لقد أجريت محادثة تفاعلية مع دروف شارما، الرئيس التنفيذي لشركة AngeList India، في ”أوفلاين“. Offline هو مجتمع أعضاء خاص لرواد الأعمال الرائدين في جنوب آسيا. لقد كان من الممتع الدردشة مع أوتساف ومجتمعه من مؤسسي يونيكورن الاستثنائيين. مستقبل التكنولوجيا في الهند مشرق للغاية!
Here is Utsav’s cheat-sheet of golden nuggets that landed hardest with the Offline crew:
🔑 4-point “one-hour” deal filter
1️⃣ 🔥 Team = eloquent and execution-obsessed
2️⃣ 💸 Business = big TAM + pay-back ≤ 6 months
3️⃣ 📄 Terms = fair vs traction, not frothy
4️⃣ 🎯 Thesis fit = lines up with the future you actually want to exist
Miss even one box? → pass. Discipline > FOMO.
🤖 AI ≠ free pass
75 % of Q1 US VC dollars went to AI, yet moats are rare.
“Copilots for X” is a week of code & a crowded party; differentiated data is where the edge lives.
Valuations at 💯× ARR? Careful… the bill for 2021 déjà-vu is coming.
📈 Marketplaces 2.0
Consumer side is largely done; the next trillion-dollar wave is B2B inputs, cross-border & re-commerce.
AI superpowers: auto-translate listings, auto-price, one UX for chat and search.
Answer-engine optimization (AEO) is the new SEO.
💰 Angel math
< 50 bets → odds stacked against you. 50 + → probability tilts.
Stay in your zone of genius, keep cheques small, and sell 50 % of winners on the way up to lock real DPI.
🛠️ Productivity hack-stack
Ruthless outsourcing: VAs for inbox, bills, slides; butlers for offline ops; five rotating nannies on a shared Google Sheet.
Saves cycles for reading 100 books a year, kitesurfing, ✈️ and hosting Jeffersonian salons.
🌏 Macro take
De-risking from China = India’s manufacturing moment. Massive whitespace for SME tooling & export-ready marketplaces.
💡 Biggest reminder: Ambition scales fastest when curiosity, discipline & joy ride together.
Huge thanks to every Offline member who poked, prodded and pushed the convo further.
Transcript
Dhruv Sharma: Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us Fabrice. It’s great to have you with us. Thank you for making the time. What do you need to know about Fabrice? Most of us know him as the founder of OLX and now FJ Labs. Fabrice is from Nice, France, lives in New York, loves the life of exploration and adventure, and he is built not one, but three extremely successful companies that we don’t always know about.
And the other two being Zingy and Aucland. And just very delighted to have you with us, Fabrice.
Fabrice Grinda: Thank you for having me.
Dhruv Sharma: Before we get into the substance of this conversation, I wanted to ask you about these Jeffersonian dinners you’ve been having all these years.
What, in your mind, Fabrice is a good recipe? Figuratively speaking for these dinners. And what has it meant to you over time?
Fabrice Grinda: So, the reason I have them, is think back to when you were in college. You’re studying everything and anything, and you’re having conversations on the meaning of life and you’re being extraordinarily thoughtful.
This world, this simulation matrix, whatever you wanna call it, reward, specialization. And in fact, specialization is the reason we have the quality of life we have. But we as humans should not purely be defined by the job we do on a daily basis. And actually, I value being able to be polymath and think through a whole bunch of different topics.
And as a result, what I’d like to do is bring together about 10 people. like eight to 10 around a dinner table. The format of a Jeffersonian dinner is that there’s only one conversation at a time. You don’t have side conversations The sum total of the minds at the table or on the issue.
And of course, no one is expected to speak for more than 30 seconds or a minute at a time. I give the topics ahead of time and the topics are very far and varied. It could be like how to reinvent democracy for the 21st century, life in a post singularity world religion in 2100. The ethics and morality of torture, or sometimes the most open-minded ones are very interesting.
It’s like what has been on your mind or something you’ve learned recently that you could share with everyone. This way everyone presents for three, four minutes and then we all discuss it for five, 10 minutes. It’s an amazing way to elevate the debate
The point is to get to the truth. I find that we live in a world where intellectualism is not valued enough. it’s wonderful to be thoughtful about a variety of topics with extraordinary people some of the best friendships and frankly, fascinating conversations upcoming these.
I organize one about every three weeks, changing the guest list. I’m, extraordinarily strict. Your phone cannot ring or you’re not invited again. You cannot be one minute later you’re not invited again. Like I really, and, and by having these rules, people take it seriously.
They come prepared, they read the questions, they know what they’re gonna talk about. and I changed the guest list with like intellectuals at people from academia, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and people from a wide walk of life. it’s super fun. I wrote a blog post on, Dialoguing dinners on my blog.
I’ll put the link in the chat and you could read, sample questions, organization, the email I sent to people about how to get ready,
Dhruv Sharma: That’s amazing. Fabrice, when was the last time you hosted one
Fabrice Grinda: I did one through weeks ago and I’m going to one tomorrow night.
Dhruv Sharma: Oh, that’s great. So you’re not the only host that means you others who host these dinners as well? Similar format.
Fabrice Grinda: people from my circle are hosting the ones tomorrow night. There’s an organization in the US called Dialogue, organized by Peter Thiel and Orin Hoffman, which brings together several hundred really smart people to talk about, problems.
The organization has one event per year for extraordinary people. typically, in California, in April or May. during the year, I use the organization to curate and find people. So this way I outsource, which is something I like to do in life, outsource almost everything I can to focus on things that are in the most fascinating.
They help me find the guest list and think through questions.
Dhruv Sharma: That’s amazing. you also have this thing, Fabrice, that you launched, about a year ago. It’s called Fabrice AI, and it’s a way for the world at large to, in a sense gain a window in your thinking. For those of us who may not know about that, what can you tell us?
Fabrice Grinda: In venture writ large right now, it’s really a tale of two cities. Venture at large has been down like 70%, and yet there’s been a massive recovery, at least in the US in adventure investing because of AI. In Q1 25, 70 3% of all investors in AI. And by the way, a year ago I thought already AI was in a frothy bubble and the bubble has only inflated more since.
And we’ll talk more about that later. But because I started being pitched infinite AI deals, I wanted to really understand what was easy, what was hard. I’m like, you know what? Why don’t I code my own AI to understand, where we are? and what are the complexities? I started by using GPT 3.5 or 3.0 didn’t work actually two years ago.
Didn’t work particularly well. So, I started using Langchain and Pinecone then I started using an open source library to do, voice of text. Nothing worked particularly well, I have to admit. And the complexity was way greater than I thought in the sense that the source files for all the knowledge and data structure, which was basically everything I’d ever written, every podcast I’d been on, every YouTube video I uploaded, et cetera.
The transcription of all of these, the separation of the speakers. So even the data formatting preparation was extraordinarily complex. And then the data retrieval was complicated. I had to use MongoDB ’cause I didn’t, it didn’t work in just my SQL. I put all this work literally a thousand hours of work, and I thought originally it was gonna be like 40.
