have more than I need to travel and settle in California again if I want to, I can also do what I love above all: attend house music festivals and occasionally perform as a DJ.

Guess who I am?”

Hint N.1 Sunday 29th October 2006 17:18: “JAVA”

Second hint tomorrow if nobody found who this entrepreneur is in the time between. But it’s getting easier and easier.

Hint N.2 Monday 30th October 2006 9:23: “I sold my company for 350 million USD” – come on guys, I can’t believe it! No way I’ll help you more than I already did.

Update 31th October 2006 18:13: COME ON GUYS, THE ANSWER IS ONE GOOGLE REQUEST AWAY. AND I WANT TO GET BACK TO BLOGGING!

Update 1st November 2006 15:22: Congratulations to Mark, who lets me back into blogging; Mark, I’d be glad to invite you to have a beer if you come to Paris some day, so let me know. The answer was of course Marc Fleury, founder of JBoss – a company sold to Red Hat in March 2006 for about 350 million $. I’ll post a biography of Mark Fleury tomorrow. To all other readers: how come couldn’t you think of Marc Fleury after all the details I provided? I can’t believe this guess took 5 days to be solved.