My brother, who was more serious than me worked in the summer to make some money. So he had more money than me to buy a Hi-Fi system. He had a nice Hifi system. So I lead long cables from his room to my room to be able to listen to his music through my radio. It was nice at the beginning. He had some Japanese components and Thorens speakers, the flat panels that were made a long time ago with 98 dB of efficiency. I don't remember the names of the big models. They were nice and but I was not satisfied with the sound of the Japanese amplifiers, to me it was a little bit harsh, hard and dry. So I started to buy some Revox amplifiers and Revox Hifi, because I liked the sound much more, because to me it was softer, better, less harsh. But I never had the money to buy a tape machine. So I had all the equipment from Revox, but not the tape machine. I always had the last version they made as I worked also in the summer to buy them. And when I was in school at the age 13, I decided to study electronics because I liked these things and was interested in what's going on inside the gear. So I went to the Engineers School of Geneva. In 1984, I graduated. I got my diploma as an engineer in the field of electrical engineering. It was called ‘Génie Électrique’ in French. I did my diploma in the electrical faculty with a specialisation in telecommunications.

My degree dissertation consisted of building an amplifier. That was fun because back then, in 1984, I built a digital amplifier, Class-D. That was nice because there were no complete chips, so everything was discrete with integrated circuits. You had to build your own discriminator and comparator, and that was a challenge. Then after school I decided to develop my own amplifier, but analogue rather than digital. It was a long, long, long time of trial and error. Then one day my father said to me: ‘Maybe it would be nice if you started working and had a job.’ ‘Okay, Dad.’

So I started my first job at LeCroy. I don't know if you remember: LeCroy was a company that made digital oscilloscopes, and they were one of the first. It was an American company, but they had a division in Geneva. And there were some very brilliant engineers there. They developed a new digital oscilloscope that beat all the brands like Tektronix or Phillips. I only worked there for two years. Then I opened a business with a friend to import and distribute telecoms products. It wasn't about hi-fi, but about products such as fax and communication systems. At that time, mobile phones were emerging, which were called the Nordic mobile phone. It was not GSM, it was much earlier than this. But to make the story short, in the 90s we had to give up this business because the economy was not going well. Before we stopped, we moved into computers and my former colleague still works there. But I didn't know what I wanted to do.