And eventually GPT released 4.0, and I ripped out my tire backend, connected 4.0 replaced my open source library for voice attacks, put Whisper and everything started working. The point of that is when people started pitching me things like Co-Pilot for X, Y, Z, I realized, okay, when you’re pitching me, I can code in a week.
That is not a defensible, viable idea with a moat. And, and most of these AI companies, I was being pitched that insane valuations. Honestly, were not that differentiated, didn’t have a mote. And so it was extremely useful. It also showed me the risk of both open AI expanding its reach and little by little taking share from other AI companies.
As time went by, I started ripping out all my backend. right now I temporarily, turned off this AI. It is still running, but now I’m using a third party company called Delphi because they were formatting better and their voice interface. So the OpenAI doesn’t have a great voice interface.
So there’s a company called 11 Labs, that could replicate your lab. But I needed a code, the API, to connect to them and train it. I already have all the data sets. I’ll upload to Delphi, use them for now, but I’m currently coding the next version of Fabrice AI, which is combination of my avatar you can have a call with and, pitch me. So I’m currently transcribing all of the calls I’m having with founders, including the deck. the call and my debrief and recommendation, my hope is that ultimately founders can get intelligent feedback. It’s not actually can it surface of deals, it’s just, right now we get 300 deals inbound a week.
We, FJ Labs talked to 30 to 50 of ’em and I Fabrice talked to like five of them. And so there’s. 270 founders a week that don’t speak to anyone at FJ Labs and 295 that don’t speak to me. so I’m like, can I create an AI good enough that as a service to humanity, if you’re a founder, you’re gonna get intelligent feedback.
Now your deck, your presentation’s, not scripts. The total addressable market size is not, gr is too low. The unit economics don’t make sense. there’s a lot of competition. can I get there? I don’t know. I only have 150 transcripts right now. I think I need at least 500 to get there.
But I’m playing with it. And maybe it’ll even surface fee deals. I probably a year away from having something that I’m satisfied with. it’s fun, it’s an intellectual exercise And it’s a public service to founders Fabrice AI, already works pretty well.
You can’t pitch it, but if you wanna have a conversation on anything I’ve ever written about. you can have a meaningful conversation.
It works really well for that. It just, you can’t pitch it ideas yet and have intelligent feedback.
Dhruv Sharma: I do something that I asked it, which I’m gonna maybe quote later just to check if that tallies up with your current thinking in the topic. But we’ll get to that. I think this is a great moment.
I mean, you said 300 deals a week. You said a week, right?
Fabrice Grinda: Yes.
Dhruv Sharma: That’s a lot. And I believe you’ve had this four step investing framework that you’ve stayed true to all of these years. Can you tell us about that?
Fabrice Grinda: Yeah, so the 300 deals inbound. most VCs are structured very differently from us, right?
Most VCs have these teams of analysts and these poor analysts are basically cold calling and scoring LinkedIn and going to tech conferences to try to find deals. We’re in a very privileged position, right? I never intended to be VC. I describe myself as an accidental VC. It just so happened that when I started my very first company back in 1998, which is an eBay of Europe, I was a very visible consumer facing internet, CEO.
So I was being approached by other founders and at that time what it meant to be a tech founder was not very clear. even the basic stuff like what tech stack to use, was not obvious. There was no open source.
it cost millions to turn the lights on. I had to build my own data center So I thought long and hard, should I be an angel investor in parallel to being a tech CEO, because it is a distraction from your core mandate. And so I decided, If I can articulate lessons learned to others, it makes me a better founder.
I’m running this horizontal multi-category site as I did for OLX. If I can meet vertical founders and keep my fingers on the pulse of the market, it makes me a better founder. So I took key to be an angel as long as I don’t waste too much time. back in 98, I created these four selection criteria to decide in one hour if I would invest in a startup or not.
So I’d meet the founder and evaluate four things. One, do I like the team? Now, of course, every VC in the world will tell you I only invest in extraordinary founders. The thing is, extraordinary founder cannot be like porn. It can’t be, I know it when I see it. And so we’ve actually defined what that means to me, that someone who’s extremely eloquent, who has a way with words, who can weave a super compelling story and someone who’s very eloquent and salesy can raise money at a higher valuation, can attract a better team, can do better BD deals, can get more PR, but that’s a necessary but insufficient condition.
You need someone who also knows how to execute. and the way I tease that in a one hour call, they know how to execute, is number two. Do I like the business? And so what is a total addressable market size? What are the unit economics? We mostly are seed investors, so post-launch, post product, early revenue.
Even when we do invest pre-launch, we expect people to thought through it. Have they done landing page analysis. Based on that, what are the density keywords in Google? What is the average CPC What is the conversion rate to people signing up? What do you think the customer acquisition cost is based on the average conversion rate from visit a purchase in the category?
What is the average order value in the industry? They better be in line with the average order value in the industry, not expect to be 10 x above it. What’s the margin structure? Do they really understand their cost structure? Do they recoup their fully loaded costs on a contribution margin two basis after six months?
And do they three x it an 18 month? And if not, will the unit economics improve with scale without needing all the stars of the multiverse line? Number three, the deal trips. Nothing’s cheap in tech, but is it fair? Is it fair in light of, the traction, the opportunity, the team, et cetera. And number four, is it in line with their thesis of where the world is going?
And I have a clear perspective on the future of food, the future of climate, the future of mobility, the future of real estate. And I want them something that is both useful to the world and meaningful in line with where I think the world’s going. I will invest if all four criteria are simultaneously met.
it’s not three out of four, it’s literally four out of four. An amazing team is not enough because if an amazing team meets a bad business model typically it’s the reputation of the business that wins over the team. some founders or VCs will say, the team will figure it out.
The thing is that to me leads to a too high failure rate. So far we’ve invested. In 1200 companies, we’ve had 355 exits. We’ve actually made money on 45% of our exits, which for a pre-seed seed investor is an extraordinary hit rate. because in 95% of startups after five years, that’s that have raises seed fail.
So we’re doing very, very well because we’re disciplined evaluation because we’re disciplined unit economics. the reason we get all the deal flow is because I have a brand. People know me as the asset like, network effect marketplace investor. And as a result it’s a very privileged position where this deals just come in.
So we don’t actually do any outbound. The deals come in, the other VCs share deals with us, the founders, that we’ve backed so far. So 1200 companies is like 2000 founders. They send us to their friends, they come back to the next company, they send us to their employees, and then of course cold inbound.
And we get over 150 cold inbound deals for a week.
[00:13:24] Dhruv Sharma: That’s very impressive. Fabrice, so you started this journey of angel investing and it worked out really well for you. In fact, you say it made you a better founder for any of the founders here attending who have that question in their mind, should they start the angel investing journey? and if they already have, should they scale it?
What would you say to them? And based just not on your experience, but maybe also based on the experience of your friends, which might have been different from yours?
Fabrice Grinda: I think it depends on you and who you are, what you want, what your advantage is, Like I am, intellectually curious polymath, right?
The reason I like angel investing is there’s infinite problems in the world and boundaries basically see these problems. And by the way, something like climate change or inequality of opportunity is not one problem. It’s a thousand sub problems. the way I see founders, they see problems and they wanna go solve them.
