OpenVC:我有史以来最深入的视频采访!

我的大多数面试都集中在我的近况和 FJ 实验室目前的论文和选拔标准上。Harrison Faull 给我发来以下问题清单,让我为面试做准备,这给我留下了深刻印象。

早年生活和基础经历

1.普林斯顿

问题:你 17 岁就来到普林斯顿,身兼三份工作,向欧洲出口计算机设备,毕业时仍是班里的第一名,银行里还有 5 万美元的存款。在那段大学时光里,有没有什么特别的回忆,有没有什么小的胜利,或者有什么瞬间让你意识到,你的雄心壮志和勤奋努力可以为你打开一扇你从未想象过的大门?

2.麦肯锡

问题普林斯顿大学毕业后,你加入了麦肯锡,并以创纪录的速度晋升。是什么让你如此迅速地超越了能力出众的同行?

3.奥克兰

问题90 年代末,你将 eBay 模式推广到欧洲和拉丁美洲,筹集了 1800 万美元,创下了法国初创公司的筹资纪录。这是一家什么样的公司?你们的投资者是谁?

研究报告:从伯纳德-阿诺特(Bernard Arnault)处融资,但他并不想最大限度地以现金退出。尽管拥有公司 40% 的股份,但由于没有标记权,错过了 eBay 3 亿欧元的收购计划。最终出售给一家上市公司,该公司倒闭了 99%。

4.媒体

请提问:当你第一次退出市场时,法国媒体对你很严厉。在成为法国数字创业海报儿童之后,作为一个年轻人,你是如何处理这种公众监督的?

5.Zingy – 卷土重来

请提问:在经历了对 Aucland 的失望之后,你变得更加明智,开始寻找一种不需要大量资金的特定商业模式。这最终让你创立了手机铃声业务 Zingy,虽然你并不热衷于这个产品,但还是决定刷爆信用卡,在纽约市每天靠 2 美元生存,并被迫多次拖欠工资。是什么让你在最黑暗的时刻坚持了下来,你对今天那些在生存边缘徘徊的创始人有何建议?

6.天文增长

请提问:Zingy 的收入从第一年的 100 万美元飙升到 500 万美元,然后是 5000 万美元,最终达到 2 亿美元!这是一个非凡的增长轨迹。回首往事,在每个规模阶段,什么东西最容易崩溃,是什么框架或思维方式帮助您和团队迅速适应这些持续不断的压力?

研究报告:面对唱片公司的巨额诉讼,不得不处理复杂的法律和规模问题。

7.以 8000 万美元现金出售 Zingy

问题经过激烈的竞购战,你以 8000 万美元现金出售了 Zingy。你曾经为筹集资金而苦苦挣扎,如此成功地退出感觉如何?这次退出的经验教训对你今天如何看待投资组合公司的企业价值和退出时机有什么指导意义?

研究报告:在公司工作了 18 个月,但与日本所有者的愿景不同。有机会以 100 万美元收购 Shazam 吗?

OLX

8.机遇

问题从 Zingy 退出后,你发现 Craigslist 并不尽如人意。请与我们分享一下你的看法,以及在建立自己的改进版之前,你是如何尝试与 Craigslist 合作的:OLX?

9.全球启动

问题:你们同时在 100 个国家开展业务,为每个市场拨款约 5 万美元进行试验,寻找最初的牵引力,最终将目标锁定在印度和巴西。您能否向我们介绍一下您是如何设计这些测试的,有哪些迹象告诉您哪些市场需要加倍努力?

研究说明:结果是将重点放在了印度和巴西,并在搜索引擎优化的推动下实现了大规模增长。

10.将 OLX 用户数量扩大到 3.5 亿

问题:OLX 在搜索引擎优化方面取得了巨大成功,全球业务遍及 50 个国家和地区,拥有 11,000 名员工,月独立访客数达到 3.5 亿。您能告诉我们一两个您在 OLX 最美好的回忆吗?

11.OLX 退出与竞争之战

问题在 OLX,你被迫与一家欧洲竞争对手交战,结果引发了一场耗资巨大的媒体战。你从与根深蒂固的竞争对手的正面交锋中学到了什么,在决定支持可能进入类似竞争环境的创始人时,你如何运用这些经验教训?

FJ 实验室:标准、流程和全球视野

12.问题FJ Labs 每年投资约 300 笔交易,涉及不同行业和地域。您能否向我们介绍一下这种大批量、全球化投资方式背后的核心理念和战略,以及您认为目前哪些类型的市场和商业模式最有吸引力?

13.FJ 实验室的辉煌业绩

问题FJ Labs 的退出案例超过 300 个,内部收益率高达 39%,成绩斐然。您能否分享一个最近的成功案例,以最好地说明您为初创企业带来的价值,以及您是如何支持它们度过关键拐点的?

14.关于市场平台的九个问题

问题在 FJ Labs,您制定了一套评估市场的九项标准。这些标准是什么?创始人最容易忽视哪些标准?

研究说明:团队、业务模式(单位经济效益)、交易条件。

15.MVP 市场建议

对于想要建立市场的创始人,您是否建议他们使用 wordpress 的通用模板?你建议他们如何研究机会?

16.两会决定

问题:你每周要做 300 笔交易,但一年只做 300 笔投资,往往只开两个小时的会就做出决定。在这些会议上发生了什么?

17.全球市场和意外市场

问题你支持过波兰的砂砾和印度的石化等不同市场。你能分享一个你投资的意想不到的市场的故事吗?

研究说明:偏好分散的市场,不做其他市场的分销商。

18.筹资和组群指标

问题如果一家初创企业发现其新进员工的支出或购买频率低于早期员工,您会建议他们考虑哪些战略支点或重新评估,以避免停滞不前?

研究说明:警告:如果队列没有改善,最初的 ICP 可能已经达到峰值。

19.人工智能与市场的下一步发展

问题随着人工智能不断重塑各行各业,您认为市场将如何超越简单的买卖双方撮合?

20.改进投资组合

问鉴于你们的市场投资组合如此集中,你们是否在 “topco “层面上进行过投资,以便整个投资组合都能利用?我认为像 Klarna 这样的公司会非常适合你们的大多数初创企业。如果是这样,您能和我们分享一些例子吗?