And I found it fascinating to be able to meet these founders that are brilliant people who want to solve these problems, to hear the stories, and then share best practices with ’em. And the number of founders who’ve told them the interactions they’ve had with me have been meaningful, I made me realize that I can get fundamental leverage through doing it.
That said, in order to not be distracted, I only did dealt with inbound deal flow, and I only focus on marketplaces because I knew that’s what I knew innately, and I had this mechanism by which I would invest it in one hour meeting. So should you do it well? Do you have free time? Do you have free cash?
Do you like it? Is it interesting to you? And by the way, you’re only gonna make money if you have a diversified portfolio. Meaning on average, if you invest in less than 50 startups, you’re gonna lose money. If you invest in more than 50, you’re gonna make money. The more companies you invest in, the better you end up doing.
And so you really want a diversified portfolio. So should you scale it, not necessarily. So reflection of your personality, if you like doing it, if you have an amazing deal flow and if you have free cash and time, why not I didn’t intend, to become a venture capitalist post selling, OLXI. I created a family office, which was investing companies, creating companies, but I tried a whole bunch of other things.
I try to buy Craigslist, I try to buy eBay classifieds. I try to convince the Castros to let me run a free trade zone in Cuba. Actually a special administrative zone, copying what, Deng Xiaoping had done in Guang Dong. I thought of becoming a public intellectual. It’s just these things required someone else to you to say yes.
And I threw this spaghetti of the wall, this spaghetti didn’t stick. And writing people checks actually kind of worked. then all of a sudden I started getting approached by third parties saying, I wanna expose you to what you do, that’s why I became a VC. But I’m a non-traditional VC because I’m a VC who behaves like an angel.
Every year. I invest in 150 deals. I write small checks. I don’t lead, I don’t price, I don’t take board seats. I try to be this value added friendly guy. Only do it if you think it’s fun and interesting and it’s a reflection of your personality and you have a process and deal flow.
If you don’t have deal flow, getting it is hard, because you guys are visible and successful, you do have deal flow. but it’s not obvious that you should do it. Many of my friends would rather use the time they have post exit, to do something else.
And that’s totally fine. and that could be anything, right? Like from investing more time in family and friends and relationships, to hosting intellectual salons, to entering politics, to doing different forms of philanthropy. Now, my take of philanthropy is a bit contrarian because I actually find that what I do through tech is a form of philanthropy,
As I said earlier, it’s a boundaries see problems and they try to solve ’em. So then I try to solve problems that I think are meaningful. And the reason I’d like the for-profit mechanism is because it creates something that’s scalable and repeatable and doesn’t need to go fundraising every year.
Dhruv Sharma: Fabrice, before I ask you the next question, this is for everyone in the audience. If you have something you’d like to ask Fabrice right away, let’s do it. Maybe just leave your question, or just tease your question out in the chat window, and I’m more than happy to invite you to come, ask you a question.
Fabrice before we go ahead, reaching out of the Castro family to set up, a trade zone. We kind of let you proceed before you tell us a little more about that.
Fabrice Grinda: So, by formation, my background, I’m an economist. I studied economics at Princeton and one of the things I love, was market design, which is why I was well suited for creating marketplaces, in terms of like measuring elasticity of supply and demand, figuring out what the correct, key creator business model was, et cetera.
But studied economic performing in China, and I was a huge fan of Deng Xiaoping, who basically single-handedly took a billion people outta poverty. And I went to live in China in 1994. I studied Mandarin at Beijing Normal University.as I was thinking through after our lack of giving back and thinking through what could I do to make the world a better place, I’m like, you know, these free trade zones and more importantly, special ac administrative zones have that profound impact in changing the livelihood of people around the world.
You see what Dubai has become, despite not having the same natural resources than the other, a Arab states. I love the Caribbean. I like splitting my time between, the US and New York, which is a haven of an intellectual, social artistic endeavors with a place where I can be more reflective and read, write kite, surf, do yoga, meditate.
now I’m working there, I play tennis, I play paddle, and, and that’s my work life outs. I started looking at the time, so we’re talking 2013 at Cuba. Cuba is, foreign direct investment was about a hundred million a year. The average salary is about $20 a month. And it’s essentially a failed state.
They have a highly qualified, labor force with super low GDP, nothing working, and they have large swath of the country that, are underutilized and completely empty. So I’m like, look, give me, a couple percentage points of the country to build in my special economic zone where I’m essentially 70 miles from Florida.
So creating a small agricultural and manufacturing hub, obviously using capitalism where you can export to the US makes infinite sense. they originally said yes, the reason they ultimately said no is I didn’t just want a free trade zone. It needed to have a different constitution, it needed to have a different currency.
it needed to be its own little city state because I needed respect for property rights and there couldn’t be arbitrary confiscation of all these assets. the currency didn’t need to be the dollar. It could be the yen, the Euro. it needed to be convertible.
It couldn’t be the Cuban peso. and they thought that was a step too far. ultimately, I did think, it probably is a good thing it didn’t happen because the issue is, imagine it had been very successful. they could have just confiscated it, right? they have a military, so I’m not sure I could have kept it, even if it worked extremely well, difference between the state itself and, doing it like Deng Xiaoping did, and being a third party foreigner, trying to implement it.
But it was a great idea. I think it would’ve worked because, bringing incentives, structures and systems there, and I had actually a couple hundred million, I think I had 900 million lined up, which tripled the FDI per year, of the country to go and build this. So, didn’t happen, but it’s okay.
Dhruv Sharma: A remarkable story to tell. are there other economic reformers you look up to, Fabrice or if any of us are interested that you would encourage us to read more about their work?
Fabrice Grinda: Well, my role models and heroes through history, probably, Octavian or Augustus because he single-handedly created the Roman Empire and he inherited from his uncle Julie Caesar at 17.
It was not given that he was gonna be the winner with Mark Anthony and the other pretenders to throne, even Castus breach was gonna pretended. And he put an end to the Civil War, created the Pax Romana created a, basically a period of relative peace and stability that lasted for a hundred years and a quality of life that was unheard of at the time.
The other one is Alexander Hamilton. The debates between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in terms of what the US should become. we are all collectively glad that Alexander Hamilton won that because Jefferson had more of a Russo-Esque agrarian society. We don’t repay the debt, we don’t have a modern financial system, et cetera.
Where we ended it was extraordinary. But then of course, some economists have, played a fundamental role in creating the world we knew today, like, Keynes, right? and I don’t mean Canadian thinking, I actually think is actual impact of creating the IMF, creating the bread and wood systems, to help rebuild post-World War II.
Was profoundly, impactful in creating the post-World order that we had that led to peace, stability, and prosperity for 70 years post-war. which is sadly, coming to end right now. And even the thoughts of like Freedman and others, now of late, right?
It’s hard to have people that you look up to, in democracies by design. It’s very hard to make changes. And, and so it’s not a, the conflicts in democracies, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature of democracy. The founding fathers, and thus through most democracies, want check and balances between the Senate, to the judiciary and the legislative and the executive.