个人感想

21.极简主义、家庭和冒险

问题您花了三年时间拥有了除 50 件物品之外的所有物品,您认为在这种炫耀性消费文化中,最有价值的物品是什么?

22.最难忘的冒险和购物

问题在您所有的人生经历中,您经历过的最好的冒险和购买过的最好的物品是什么?

OpenVC 的访谈介绍

在本期《OpenVC 播客》节目中,我们请到了市场、科技创业和风险投资领域的真正先驱法布里斯-格林达(Fabrice Grinda)。

🎓 At 17, he joined Princeton, worked three jobs, and graduated top of his class

💰 Raised $18M in seed funding for his first startup—the largest seed round ever for a French company

📈 Built Zingy to $200M+ revenue, then sold it for $80M in cash

🌍 Founded OLX, a global classified ads giant with 350M+ users and valued at $3B

📊 Now co-founder of FJ Labs, one of the world’s most active angel investors with 300+ startup investments

In this episode, we dive into:

✅ The hard lessons he learned from his first major exit

✅ His framework for evaluating billion-dollar opportunities

✅ How he scaled OLX into a global marketplace leader

✅ His investment philosophy and approach at FJ Labs

✅ Advice for founders navigating hypergrowth & market expansion

The OpenVC Show is hosted by Harrison Faull, co-founder and managing director of OVC Ventures. OVC ventures is the sole investment arm of OpenVC, where 1,000+ new startups raise funds monthly.

Harrison’s LinkedIn:   /harrisonfaull 

Timestamps:

00:00 From Ambition to Action: The Startup Journey Begins

04:02 Building Auckland: The Rise of a Marketplace

06:27 Navigating Challenges: The Evolving Landscape of Tech

08:35 Lessons from Failure: Resilience in the Face of Setbacks

10:43 Reinventing Success: The Birth of Zingy

13:15 The Ringtone Revolution: A New Business Model

15:16 Scaling Up: Overcoming Initial Hurdles

17:27 The Art of the Deal: Selling Zingy

20:32 Life After the Sale: Reflections and Future Plans

25:26 The Journey of Hypergrowth and Selling a Business

26:40 Passion for Product Development

27:58 Identifying Market Opportunities with OLX

30:54 Rapid Expansion and Market Testing

33:40 Transitioning to Angel Investing and FJ Labs

36:01 FJ Labs: Investment Strategy and Criteria

43:46 Advice for Founders: Building Marketplaces

46:35 Navigating Growth Challenges in Marketplaces

49:48 Leveraging AI in Marketplaces

52:44 Closing Thoughts and Future Engagements

In addition to the above YouTube video, you can also listen to the podcast on Spotify.

Transcript

Fabrice Grinda (00:00.141)

play that role and little by little got a lot better but they promoted me and I’m like okay thank you bye time has come I learned what I need to learn and now the time has come to go and actually pursue my destiny and go build tech startups

Harrison Faull (00:13.515)

Amazing. OK, so you had that ambition to be a founder from a young age. You went out, you built your toolkit, you got your credibility working at McKinsey. Can you tell us a little bit more about your first startup, Auckland, or not your first, well, the first tech startup that you had after McKinsey?

Fabrice Grinda (00:27.667)

Well, first venture method, but prior ones were tech as well, but they’re just not big, right? Like they were more like, you know, I building computers, selling them with your classmates and friends. I built a BBS, like the ancestor of the internet. This is the first one that’s like venture backed, lots of employees, et cetera. So the issue is I graduated, I finished McKinsey, was 23. And the issue is I didn’t consider myself to be pretty creative. And you want to be in tech, but I didn’t know what to build.

And so I’m like, you know what, maybe to start, I’ll just take an idea from the US and bring it to the rest of the world. Also, a lot of the ideas, in a way, required a lot of, especially back in the day, where it was a lot more expensive to build startups, a lot of skill sets and or capital I didn’t have. If you want to build Amazon, you need billions in inventory and warehouses and supply chain management skills. If you want to build E-Trade, you need banking licenses, et cetera.

Harrison Faull (01:24.367)

Cloud didn’t exist, right? So you had to build the physical infrastructure, which was already cost prohibitive. Yes.

Fabrice Grinda (01:28.008)

yeah, no, I built my own data centers. I built my own data centers. We had to get Oracle database licenses, and Microsoft web servers. mean, just turning the lights on is like a million bucks. The times have changed. There were very few people that knew how to code. And you had to code for the web. And so even finding them, which is part of the reason I coded the full front end of the site myself, because I just couldn’t find anyone that I was happy with their coding.

So kind of randomly, I saw the site of eBay in June of 98. And it was another one of these aha moments of love at first click. I studied economics and mathematics at Princeton, including market design. And the idea of creating markets which have liquidity, which unlock a tremendous amount of value, resonated with me. And I realized, OK, if you go to these offline,

flea markets, you’re unlikely to find what you want. If you want to sell, you’re unlikely to find a buyer for what you have. But if you put all that online, you create this virtuous circle with ever more buyers, brands, ever more sellers, and so on and so forth. And I thought this is a something, yes, marketplace is of a unique problem of chicken and egg, but it’s a problem that I’m uniquely well positioned to solve, given that that’s exactly what I’ve studied. Market design, a measuring elasticity of supply and demand, to figure out what an effective take rate is.

Fabrice Grinda (02:53.597)

thinking through how you match supply and demand, et cetera. And so I decided to go and build an eBay for France and Europe, ultimately, which is called Auckland.

Harrison Faull (03:03.469)

Awesome. the journey with Auckland was off to a running start. I’m not sure how long it was before you had the largest fundraise of any French startup ever with $18 million and actually funded by the family office of Berno Arnard, I believe. Yeah. So you’re extremely young. You’re bringing this US model to Europe. You’ve had the biggest fundraise and you’re off to the races. The press are writing about you.

Harrison Faull (03:33.061)

You’re on the front page of several different magazines. Can you tell us a bit about the journey of building that company before we get into just as interesting the ending of that journey?

Fabrice Grinda (03:43.739)

Well, the beginning of the journey was interesting because in the US, there was a full-blown tech bubble going on. And it actually had not yet reached France. And so even though I built the company, I built the code we’d launched, it actually hadn’t reached the level of hype. And every VC I talked to, and I was like, I want to raise like $10 million, do proper fundraising. They were like, nah, it’s France, half a million or a million. And I just didn’t want to do that.

kind of engineered the press hype around the company and around me. People did not take PR very seriously. And so in France, the CEOs of the companies were like barely talking to the press. And I basically reach out to the journalists and say, hey, I’d like to tell you about what I’m doing. None of them would take me seriously because I was 23 or 24. But I’m like, you know what? I’ll come to your office and just chat. And of course, I had a compelling story to tell. So each

Fabrice Grinda (04:39.987)

One hour conversation led to an article. And then I became kind of the go-to person for them to ask questions about tech. So they would send me a question. I would send them the article back. And literally, they would copy and paste the article, publish it. I mean, they’re lazy. And so very rapidly became the go-to person to ask tech questions, first in the written press, then radio, and finally on TV, like the 8 o’clock news, et cetera. And at the same time, people started realizing this internet thing was bubbling.

Fabrice Grinda (05:09.996)

And it became a bit frothy and also like it switched from no one caring to everyone wanted to invest in the category and Arno amongst others started reaching out and saying, hey, we want to back you. actually, I remember he actually bid on a foosball table or his secretary did and like and the transaction went well and realized there was something there. and so talk to him and the other people. He offered the most the highest valuation and the most capital, which is why I chose

to raise capital from him. And we were off to the races, I used the capital, we launched a super successful TV ad campaign, which was a way to reach the masses then. Traffic exploded, we grew to like 100 plus employees in five countries, 10 million a month in GMV. Like things looked actually like we’d made the right choice and everything was going well.

Harrison Faull (05:57.052)

Yeah. Wow. Amazing. So you’re young, you’ve managed to convince extremely impressive people that this is the future. They’ve backed you, you’re off to the races, the model is working. Did buyers started appearing? I believe there was some talks with eBay at some point.

Fabrice Grinda (06:15.26)

So eBay, met Meg and Pierre early, before I raised the capital from Arnaud on Europe at Web. And they actually offered me like $25 million or maybe $20 million. And at that point, I owned 75 % of the company. But the delusions of grandeur and arrogance of a completely penniless 24-year-old at that point, I’m like, eh, whatever. It’s money. doesn’t mean anything. I’m doing this to build something meaningful.

Fabrice Grinda (06:43.027)

15 million is nothing. And I really meant it. And it’s funny because I literally, I didn’t even, yeah, I didn’t even consider it. Since then I’ve learned how hard it is to make money and how easy it is to lose it. But yeah, I was gonna make 15 million at 24 and I didn’t even for one minute consider it. I was like, nah, it’s nothing, I’ll make it later. But it doesn’t matter. And…

Harrison Faull (06:47.303)

just dismissed it, literally just managed to dismiss it out of hand like that. It’s similar to your heroes though, like Zuckerberg turning down a billion when he was building Facebook.

Fabrice Grinda (07:12.07)

Yeah. so, and for a long time, it actually looked like it made the right call, right? Like the company grew very rapidly and then eBay came back maybe nine months later and offered like 300 million in cash. So clearly the turning down 20 to take 300 despite the dilution that happened along the way made sense.

Harrison Faull (07:37.939)

And would that have been all cash? Would that have been part of the dot com bubble in terms of equity? And why ultimately did that?

Fabrice Grinda (07:44.979)

It was a cash offer, but frankly their stock is one of the few that held up during the dot com bubble burst because they were a profitable company that did very well. So either would have been fine, but actually it was a cash offer.

Harrison Faull (08:00.308)

Okay, so what’s telling, who’s stopping you taking 300 million nine months after the fund rate?

Fabrice Grinda (08:03.762)

Well, as a first-time founder, you make a lot of mistakes. One mistake is you shouldn’t necessarily raise the highest, the most money at the highest valuation. Picking a VC is like getting married. They need to be with you in good times and bad times. You need to see eye eye and where this is going and what the vision of the company is. turns out that when

the person backing you is one of the wealthiest people in the world, making more money is not necessarily their core objective. And I came to Arno and he’s like, no, I’m not a mere financial investor. Making 10X in six months, that’s not for me. I’m an industrialist. I want to be perceived as the old school guy who got the internet. And he’s like, no, I don’t want to sell. Normally I would not want to sell now. I don’t want to sell ever. I’m not in it for the money.

Fabrice Grinda (08:56.689)

And I was like, that would have been nice to mention when you invested in my company. And usually it’s not a big deal because today you have these standardized documents and you can, there’s a drag along if I want to sell, I can force other people to sell, et cetera. But again, when I signed these documents, I was 23, I had no idea what I was doing. I trusted my lawyer to negotiate the right things. Of course, they didn’t take me seriously. Even though they were very well known.

law firm, I don’t think they took me purely seriously because I was so young. And yeah, they did a really bad job, didn’t have any of the relevant rights to force a sale of transactions. So sadly, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory. And what would have been extraordinary, as I led to essentially nothing. Sold to a company that he wanted to sell to, whose stock probably fell 99.98 % from like $10 billion in market cap to

$30 million in 1999. I mean, it was a total disaster. basically left the company with barely less, more than I started with. But interesting life lesson at someone else’s expense.

Harrison Faull (10:06.057)

Yeah, mean a lot learned and not very much time. But in terms of dealing with that failure, that setback, I’m sure there had been several along the way, building such an explosive growth company, there’s always going to be problems every day, but nothing of the magnitude of seeing the value of your shares go down quite so drastically, coupled with you being the poster child of France’s tech guru. And I’ve read that the press weren’t too kind to you.

after that success became a bit of a failure in their eyes. How did you handle that? What kind of resilience? Did you have any tools, any techniques to help you get through that that would be helpful for founders to hear about today to manage that pressure?