And that’s why almost nothing gets done. But that’s okay because the fundamental systems are pretty good and people, are worried about the conflicts they see in today’s democracies. But the reality is they’re not worse than they were before.
People forget, we had a full civil war in the US in the 19th century. There were like race riots in the 1960s. There were anti-war protests that were violent in the 1970s. what do you have today? Like, is nothing relative to that. And I think ultimately. Even though it ebbs and flows the system, does lead to the right outcomes, even though as Churchill said, the US could be counted on making the right decision.
After all, other options have been exhausted; which of course is the second most, popular quote of Churchill after that democracy is the word of also, except for all others. So, yeah. Are there great leaders, in time that I also, admire, et cetera? You know, Allah Churchill, absolutely. But, but in terms of economics, no.
I think, Deng is probably the one that has had the most impact, but what’s interesting, of course, is now India, is growing extremely rapidly and is helping get hundreds of millions people out of poverty as well. So it’s, accelerated. The leaders of Singapore have been extraordinary, so that’s probably another thing. The issue with these dictatorships though, is enlightened dictatorships are only as good as your dictator. sometimes you have enlightened dictators, but then you have incompetent, fools like Mao or Xi Jinping, that set these countries back dramatically,
Like Zimbabwe used to be the shining star of Africa, and then Mugabe destroyed it, these, aspiring autocrats, like Erdogan in Turkey, he’s betraying the legacy of Atatürk.
Dhruv Sharma: Fabrice, when OLX first enter India, which year was it?
Fabrice Grinda: Very early in our journey. I had been friends with, Suvir, and Avi from Bazi, who of course had had then sold to eBay, became eBay India, and they, and s Suvir had created Nexus, a venture capital firm.
And, OLX, originally I would’ve preferred it to work in the West, but because they were incumbents, marketplaces with liquidity didn’t really take off. And so we opened in a bunch of countries, and it really took off in places like Portugal and Brazil,
Suvir is like, look, I wanna fund you, but you have to enter India. I think the market is amazing here. in fact, I’ll help you, find your country manager. that was the first employee, at eBay, India, which is Amar, who’s on this call.
I don’t actually remember the year, but Amar maybe does,
Amar Jt: It was 2008. I joined in the end, but I think OLX was already live So it must have been 2007. The site must have been live 2007. we cleaned up a few things after that, but, the real work started 2000, I mean, when we started scaling up for 2011 when we did our first big campaign, but during that time we were doing interesting, things about consolidating and stuff like that.
Fabrice Grinda: Yeah. And, and load the groundwork. But yeah, we basically launch very early, but like, yeah, the real effort and cleaning up the side, making sure we had focus, having all the languages, and making sure we’re in all the different languages. And, started, when Amar joined in 2008 the company was created in 2006, and we went live probably in early 2007, so very early in the journey of OLX.
Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. So, 2008 Fabrice, 17 years. And, clearly there’s been an economic transformation in those 17 years. Now we’ve witnessed it firsthand, you maybe have a different perspective because you’ve always had one leg in and one leg out. So what does this look like to you?
Fabrice Grinda: I’d say the main transformation. what led to the real explosion in India? I would say was 3G, right? Like once smartphones started, coming of age, and you started having these super cheap Android phones with 3G, you started having the entire population having access to, I mean, imagine today your poor farmer In India, you have the sum total of humanities knowledge in your pocket.
You have free global video communications, and you have a super smart advisor in the form of GPT in your pocket. So basically you have more access to information and more access to communications that the president of the United States did 25 years ago. And that’s as a lower class farmer in Africa or India.
It’s mind-boggling. people take for granted the revolution we’ve had, but it is so profoundly transformational and actually egalitarian, right? It gives, people access to these tools in a way that they weren’t before. And, and we lived it because we were early, because the company I built before OLX was a mobile content company.
We were early in the journey and discovering that we needed to go mobile. and so Ol X from the beginning, we had a mobile website. We were very early with apps. So we lived the Indian, internet revolution through mobile from the very get go. and, and, and what we did right, was realizing if you wanna reach people that are offline, the best way to do, it’s through TV.
And that’s why in 2011, we started doing these TV ads especially around cricket, which helped bring a lot of people online and of course helped consolidate OLX the leading classified buying sell site.
Dhruv Sharma: There’s a couple of questions in the chat window. Why don’t you ask a question, please.
Utsav Somani: Yeah. Building on that Cuba thing, what’s the one crazy thing that you’ve attempted in the last decade that’s not worked out, but you wish it did?
Fabrice Grinda: in 2006, when I left, my prior company Zingy, I went to see Craig, of Craigslist and I’m like, Hey, you are creating, you have already have network effects. You’re doing an amazing job.
you have a 1995 interface, and more importantly, you’re not moderating any of the content on your site. Let me run it for free. Not ’cause I wanna make money just because I wanna make the world a better place. I wanna provide a public service to humanity. And we could always talk later if you’re happy about some form of conversation.
Of course, even though I was credible, ’cause I’d sold my last company had grown it at 200 million revenues profitable. he didn’t take me seriously. So, then I went back in 2013, when I left OLX, I went to Craig and I’m like, Hey. Look, I build a site bigger than Craigslist, 300 million units, 10,000 employees, 30 countries.
It’s amazing. And we’ve solved all the problems you have. Let me do this again for free. and he said no. I think he and the CEO were like so high on drugs. they were fading out of consciousness. I don’t think they even remember we met. They didn’t remember we’d met before. Every time I met them, they forgot we’d met before. It’s like mindboggling. They just didn’t care. I tried so many times over the years to take it over. I tried to buy it. They said, no, I tried to run it. They said no, et cetera. So that one, because I said earlier, these things, they require someone else to say yes.
I try to buy eBay classified twice. So, eBay owned very big classified sites in, Western Europe, Canada, and Australia, especially in Germany. I tried to buy it in 2015. I had, lined up private equity. It was like a six or $7 billion deal. They said yes, signed an LOI. But then they divested PayPal, when they divested PayPal, they had enough money that they didn’t feel they needed to anymore.
So they changed their minds. a year worth of work for nothing. I tried again in 2019 and they ultimately sold, I thought I’d won, but they sold it to my biggest competitor at OLX, which was at Adevinta. So sadly I didn’t win buying eBay cost. in hindsight, I probably would’ve hated it because eBay is a ginormous company with like, they had like, o well actually is kind of built for me by me and it’s kind of, I would like to believe it. Enlightened dictatorship with centralized, everything. each country had local product and local et cetera. Like we had one tax stack and I could say jump and, you know, people would say, ah, hi.
eBay was like different silos, different techs in every country, overlapping fighting fiefdoms. It would not have been easy to execute on. So, in hindsight, probably, something good, but I try to build, in the Caribbean and to Dominican Republic, a massive kind of off-grid commune, not a commune in the communist sense of the word. More of a place where tech founders could come and build tech startups and innovate, where spiritual leaders can host events where, where, where artists could come and create. and, and the idea was to foster. Something not too dissimilar to my Jeffersonian dinners by bringing smart people around to go and create things.