Fabrice Grinda (10:49.437)

So first of all, I mean, look, I never took that seriously like, you’re worth a billion or whatever. first of all, I realize it’s monopoly money, right? Like, virtual value of your shares does not allow you to buy an apartment or car, let alone buy coffee. So it’s virtual. And I realize we’re in a bubble. And then at some point, the bubble would burst. So from that perspective, my feet were grounded on a

were reasonably well-grounded and didn’t let that success get in my head. The bigger concern for me was I had been at the right time, at the right place, the right skills, and I’d failed to capture that opportunity. I worried that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity where young people with the right type of skills and background were given an opportunity to in a way like shortcut the different path that you had to go through in life or hoops.

to become successful. And I’d blown the opportunity, even though I’d executed in many ways perfectly from a product perspective, getting liquidity, building a website, et cetera, from a financial perspective. But at the end of day, I didn’t do this for the money. So I’m like, you know what? Maybe the entry now is going to be this niche little toy thing that only nerds like me are going to play with. And there’s no money in it. But I like building something out of nothing. This is my form of creative expression. And so.

There’s no money in it, but I’d rather stay in the internet. This is what I love to do. And I’ll go and build it again. So yeah, I was bit disappointed and disappointing. But because I never led the hype game in my head, the disappointment was more about the fact that I’d missed the opportunity and now I was just going to be doing this little niche-y thing for the rest of my life. It wasn’t going be meaningful or big. So that was more the disappointment. But at the end of the day, I like, you know what? I like what I’m doing. That’s all that matters.

Harrison Faull (12:47.86)

Incredible resilience, but let’s not downplay the victories too much. Do you have a favorite memory of that time of building Auckland? Is there one particular moment where you felt, wow, I’ve achieved X or that was really special?

Fabrice Grinda (13:03.474)

The, look, lots of little victories, right? Like turning the lights on, having the first transaction, having, I mean, we created a TV ad that was so shocking that we won a silver lining con for like creativity to when I made the cover of the French Fortune basically, or being the eight o’clock, all these were amazing. There were two TV shows where they’re following me around in my life as a founder and like, and it was like,

Fabrice Grinda (13:32.178)

number one TV show in France. don’t know, like 20 million or 30 million people watching it. And an entire episode was just following me do business. It was pretty insane, the level of fame and recognition, et cetera, for a otherwise shy, introverted 25-year-old.

Harrison Faull (13:50.124)

Yeah, you must have been able to create this persona or been able to convince yourself that it was the right thing to do to get all this free publicity to advertise Auckland and also yourself. Was personal brand a part of this or were you always trying to push the platform?

Fabrice Grinda (14:02.48)

The, no, it’s both. Look, I thought it would be helpful for both getting traffic and getting revenues. I think it was more meaningful then than it is today. Like today, I don’t care for visibility. Like I don’t have a publicist. I don’t want a big following. I have exactly the right level of fame. I think it would get in the way if I was more well known in terms of my quality of life.

And so I don’t pursue it in any way, shape, form. It was a means to an ends. Ultimately, I don’t think it was actually all that as helpful as I thought it might have otherwise been. Perhaps the doing that in the early days probably helped me get fundraising or capital in a way that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. But it didn’t bring that many users. Because the users are not reading Forbes and Fortune and the Washington Journal.

Fabrice Grinda (14:57.939)

The two that were helpful were the big TV ones where they were following me around. But even then, it’s pretty short-lived. One big TV ad in prime time on one of the major channels would have probably had just as much impact. But I did like the attention. And I realized that speaking came very naturally to me. And I’m not sure I created persona. It was just myself. And I was like a.

Be your authentic self and I think it resonates when you’re your true authentic self to other people, even though, know, I’m probably not probably, I am more direct and transparent than most people and sometimes it makes people uncomfortable, people realize it’s genuine and that’s all that matters.

Harrison Faull (15:39.363)

Awesome. No, I think that’s great advice. And yeah, a persona might be good if someone’s too nervous to get out of the camera, but the best thing is being your authentic self. And it definitely comes across on camera if you’re able to tap into that. Okay. So we’ve had the massive rise, a lot of small wins and some big wins with Auckland, then the crash ultimately with the exit. And then you reinvented yourself to create Zingy for the audience that don’t know.

What was the business and why did you choose that particular sector?

Fabrice Grinda (16:14.714)

Zingy was a mobile media company, to be more specific, we basically sold ringtones in the US market. In the old school days of the Motorola flip phones and the Nokia phones, people loved to personalize their devices with wallpapers or play little games or ringtones, which were the bigger category. And I chose the category despite not thinking it was particularly a large value add for humanity, and I never even listened to music in my life.

Because my prime directives was I wanted to be a tech founder. And in 2001, when the bubble had burst and no capital was available, I needed a company that I could build with very little capital and make profitable quickly. And as I looked at the types of companies I could build, almost all of them required reasonably large amounts of capital that was essentially not available. And this one, the few companies that were around doing it in Europe and Asia, were all profitable. And I’m like, OK.

This is something that doesn’t seem all that hard to execute that I can go build. The US is like years behind. There’s no like text messaging within a carrier, let alone between carriers. There’s no mobile payment solutions. We’re like US dark ages when it comes to mobile. So let’s try to see if I can bring the mobile revolution to the US market. And so that was the genesis of the idea. Because I just want to be a founder and the idea didn’t matter. Now.

Ideally, of course, that wouldn’t have been what I would have done. Ideally, I would have built the company I wanted to build, but you need to deal with the constraints that are around in the environment you’re with. If there’s no capital available, build something that you can build in a shoestring that can be profitable, even if it’s not ideal. Use that as a means to an end to then go on to build the thing you want to build.

Harrison Faull (18:00.749)

Awesome. I like it. But can you give us an insight into the early days? Because I know you went on to have phenomenal growth and a fantastic exit, but there was a long period where cash flow wasn’t coming in. Sales weren’t happening as fast as you wanted them to because you were doing a B2B. You wanted a B2B model, but I think you got initial traction B2C.