And I bought several hundred acres of land. There was a mile of beach front. the problem is, the Dominican Republic was more of a banana republic than I expected it to be. that was my second attempt. The first attempt with a massive piece of land in Belize. definitely a banana republic and failed.
And so I’m like, oh, Dominican Republic, it’ll be fine. Democracy, et cetera. But like everyone wanted bribes from the local mafia to the mayor to the vice president of environment. I didn’t wanna bribe anyone. Maybe that was a mistake. And so after like seven years of things going from back to worse with, tropical diseases, burglaries poisoning my dog, we, we even got full on attack by gun men with shotguns.
So there was a Call of Duty shootout in my garden. The time had come to move on. I left after seven years of essentially failure, lost like $8 million in the process, and I moved to a much smaller, but much more beautiful and safe place in, in Turks and Caicos where I don’t have the incubator and all that stuff, but I do host three tech conferences every year.
I brought the CO of eBay. I bring unicorn founders to brainstorm about the future of humanity, the state of tech. I host a crypto conference, et cetera. I own seven acres of land it’s much smaller. But I’m toying with the idea of moving to either Antigua or Nevus and getting 30, 50 acres and restarting that.
But again, it’s more for fun as much as anything else. It’s like intellectually stimulating it’s less scalable, meaningful than what I do on the professional side, some of the companies in a way that I’ve helped build, like Vinted, you know, Vinted now is like 10 billion in GMV, a billion in net revenues, hundreds of millions of users.
And it’s the first cross pan-European cross border transactional site. My right hand man at OLX is now the CEO there, the leverage I have through my tech investing in terms of impacting millions, if not billions of people, is way greater than these things.
But these things are fun and also an amazing place for me to bring my entire family and extended family together.
Dhruv Sharma: Fabrice, before we switch our focus to marketplaces and AI, I’m seeing there’s two or three questions, we can go through Amar Jt, would you like to ask your question? Then maybe Dheeraj can go on and we’ll take it from that.
Amar Jt: I think there are so many questions for Fabrice all the time, I think he’s doing so much. I think it’s fascinating. with the intensity and the speed at which you work, Fabrice, you always astonished me. You work on fifth gear and I think I sometimes I feel I’m not even on the first. really always so amazing to hear you.
I always remember, whenever we used to chat about it, I think India was one. I mean, you are already investing in India a little bit. I handle emerging markets now for Spotify, when you used to build companies, you know, and invest in them, you used to look at the world. When we started OLX, we were looking at, okay, how do we take great models from us and take it to the world?
Of course, you have moved way ahead of that now. Now what is your thought process about emerging markets, there is not enough happening there, but also enough happening what is your current, understanding of this market and how you’re investing? What do you think about the future? Love to have your latest view on this.
Fabrice Grinda: Maybe later I’ll explain how I can do as much as I do, because I think there are many trucks in terms of what you can outsource in life and how to be, productive in order to focus on the things that you love doing and not be distracted by all the things that take time that are actually non-value added and not in line with your own ethos.
So, FJ labs throughout history, we’ve really been reasonably constant, which means we’re about 50%, US and Canada, about 20% Western Europe, about 15% in Latin America. 5-10% in India and the rest of the rest of the world. So, emerging markets for us really is we prefer larger market countries like Brazil, like India, because there are large enough that you ha you can have companies that can scale two B unicorns just in that one country.
You end up having actually viable, venture capital ecosystems. You end up having exit markets, et cetera. So I’d like larger markets. But market large markets like Nigeria and Kenya, which are 200 and plus million. A hundred plus million, or actually still too far down the curve. So we have a few investments there, but we’re not a focus.
because of the geopolitical, macro trend right now of the new Cold War between the Westford writ large and China, well, I guess it’s China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and one side, and the west on the other side. everyone’s trying to move their supply chains out of China. And the only place that I think is scalable and interesting and the most scalable and interesting is India.
But because India is manufacturing base is mostly SMEs and as opposed to large manufacturers, there’s a unique opportunity to invest in marketplaces that help small business manufacturers in India export, and work with, Western companies. That’s why we’re investors in Zyod, Which is helping apparel manufacturers in India sell to brands in the west because they don’t know how to answer RFQs. They don’t know how to do prototyping. They don’t know how to do customs and export, et cetera. And we’re doing this kind of vertical by vertical. In fact, Utsav, one of this thesis right now is like scaling manufacturing in India and investing in manufacturing companies, which is fully aligned with this general macro trend of like moving manufacturing out of China, especially in India and scaling it and building brands locally, et cetera. So, that said, if I’m building a company, I would still be focusing on the US market right now because it’s where you get the most value.
You have 350 million rich people that are early adopters of your products. you can sell them at pretty high prices. it’s easy to raise capital, it’s easy to get exits. Even if you failed, you get acqui-hires and you can still salvage from the exit. I still prefer building and investing in the US. That said, especially a few markets like Brazil and India – are fascinating of course, Warren.
And if I was in India and I have a comparative edge there, I’d be very happy to focus and invest and be in India. it’s harder to build, are there interesting things happening everywhere globally now? Yes. the cost of launching a startup has basically gone to zero.
Even a non-programmer could use Lovable or Cursor and start creating a startup for almost nothing. So between, Cursor or GitHub with CoPilot and AWS and the cost of launching a startup and you have an explosion in creativity and company creation from non-traditional backgrounds.
You no longer need to be a Stanford computer science grad. we’re seeing interesting companies emerge from everywhere. But because the world is still capital constrained and you need people to buy your products, I still try to focus on the larger, more interesting markets. We’re seeing amazing things happening everywhere, and we do invest a little bit in Vietnam and the Philippines
It’s just that all that falls in the 5%.
Amar Jt: Thanks, Fabrice. And for everyone else, I want to really tell about him. He is, one of the most positive people I’ve met. and, I think he’s very large hearted, very transparent.
there’s nobody in the world I’ve met who will share everything about himself openly. I have found that amazing because I feel that people operate in two worlds of wonder that they show and watch they live. I think he lives the world so openly. And I think since I worked with him long time back, I feel that he’s relentless.
I wish you more power, for your amazing. You’re unstoppable and I think keep going and love to catch up with you soon.
Fabrice Grinda: No, thank you for the kind words. Look, I’m built ambitious, right? Where does that come from? Who knows, right? I never built companies to make money.
I built companies. I like creating something I nothing. I’d like having an impact and try to make the world a better place and living what I find is a purposeful life. Now, to Amar’s point, most people I think don’t, or not the true, authentic self, right? Like they have a facade when they interact with the rest of the world.
But when you are authentic, it comes through. And by the way, it’s so much easier to be yourself. Now that said, if I lived at, I don’t know, Mexico and there was risk of kidnapping of my kids or me or whatever, I probably wouldn’t be as transparent and open as I am. I feel that I can be in a position to share and be my truth with no downside and risk.
it resonates better with people to be authentic. I’d like to answer Dheeraj’s question because I think it’s very important, given the current bubble in AI. So Dheeraj, if you wanna ask it.