Fabrice Grinda (18:22.01)

Well, the ideal model, the way it’s worked in the rest of the world was actually B2C. You sell directly to the consumer, but the consumer can pay through their cell phone and it works on every phone. In the US, you had all these different networks like GSM, TDMA, CDMA, IDEN, et cetera. They were all incompatible. None of the carriers had delivery mechanisms into their platforms that were open or frankly didn’t even have any of them. And there was no billing mechanism. So the only way to launch, frankly, as a proof of concept was directly to the consumer.

Fabrice Grinda (18:50.675)

where we literally hacked into the delivery mechanisms of the carriers to deliver. They didn’t even know you could do that. We hacked into it and showed we could deliver into the networks, and not all of them, a subset of them. And so in order to order the ringtones at first, you had to pick your carrier, pick your phone model only from one of the phones that were available, so you didn’t know what that was. And you had to enter a credit card number on the web. So you can imagine the volumes were extraordinarily low. And the music companies didn’t take this seriously.

Fabrice Grinda (19:20.4)

None of them wanted to give me a license. And in other countries like France, there is a centralized music repository where you can just go get a license and poof, you get a license to all songs and you pay whatever, 10 cents a download or 10 % of the revenues. In the US, there was no standard contract, no standard license, and even no database who owned what. So we had to go on this detective hunt of figuring out which artists worked with which.

Fabrice Grinda (19:50.259)

writers, songwriters, because we needed the mechanical rights which were owned by the songwriters, which were represented by which law firm to try to figure out by which music publishing company to try to get the rights. even when we did figure it out after a massive detective work, the music companies often didn’t want to give us the licenses. And so even though I was like offering to pay them, they just didn’t give us the time of day. So we did a number of different things. At first, I

Fabrice Grinda (20:19.57)

documented who owned what, we launched, violating every, we didn’t even have licenses, we violated every copyright law in the world, but we would actually be sending checks to the different music publishers as though we had a contract. And they pretty much all of them deposited it. And so eventually they caught onto it and the penalty was like $250,000 per download infringement, and same penalties. So I was starting getting sued for billions and billions of dollars.

Fabrice Grinda (20:48.337)

by all these different publishers. And the lawyer, so I get the season’s business letter or whatever and the billion, multi-billion dollar. And I would call the lawyer like, I’m so excited that you’ve reached out to me. I’ve been trying to talk to you for so long. This is amazing. And to be like, who is this crazy guy? I’m suing him for like a billion dollars and he’s like so happy to talk to me. And I’m like, look, I actually want to do the right thing. I’ve wanted to do deals. I’ve wanted to pay you. By the way, I’ve paid you. You’ve deposited the checks. You’re all the checks. So I would argue I have an implicit contract.

Fabrice Grinda (21:17.618)

And if you want to sue me out of existence, you can, but it’ll cost you more and then just settle with me. And so I ended up settling with all the music companies, obviously for what I owed them or maybe 2x what I owed them, not like the crazy penalties, and ended up being the only licensed player in the US. No one else was trying to, because they went after me and I was just friendly. And also I put every last penny I had in the company. I borrowed 100k on my credit card.

Fabrice Grinda (21:46.675)

We had no revenue, so I missed payroll, I think, 27 times. Every two weeks, we make payroll. If I missed payroll, I’d be like, I don’t understand. Something’s wrong with the bank. They suck. They keep not wiring. Of course, there’s nobody in the bank who had to wire. But then I’d meet someone and convince them to put 5K or 10K in the company to make payroll. And so that happened over and over again for the first two years, basically. But little by little, laid the groundwork for what would lead to the success, meaning

Fabrice Grinda (22:16.828)

got the licenses. Then in order to, I kept knocking on the doors of all the phone carriers, but they’re big, ginormous companies. They don’t work with startups. They’re afraid we’re not gonna be around in the future. And so I went to all the shows. They didn’t even want to give me a meeting. Like I would shake their hands, make sure they heard my name. And so to, I kind of engineered the first deal. I, MSN, just like the Microsoft portal, they were desperate for good revenues.

I paid them $100,000 to become their official ringtone provider with a tab ringtones on MSN portal. And then we got a press release, and that got a little bit of tension. Then got Motorola to inbound me, and they were like, hey, we’re running the ringtone portal by web for Nextel. Do you mind providing them to us? So that was our first contract. And then this friend came calling and says, hey, we’re thinking of launching ringtones. Do you have any license? And I gave them like 25 of them. And that took on. once that took on and worked,

Fabrice Grinda (23:14.45)

All the other carriers were like, wait, we need this. And it became a frenzy where we signed every operator in like a three month period. And there was a question of launching. We finally got that. we launched on Sprint in March or April of 2003. We didn’t even know how well we were doing because it was on their platform. We finally got the check August 15, 2003, which is when we became profitable. And so we were saved. I I lived on the

Fabrice Grinda (23:43.443)

couch at the office for two years like living at two dollars a day I could only eat ramen noodles. So I paid back my credit card debt, paid back the employees that had backed salary and then it became a rocket ship. We went from a million in revenues in 02, 5 in 03, 50 in 04, 200 in 05 and yeah this time we grabbed victory from the jaws of defeat.

Harrison Faull (24:05.572)

How much were people willing to pay for ringtones back then?

Fabrice Grinda (24:11.122)

More than you would think. I started 99 cents, then I increased to 149, then I increased to 199, then I increased to 249, then I finished at 299, and we never saw declines in volume. So 299 in ringtone. And if you were especially a teen, and you wanted really the latest hook of the latest song to provide social currency, and so people would change almost every week or every other week. So it became a much bigger business than people expected.

Fabrice Grinda (24:40.531)

And in fact, think I paid 50 cents, I don’t know, $5 or $10 million in one year when he had in the club and once paid similar amounts. mean, the top songs of the day were extraordinarily popular. And we were generating more revenue to the songwriters and the artists than traditional music sales, which at the time were being all pirated by Napster and whatever the.

all the different, lime wire and things like that.

Harrison Faull (25:08.199)

Let see. wow, what a journey, what a story. So astronomical growth, right? 1 million to 200 million in four years in revenue. And then you end up selling. It’s sold to a Japanese company, if I’m right on that. I have to say, like most people do, transition period, pass over your skills, make sure there are processes in place. And I actually found that process to be not as smooth as one would hope. Could you tell us a little bit about

Harrison Faull (25:41.98)

what you learned from selling and perhaps what you might not have known at the time, do you would like to advise other founders on now to avoid a similar situation?