Dheeraj Jain: Yeah. you’re right. But I think there was two aspects. One is, is it more complex than the previous generation of startups, in the previous decade you could foresee where the market’s gonna evolve, what the product and the solution.
the uncertainty was very limited. But now some companies have scaled up so quickly, they like 10 million ARR, which used to take four, five years now happening in one year. And then the future rounds become very expensive. You know, you don’t probably able to do pro-rata and all that kind of stuff.
So that’s one side of the question. The second is also these companies, as you said, 75% of the companies in the last one year, are they also, gonna fail faster because the newer ones will come eventually. So they’re kind of two different things.
Fabrice Grinda: So look, is AI a megatrend?
Absolutely. will it transform the world in ways we cannot even begin to imagine? Absolutely. I also think though, like in every other tech revolution, it’ll take longer than people think, right? Like in the nineties, we had pets.com, we had Webvan. the ideas were good because ultimately we ended up having Chewy Instacart and Uber.
the tech and the market weren’t there right now, the valuations in which people were investing, implied that AI will. Take over the world, lead a massive productivity revolution immediately. And we on this call, or the early adopters, a hundred percent of our startups are using AI to improve programmer productivity, to change customer service, to improve sales, to actually change the funnels of buying and selling.
But when I look at these larger companies, or even SMBs, they are so far removed from implementing this. I suspect this revolution is gonna take a lot longer than people think. there’s gonna be this moment of disillusionment that is coming. And as an investor, I like to be contrarian.
in February 21, I wrote this blog post entitled, welcome to the Everything Bubble, where I said, if the valuations are so insane in every asset class, if it’s not anchored to the ground, sell it. I suspect something similar is happening in AI right now. people missed the boat, they should have invested in GPT or Open AI five, six years ago, and they missed the boat.
So they’re investing in everything else. The problem I’m seeing is multifold and it harks back to the problem of 2021. For each AI category, I see five or six or 10 well-funded competitors. So whatever category it is you have, you have a team from Harvard and a team from MIT and a team from Princeton and a team from Stanford all with 20 million of funding all going after it.
What worries me is that the competition between them is gonna bring the economics down to zero. They’re fighting for talent, they’re fighting, they’re increasing their customer acquisition cost by spending money and marketing or sales, and they’re decreasing pricing in order to gain share. So it’s leading to non-economic behavior.
One big problem that’s super competitive with a lot of companies is hard to tell of these amazing companies, which one is gonna win Problem number two, valuation you’re investing in is very high, such that if you don’t grow to a hundred million in ARR in record time, it’s hard to imagine how you’re gonna make money problem.
Number three, you may think you’ve won and then all of a sudden Open AI offers what you’re doing for free. you go from zero to 4 billion evaluation like, Olive AI, or you’re like Lensa went from zero to six 60 million a month, or 30 million a month back to zero, three months later.
When people realized they had used it and were done with it. I see these companies, even the current winners, right, like the two winners from an A RR perspective right now are Cursor and Lovable. If you’re at a hundred million ARR in record time. The thing is, can I imagine a world where GitHub copilot just gives it away for free?
And this is a race to the bottom in revenues in the future. Yes. Can I imagine a world where for whatever reason, opening I decide this is something they want to do and they offered away for free. Two years ago, I used Midjourney for images. Now I just used Dall-E. Two years ago when I wanted to do a video, I used Runway.
Now I just used Sora. this is kind of scary. You can have, category expansion my Open AI. Lots of competitors, new orthogonal people arriving. deep seek ended up not being an existential threat to Open AI, but it could have been. these deep seek moments could happen in any major vertical.
it’s not to say I don’t invest in AI, but I’m very careful. The AI invested in is vertical applications, based on differentiated data sets where the data you have access to is profoundly different at reasonable valuations that are not far from the normal valuations. Right now our pre-seed deals are like five or six but in AI they typically are 25.
I’m not gonna do more than 8. Our pre-seed deals in the US are like 10 to 12 pre, and it either could be 50. I’m not gonna more than like 15 or 10 to 12, I’m not gonna do more than 15. Or A deals right now are like 7 to 18 pre, eight at 20 pre, maybe 10 at 30 pre.
And in AI I’ve seen that like a hundred million. the median is way lower than the mean because of like second time founders AI, et cetera. I try to stay within the right valuation range and I am seeing deals. At the right price with differentiated data sets in verticals where there’s a willingness to pay,
The issue is there are many categories where there’s no willingness to pay. And giving me metrics like, users per day and DAUs, is not something I value. I value unit economics CAC retention and, contribution margin, we are seeing interesting deals.
We’re like Voca, which is helping doctor’s offices in Europe and France specifically, to digitize and connecting their electric medical records. We’re in a company that’s helping cities collect parking tickets. there’s a whole bunch of stuff in these vertical AI companies that we’re doing, but we invested in the right valuation and the right teams, et cetera.
As an angel, I would be very careful because you might be better off investing in the current round of Open AI at 300 billion valuation I think they’ve won. they’ll continue winning and there’ll be a multi-trillion dollar company in the future.
That’s probably a safer bet despite the price than investing at a hundred pre in a seed or A company in AI. Got it. Thank you.
Dhruv Sharma: I think this is a great moment to ask you a question about your anti VC strategy, right? Selling winners on the way up, especially against this backdrop of AI and forever private companies and permanent capital vehicles. another structural question around venture. We’d love your thoughts.
Fabrice Grinda: Venture is seeing a profound shift, right? Because there’s been no exits in 22, 23, 24, there’s been no DPI. So venture is in the midst of a transformation and recession. 2000 VCs have closed their doors in the last, few years in the US and we’re seeing a schism between. The winners that are in massive funds that, or I would not even describe them as venture funds anymore.
I would describe them as asset accumulators. The Andreessen Horowitz, the General Catalyst, they basically now billions. And they’re becoming evergreen. They’re saying once the company’s going public, their eyes, they’re holding the sock, et cetera, they’re no longer going to be giving three X returns.
They’re gonna be compounding at 10- 15%. which pension funds think are okay, but it’s no longer venture. And then on the other end, you’re gonna have specialized, like we are in a way, the marketplace- seed- asset light funds that are like three, four, 500 million that are specialized in different categories that because their expertise can do rather well.
And everyone in the middle I think is going to die. What’s interesting is many of these funds, the reason they’re dying is because the LPs feel overexposed to venture. They’ve had better returns by investing in Nasdaq in the S&P 500, and there’s no illiquidity premium. And our strategy, of selling or winner is on the way up, is actually, especially for an early stage fund, proven to be correct because the beauty of not leading, not having 25% of a company is twofold.
You don’t need to do your pro-rata. So if a company is doing okay and you own 25% of it, you have to do your pro-rata even if you don’t want to, because if you don’t do it, the company dies. It doesn’t get funded in the next round. VCs end up writing a lot of follow on checks in companies they would rather not but they have to.
The second thing is. I don’t believe in this. the winners do keep on winning, but you don’t invest at any price. I will evaluate every single round as though I’m not an existing investor, knowing what I know now of the team, of the traction of the category, of the valuation. Would I invest in this round?
And what happens is the winners often, I feel, are priced to perfection. They’re like at a hundred X, It’s gonna take years for them to grow in valuation. but they are the winners. there is demand for it, right? You can’t sell the dogs, right?
Like, so I don’t wanna mess on the dogs, but no one will buy them for me. But if the company is crushing it and I find is extremely. Priced over where it should be. We often sell 50% of the way up because there’s an opportunity as the VCs want more ownership. the founders don’t dislike it because they’re like, Greylock, Andreessen, and Sequoia all want in.
I want them, they all want 15%. I don’t want ’em to find a competitor, but I don’t want 45% dilution, so I’ll take 30% dilution. I need to find secondary, and you happen to own 2-3% as a favor, would you mind selling them? I’m like, look, I love you, but I’m happy to help out. And so we typically sell 50% when we feel the company’s doing well.
it is the reason we’ve added 30% realized IRR we have had exits in 22 23, 24 and 25. Most of our exits have come through secondaries, either through platforms like Forge, which are marketplaces for secondaries or on the way up, but you can only sell the winners.
We don’t always sell the winners because if the winners are priced correctly, we keep investing. It’s based on what I know now, the company at the traction of the terms do I think it’s overpriced. And if it’s a bit overpriced, we probably hold.
But if it’s massively overpriced, then we sell, in 21, whatever. Tiger and SoftBank were coming in, we basically had heuristic. If they’re coming in, we sell. it was a very good heuristic to have. Right now there’s actually a lot of stuff that we feel is priced correctly and we keep investing
The last strand was at a 5 billion valuation. if we had had more capital, we would’ve backed up the truck and wrote it like 10 or 20 or 50 million Now, I don’t have enough capital to do that. My fund is only, 290 million last fund. This fund is gonna be 300 million. We just first close.
But yes, selling on the way up, taking liquidity, you’re not gonna regret it. Selling 50% is, kind of the magic number because if it goes to zero, you’ve made 10 x, you’re happy. If it goes to the moon, you still have 50%, you’re happy. on average we sell 50%. Now, if it’s outrageously priced like a hundred X ARR, maybe we’ll sell 75%.
And if we’re on the fence, but if we sell 25%, we get three X and we’re still happy to run it, maybe we’ll sell 25%. But most of the cases when we do sell, we sell 50%. we typically don’t hold in the public markets, So we either sell into the IPO or we sell after the lockup. the reason we don’t is we’re not public market investors.
Right now I have proprietary access as CEO, I can talk to the CEO and, it gives me perspective. I could be helpful. We can have meaningful conversations.
We have propriety data, The minute it’s a public company, we’re a tiny investor amongst fidelity and whomever. We no longer have proprietor information. I’ve been compounding at 30% IRR in the private side. I think there’s zero way I’m gonna compound in 30% IR in the public side.
So I’m gonna keep reinvesting in the private side, so take liquidity and reinvest. I have a venture fund slash angel investing machine so I can do it. If you don’t have that, you probably shouldn’t do that.
Dhruv Sharma: Fabrice, Do we still have some time with you?
Fabrice Grinda: Yeah. I’m free for the next 25 minutes.
Dhruv Sharma: Alright. we can’t have you and not ask questions around marketplaces. Fabrice, you’ve solved so many different problems within marketplaces, global marketplaces, but, what do you think still remains unsolved or under solved at scale in the context of marketplaces?
Fabrice Grinda: So if you think of your consumer life, Marketplaces have basically transformed them for the better already, right? If you’re in the US you have DoorDash, you could get food in like 15 minutes. You have Instacart and you can, your grocery delivered an hour or two. You can go to Amazon, which is mostly a marketplace.
And you could get whatever you want in a day or two. you have Airbnb, you have booking. your life is pretty extraordinary. despite that, there’s still innovation in marketplaces. we’re starting to see peer-to-peer rental marketplaces like pickle come to the fore.
We’re starting to see live shopping marketplaces like PalmStreet for rare plants but if you go to the B2B world, we’re at day zero. We’re in the dark ages, if you want to buy inputs like petrochemicals. There’s not even a catalog of what’s available. There’s no connectivity to the factory to understand manufacturing delays and capacity. There’s no online ordering. There’s no online payment, there’s no tracking. There’s no financing. This needs to happen for every input geography and category. So whether you’re buying minerals or gravel or steel, but it’s also for machine parts and heavy machinery and you name it.
So all input categories. SMBs need to be digitized. And that’s not only true in places like India where all the little bodegas, et cetera, are all pen and paper. it’s also true in the US. We’ve been investing in digitization software for dry cleaners, people running, yoga classes and spas.
We’ve been running it for barbershops, for pizzerias, for Chinese restaurants, you name it. All of these are like literally sub 5%, typically sub 1% penetration. That’s true of, Creating the entire infrastructure to support these marketplaces. payment mechanism, shipping mechanism. Last month, picking and packing, automation companies were investors, a company called Formic, which basically is a marketplace to help companies, bring robots into their assembly lines.
So, recommerce is now coming to B2B, so we’re starting to see recommerce marketplaces for apparel, a company called Ghost, or for baby stuff, company called Rebel. we’re at the very beginning of marketplaces making a dent in B2B. And B2B of course, is way more of GDP in a way than the consumer world.
we’re talking about trillions Petrochemicals, 4 trillion, steel, 1 trillion, We’re at day zero. So everything needs to be done. It’s a massive mega trend that will last for the next two decades, basically. And I’m happy to ride on the coattails of it.
Dhruv Sharma: A related question to the role of AI in marketplaces of Fabrice.
This one’s a specific question. Amongst the smartest founders, you know, how are you seeing them figure out how to get better at answer engine optimization in this post-LLM era?
Fabrice Grinda: What’s interesting is many of the marketplaces were worried, that oh the top of funnel is going to be captured by the LLMs and they’re going to be disintermediating me etc.
And I do not worry about that at all. because if you think about. The way people behave and buy on marketplaces is threefold. Either they don’t know what they’re looking for and they like to browse and shop. it’s like shopping as entertainment, which is like OLX or Vinted, in which case you don’t want, an LLM to give you a better funnel,
Because the purpose, is actually seeing a feed. you typically look at low value items and find something you like, you buy it. The conversion rate of visit, it buys low. So, there’s no role for an LLM there. Number two, search. So aside like eBay or frankly Amazon, you know exactly what you’re looking for.
You put in search engine, boom, you’re done. There’s no reason to go to an LLM just as an extra click. And number three though, consider purchases. So something where you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, or it’s something where you are gonna take your time because it’s a high value item.
So buying real estate, buying a car, or maybe buying specialty equipment an LLM can play a role, but even then it’s not obvious that the winning LLM is GPT versus actually a specialized site like Carvana that has an LLM to help you make decisions on what to buy. Like on Amazon, there’s Rufus, which is pretty good at giving you advice on what to buy.
So, I wouldn’t worry about the LLMs disrupting the top of funnel. So I would index myself. I would do AEO. And there are companies like Graphite HQ that are very good at AEO. And by the way, the way I think about it is if you’re willing to index yourself in Google. You should be willing to index yourself in the LLMs.
And if you have a 99% market share in your category, then don’t index yourself in Google because you don’t want this. The behavior people go there, in order to search. But even then, like if you have a massive dominant share, even if people search in Google or the LLMs, the results will come from your site, so you’re still winning because you’re doing the fulfillment, you’re doing the payment.