Fabrice Grinda (25:50.579)

The first thing I learned in selling is use a banker. We were approached by the Japanese buyer in Q1-04, and they offered $40 million, which of course at that time I owned the majority of the company. It was like a life-changing amount. I was like, I’ve learned my lesson from the buy time. This is meaningful enough that I should probably take it. I hired Broadview, which now is called Jefferies, to run a process, and it doubled the price.

So we ended up closing with the same seller, but they ultimately bid $80 million. So I sold for $80 instead of $40. And by running process, making competitive, we increased the price dramatically. Number two, while you’re negotiating the stock purchase agreement with a buyer, having someone be the backup is very useful because you’re going to have to work for a certain period of time with a buyer. And so you can’t be the one creating a bad blood, negative relationship with.

Fabrice Grinda (26:45.235)

I would actually be the one driving the negotiations in the back end, like whatever I said, I wanted something different. would say, look, I love you guys. I wanna work with you, but my bankers are telling me this is on market and I don’t wanna look foolish. So, you know, if you change that, I’ll make sure it gets through. And so I appear as the good cop and the person solving their own. So bankers, amazing when it comes to deals above a certain price and definitely 40, 50 million pass that threshold. Number two,

Fabrice Grinda (27:14.066)

If you do an earn out, make it a revenue earn out more than EBITDA earn out because the buyer controls in a way your cost structure and so they can change your EBITDA and that will lead to that will lead inevitably to a loss. Much better actually if you have an earn out to be just time-based. You need to be there and making sure that easy things happen like the hand of control, a la la. Now in case, actually stayed longer than you might think. I stayed for 18 months.

Because actually in the early days it was fun. I was part of a hyper growth company going from 50 to 200 million. We were changing offices every six months. We were expanding the product lines, adding gaming, adding full-blown music ringtones, negotiating deals with labels. We even had the opportunity to buy Shazam for like a million dollars. Now, ultimately the reason I left is actually because all the ambitions I had, which included like buying Shazam, et cetera,

Fabrice Grinda (28:10.076)

were thwarted because the Japanese just said, no, I need the profits. And so they would take all my profits and ship it to Japan and didn’t let me continue building the empire. so we’re like, you know, at end of the day, didn’t particularly love the business, definitely didn’t like them. The cultural differences were large, but I don’t regret selling to them because they paid the most and in cash. And it was reasonably easy to keep doing my own thing on a go-forward basis. So I’m actually no regrets from that perspective.

I mean, I would have wished they’d let me continue to try to build it into something bigger by the fact that they didn’t lead me to the next adventure. So, regrets.

Harrison Faull (28:41.313)

Okay. So you’ve been living on $2 a day with ramen noodles four years ago. Suddenly you get this massive paycheck, all liquid, full cash. What’s top of the list? What do you splash out on straight away?

Fabrice Grinda (29:03.186)

Nothing, honestly, I stayed in the same studio apartment. bought a TV, an Xbox, and two tennis rackets, which probably cost me $1,500 max total. I didn’t do it for the money to begin with, and I saw money as a means to an end, like to have the freedom to build my next company without needing seed capital or pre-seed capital, to not have to worry about, like, you know, if I don’t…

Harrison Faull (29:11.243)

What?

Fabrice Grinda (29:33.219)

food again like the way I did for two years or rent or whatever but no there was I didn’t change anything into my life partly because we’re so busy or like like the more meaningful day was the day became profitable because the day we became profitable and I like that day full-on popped champagne like we were saved like we were the masters of our own destiny we were not going to die and and and that was like the probably to this day the most meaningful day of my like business career because like

Fabrice Grinda (30:03.026)

Until then, there was always a moment where it looked like we could die. And from that day on, was like, OK, now we’re saved. We’re good. Selling was just another step. But at the moment we sold, we closed in May or June of 2004, was the hypergrowth mode. Part of the reason I sold for, in a way, that little relative to what ended up being our 2004, 2005 revenues is in Q104, we closed 4 million revenues, 1 million EBITDA. And the Japanese asked me for my projections.

And of course, you never know these things. I’m like, yeah, I don’t know. We’ll make 20 million revenues this year, 4 million profits, maybe 50 million next year, 7 million profits. Had I known we’re going to do 50 and 200, I would have waited a bit longer. But again, better to leave it too late and better for cash and sock. But as a result, when I sold, we were growing like this. We were probably literally we’re moving off as I take an office, we were we were seven and we came.

25 for the time I moved office. Then I’ve taken office for 75 people. Like, yeah, we’ll never move out of that. Like six months later, like I was shit, we needed a bigger office. So we kept moving offices, hiring people, launching product lines, growing like crazy. I was working so hard that, yeah, it didn’t change anything in my life because my life was still building my business.

Harrison Faull (31:20.396)

Yeah, that’s amazing. I think it’s also extremely interesting that you found so much joy in the process, in the building, over the product. I’m sure you had to be a product expert or have someone there that loved it and made it perfect. But ultimately, you weren’t very aligned with the final consumer.

Fabrice Grinda (31:37.469)

So I didn’t love selling ringtones, but I actually like building product. And the nuance for me, the product is not that. The product is like the website, the user interface in the mobile apps of the different phones. And I love building product. I’m a product CEO. I’m the one writing the user stories. And these days, I’m like on Figma.

Fabrice Grinda (32:03.314)

like creating all the frames and then I use Canva to create different designs. So I love playing with products. I didn’t like the end product we were selling, but actually the product process of building the products. I love that. That I could do all day long. I I still do it to this day, right? I build my own AI, build my own blog because I love playing with products.

Harrison Faull (32:26.979)

I mean, it comes through. It’s energized and say, you’re passionate for it. And I’m sure it played dividends in your next step as well. moving forward to OLX.

Fabrice Grinda (32:38.247)

But actually, one comment, because when people are like, OK, does working really hard pay dividends? And the answer is absolutely yes. But if there two people competing, and one is doing it for fun, and the other one is doing it because they feel they have to do it, the person doing it for fun will win every day of the week, because it’s not work. It’s fun. And so in college, frankly, in high school, my first startup, yeah, I was working 100 hour weeks.

traditionally defined as work, but I didn’t think it was work, I thought it was play. And so, because I thought it was fun, I was just doing my hobby and being compensated for it. So other people that are doing it for work, they’re getting burned out. And if you do something you love doing, you don’t get burned out, it’s just what you do.

Harrison Faull (33:24.612)

I think that’s more true for founders because they encounter so many hurdles, so many no’s, so many failures. Unless you truly love it or you find some passion, some joy that makes you a little bit delirious and the 1 % that manages to get to the finish line, it’s extremely hard to get there without that. So there’s definitely a lot of truth to what you’re saying. So third company now, OLX which also went on to become an absolute juggernaut.

Harrison Faull (33:54.432)

For those of us that aren’t fully aware of that company, can you give us a bit of a market landscape and why there was actually an opportunity for OLX? Because I know there’s a really interesting story when it comes to Craigslist and what you tried to do there.

Fabrice Grinda (34:05.522)

Yeah, so 2005, yeah. So obviously my true love, originally it was marketplaces. So I kept an eye on what was going on in that world. And of course eBay had gone from strength to strength, 2004, 2005, Craigslist came into its own in the US and became part of the fabric of society. And it was a place to find roommates and apartments or jobs and items. And, but even back then it was already looked like it was 10 years out of date from a user interface perspective.

And just as importantly, I didn’t think they did a very good job in moderation. was full of scam and spam and phishing. They basically didn’t have a moderation team. The latest listings would be the latest posted. And then they would use the community to mark the bad ones to eliminate them. So all the latest listings were always the worst ones. It made no sense. So I went to see Craig and Jim. And I’m like, hey, I love what you guys are doing. You’re providing an amazing public service to humanity and the community. But we can do it better. Let’s moderate. Let’s improve the UX UI.

Fabrice Grinda (35:02.288)

You may not want to, you may not have the money for it, but how about that? I’ll do it for free. Like I just sold my company, I don’t need money. I don’t need anything. I don’t need equity, I don’t need cash. I will do this as a service to the community and to humanity. And no, they didn’t give me time a day, they didn’t care. They literally didn’t care. I think in one of the meetings they were like so high on like weed that they were like fading out of consciousness.

Fabrice Grinda (35:29.712)

And every time I met them since, they never remember meeting me before. was like pretty weird interactions. And I’m like, you know what? If I’m going to compete with someone, might as well compete with the person who doesn’t care. Now, the issue is in the US, they already had liquidity in marketplaces. Liquidity and network effects are so powerful that breaking them is very hard. But the opportunity was, while it was big in the US and there were few established incumbents in Europe, in most of the rest of the world, no one was doing this.

Fabrice Grinda (35:59.291)

And Classified is actually an amazing product for an emerging market because in countries where there’s no trust, where there’s no online payment, where there’s no shipping systems that work, actually meeting at your street corner and exchange a good for cash is actually a very viable option. And it’s like, know what? I’m going to build a better version of Craigslist for the rest of the world. We’re going to go mobile first. We’re going to focus on women because…

women are the primary decision makers in all household purchases, right? They decide the car you drive, the babysitter you hire, the house you live in, and pretty much everything else. And yet Craigslist is the least female friendly safe site in the world. And yeah, we’re going to start with consumer used goods because those are people buy them on a regular basis. So we get started getting a lot of organic traffic. And from there, we’re to go to cars and then real estate and then jobs.

Fabrice Grinda (36:54.836)

And yeah, that was the vision. I’ll pause here for now.

Harrison Faull (37:00.377)

Awesome. I mean, you didn’t go slowly. I read a little bit about your first go-to-market strategy, which seems bonkers, but there’s a lot of good thinking in there. Could you tell our audience a little bit of how you managed to launch in 100 countries to test the different markets? I don’t know over what period, but I imagine very quickly.

Fabrice Grinda (37:19.378)

Yeah, a couple of months. mean, basically, when you build a marketplace, you want to sort of supply, so you get sellers on the platform. And you just go to all the sellers, like car dealers, roles and brokers, like, look, I’m building a website. It’s free to list. I don’t have an audience right now, but perhaps you’ll get buyers. So do you want to list? And everyone kind of says yes. So you get supply. We built a little sales team in Buenos Aires in Argentina that was multilingual. That spoke all the different languages of the countries we attacked.

And we created the site, 100 countries, I don’t remember 30 or 40 languages, launched. And then we spent 50k per country, so $5 million total, to test where we could get the flywheel going of ever more sellers buying, bringing more buyers, and so on and so forth. And in these things, there’s a level of randomness. There are a few countries where it really, really resonated and really, really, really picked up in Portugal and Pakistan.

Fabrice Grinda (38:18.322)

And it picked up, lesser scale, but still very well for, I mean, bigger scale overall, but lesser scale is the market share of the country in Brazil and India. And so for the 100 countries, yeah.

Harrison Faull (38:27.368)

Sorry to interrupt, but what does that look like? What does that outlier look like? Is it 100 times return on your capital on the marketing? How obvious was it to spot here or was it marginal differences?

Fabrice Grinda (38:36.508)

No, it’s pretty obvious to spot because all of a sudden, every day, more listings, more buyers, more transactions, the flywheel just starts and just doesn’t stop. And even when you stop marketing, things keep going. And so it’s reasonably obvious. If we were listing an item, the probability that it would sell, at first, was 25%, which was already liquidity, but grew to 50%, 60%. So all the items listed would sell.

Harrison Faull (38:46.589)

wow, the flywheel had already started kicking in. Okay.