And these guys will never do that. That’s not, it’s not at the top hundred things that GPT wants to do, and then in the next decade. They’re not thinking of that. so even if they capture top of funnel because you have liquidity, because you have fulfillment payment, et cetera, you’re still gonna capture all the value.
You know, if you go to Google today in the US and you type A whatever, LGC 4.0 lead TV 65 inch. All the results are basically Amazon and eBay, they have like 80% market share, so they’re getting all the value, even if there’s a little bit of revenue there. So I would do AEO, there’s a company called Graphite HQ that’s very good at helping with AEO.
Now there are things beyond AEO that I would do, you know, get the free traffic. But beyond that, that you could use AI for the following things. One, if you want to be cross-border, with ai you can actually translate the listing. So within India, for instance, because there are different languages I could imagine translating a hundred percent of the listings across all the languages.
you translate the listing and then you can auto translate the conversations between the users. So right now in Vinted in Europe before Vinted Europe was not Europe. It was a French site, a German site, a British site, a Polish site, a Lithuanian site. Vinted actually translate the listings, between all the languages.
The conversations with consumers are also translated, and they have a great embedded payment and shipping. Now, it only works because they have embedded payment shipping, but as a result, they’ve now become a true pan-European company. So I can imagine having a true, true Penn Indian company with automatic, translated all the listings, conversations, et cetera, as long as you figured out a way to do payment and shipping.
cross border is becoming a thing because of AI. We have a company called Ovoko doing it for car parts, CarOnSale, doing for B2B cars. Number two, I would use AI to massively improve your cell funnel. The old way of listing things on marketplaces is you take 10 photos, you pick a category, you write a title, you write a description, you select a price.
But the reality is you as the marketplace, you have the data. You should be able to recognize what the item is. You should be able to pick the category, write the description, write the title, even consider the condition and suggest the price. And so you should make it so easy, that your visit to listing rate should improve dramatically.
I would improve the search engine. in the long term, the way Amazon has done it, which is two search engines, Rufus to ask questions about products and one search engine for search results doesn’t make sense. You’re gonna have only one search engine where you can ask anything, whether it’s like, oh, I wanna buy whatever the LG C 4.0 LED tv, or, what TV should I buy?
it could be one search box for both LLM type answers. and product type answers. I would use AI to improve program and productivity. Everyone should be using GitHub or Copilot or Cursor. AI for customer care to decree to do all the basic stuff like whatever returns, payment issues.
I mean, AI could be so profoundly good and everyone should be using AI and improve your sales teams. There are tools out there that could bring your average salesperson productivity to 90% of your best salesperson productivity. So, I would use it for that. And then on top of that, I would do AEO, in order, in order to get access to free traffic.
Dhruv Sharma: what my final question for you, Fabrice. How are you able to do so much? And, you said you tell us how you outsource ruthlessly, and which side quests are you most excited about right now?
Fabrice Grinda: So, I guess two different questions. I like to be intellectually simulated and I outsource all the things that I find repetitive and not interesting. This way I like to be the creative director if you want. I like to play with product. I wanted to be doing the Figma and writing the user stories, et cetera.
Here at FJ Labs, I want to talk to the most fascinating founders. both the new ones that I would like to invest in and the ones that I’ve invested in to help them. And then daydream about what are the trends, what should be happening, what’s happening in AI, write blog posts, et cetera.
The reason I have FJ Labs, the reason I have a VC fund is the team allows me to, to only focus on things I’d like to do. So FJ Labs, we have. Nine investors total who filter the 300 deals. I can talk to five. that’s why I have a VC fund, by the way. But things I do, so I have virtual assistants in the Philippines.
I have two of them. And I outsource ruthlessly, everything from like thinking through, I. Paying all my bills, coming up with ideas for days, new interesting shows to go see. managing, of course, all my agenda. You can outsource a lot more than you think you can. I have an offline butler that takes care of all the offline things.
Now, of course, a butler is a bit more expensive, though, probably not in India, but a virtual in the Philippines full time is like 1500 a month. I like creating for my parents a photo album of all my adventures of the year before. I have a photo album creator that I hired on Upwork, who’s in Bangladesh.
I’m actually a pretty good video editor myself, but I’ve someone to help me and video editing that I found, also an Upwork to, to help with the video editing. Even the childcare, I have two kids. a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old. I found on care.com five nannies that I hire.
I pay them hourly and create an online Google Docs where I write the coverage I want, and they agree between themselves who takes what shifts. when I travel, one, takes one week, the other takes one week, et cetera. they fully self-manage and regulate the shifts they take because of course the French nannies only wanna work 20 hours a week max, so that’s why I need five.
But you can out all the things you don’t like to do. Like I don’t like to cook, so I have a chef You can outsource everything in life to focus on the things you’d love to do. Now, the side quests, in my case and the things I love to do, as I said, it’s a combination of like meeting these sort founders, writing, thinking.
But frankly, it’s like spending time with my kids and I love to play. And I play tennis. I play paddle, I kite surf, I go back country skiing. Every year I go in a crazy off-grid adventure where, you know, I walked to the South Pole, two years ago where I was pulling my a hundred pound flood in negative 50 weather, which is kind of like an active Vipassana retreat because you’re alone with your thoughts walking eight hours a day, being off grid in this hyperconnected world is such a true privilege, where you can be reflective and thoughtful.
So yeah, continue to explore, what means for me to be spiritual, to be a good person I read an hour, an hour and a half every day before bed. So I read like a hundred books every year. Currently I’m rereading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which I highly recommend, to everyone out there.
I have a lot of side quests hosting my salons, and it’s fun. The purpose of life for me is to live a rich life. to find things that bring you purpose, meaning, to communicate, to be social and to be entertained. even work for me is entertaining.
[01:03:05] Dhruv Sharma: Fabrice, this has been great. Thank you again so much for your time. This is, This is really fuel, I think for all of us who attended. This is Fuel to go by for the next few months. Such a pleasure. Have a great rest of the day.
Fabrice Grinda: Thank you. I have a few more minutes, so if Snehil wants to ask this question, I see his hands raised.
Right. That’s fine.
Snehil Khanor: No questions. Just wanted to thank you. I don’t know if you remember, we have been connected on Facebook for more than 12 years now.
Utsav Somani: Oh, wow.
Snehil Khanor: I think since 2012 when I was just starting entrepreneurship, there was hardly any resource or network to learn from other founders.
You have always been kind. I think we have interacted three, four times on Messenger, over the last decade. And, you have always been kind to reply and guide, so thanks a lot for that.
Fabrice Grinda: I mean, it is words like these that are the reason I’d like to share, that I like to write that I’d like to, put out there, what I’ve learned.
I think the reason I have my blog every AI is, sharing what I wish I knew when I was starting as a 23-year-old entrepreneur, and founder that I now know.
Snehil Khanor: Thanks. I’m from that, 22 year, 23-year-old also.
Fabrice Grinda: Thank you everyone. This was super fun. feel free to follow up and I look forward, continuing the conversation.