Fabrice Grinda (39:07.27)

consumers would be happy. And just like, yeah, it just kept going. So the unit economics were, by the way, underwater for a long time. So our revenue per user is like $1 or $2 a year at that point in time, because we’re only on an advertising model in countries with low GDP per capita. And acquiring customers would cost us more than that. Nonetheless, the idea that you pay for the first customers and then they lead to more

And so the flywheel, it was pretty obvious that the flywheel was working in these four countries. So we went from 100 countries down to four, really doubled down on the ones that we thought had real strategic value. Obviously, if we’re going to win Portugal back to China, might as well win it. But that’s not we’re going to create a multi-billionaire company. It’s going to be Brazil and India. So we really doubled down there, grew it, became very large, even profitable in Brazil. And then once we were there, used those profits to then rescale

Fabrice Grinda (40:01.053)

to 30 other countries and become the leaders in 30 countries overall.

Harrison Faull (40:05.961)

Okay, so you’re building another phenomenal marketplace, which ultimately gives you this incredible toolkit. You’ve been there, you’ve done it, you’ve had two incredible marketplace businesses, and you’re making some angel investments on the side. Did you start off by only wanting to angel invest into marketplaces, or did you have a bit of a spray and pray approach, but then ultimately found your footing with just marketplaces?

Fabrice Grinda (40:30.674)

So before I move on answering this question, I’ll give you a sense of scale. So OLX became huge, right? It’s like 300 million users a month. It’s like tens of millions of people making a living off the site every month. We grew it to, I think 11,000 employees at the beginning. Huge, huge company. Now, my vision mission was always be founder CEO. I never meant to be an angel investor. I never meant to be a VC. But what happened is when you’re a very visible internet founder, a lot of other founders come to you for advice and or money.

And so back in 98, at the very beginning of my journey, already other founders were saying, hey, can you invest in my startup? And so I thought long and hard, should I be an angel investor in parallel to being a founder? mean, it is a distraction in a way. And having thought long and hard, I ultimately articulated, I guess, three things. One is if I can articulate lessons learned to others, it means I’ve internalized them. Makes me a better founder. Number two, I’m running these horizontal multi-category sites,

eBay or Craigslist type sites. Actually meeting and keeping my fingers on the pulse of the market by meeting all the verticals and understanding the latest trends and business models also makes me a better founder. It’s actually useful to make sure I don’t miss any of the bigger trends. Number three, to minimize distractions as long as in a one hour meeting I decide if I’m going to invest or not and therefore I’m going to stick to things I know like marketplaces, it’s okay. So I created my four selection criteria.

Fabrice Grinda (41:58.035)

and started investing already in 98. And so by 2013, when I sold and left OLX I’d already made 173 investments, I’d like dozens of exits, even though was a secondary business for me. In fact, it was funny, in the US, I was known more as a super angel than I was known as a tech founder because OLX is not big in the US. So even though OLX is like literally one of the largest companies in the world from websites in the world, I was known as an angel.

Fabrice Grinda (42:26.74)

Even though that was like my night gig, not my main gig.

Harrison Faull (42:28.938)

Thanks. Amazing. Okay. So you saw it as an opportunity to actually help OLX, help yourself in that journey with marketplaces. You ended up formalizing that angel investing process by forming FJ Labs, which has gone on to make 1100 investments, 300 plus exits. It’s remarkable. It’s a VC fund, but a super angel type model. Could you tell us today what

FJ Labs looks like, what you’re looking for, what kind of investment sizes you do.

Fabrice Grinda (43:06.576)

Yeah, so first of all, we didn’t start out as a VC fund. We started really as my partner, Jose and I were like, hey, we like building companies, we like investing companies. It’ll be a family office to do that. And it kind of took a life of its own. we started getting, beyond getting it inbounded by massive volumes of deals, like every week we get 300 inbound deals, which required a structure. So we had to hire people, et cetera. We started getting inbounded by investors who said, hey, we want exposure where you’re doing.

can you let us invest? And that’s what led to our first formal venture fund in 2016 of like 50 million of external capital. It led to our second venture fund in 2018 with 175 million of capital from 20 LPs, third one in 21 with 290 million from 20 LPs. And we’re about to go to market. We’re going to raise fund four of 300 million in Q1 25. And we do fund every three years. So like fund five will be in Q1 28 and so on and so forth.

And so it kind of took a lot of it’s own, but to your point, we don’t behave like VCs, we behave like angels. You know, like two one hour meetings over the course of a week and we decide if we invest or not. Now, what are we looking for? I’ll answer it in multiple ways. You know, we, as I said, we behave like angel investors. So we invest in every category, in every geography, at every stage. But we’re 50 % US, 25 % Western Europe, 10 % Brazil, India, 15 % of the rest of the world.

We’re 70 % seed and A, so we’re mostly post-launch, post-revenue. We want to fund your growth, but we are also 20 % beyond words and 10 % pre-seed. We are 70 % marketplaces and network effect businesses, mostly in B2B marketplaces these days because you need to digitize the entire supply chains in the B2B world, which are at the very beginning of their digitization processes. And that’s everything.

moving the online ordering of inputs to online, or moving input ordering online, helping SMBs digitize, doing support infrastructure for all the payment networks, shipping, cetera. And I guess most importantly, what we look for is we have four selection criteria. So when we decide to invest in a startup, it’s four things. One, do we like the team? Now every VC in the world will tell you, I only invest in extraordinary founders.

Fabrice Grinda (45:27.398)

But it can’t be like porn. It can’t be something like, I only recognize it when I see it. And so for us, an extraordinary founder is someone who’s amazingly eloquent, visionary salesperson, and so Van Dijkers intersection of those two knows how to execute. And the way in a one hour meeting we evaluate if someone knows how to execute is number two selection criteria. Do we like the business? And for us, it’s like total addressable market size and more importantly, unit economics. Can you f-

recoup your fully loaded customer acquisition costs on a net contribution margin basis in six months? Can you three x in 18 months? Do you have negative revenue churn such that ultimately your LTV to CAC is like 10 to 1 or 20 to 1? And if you’re not there, why are you going to get there with scale without needing every star in the multiverse to align? And there are some VCs will say team is everything, the rest is relevant to them, but we care deeply about the business you’re in. Does it have a good economics? Number three, what are the deal terms?

Now, nothing’s cheap in tech, but is it fair? Is it fair in light of the traction, the opportunity, the category, and the team? And number four, what is the thesis? Is the thesis aligned with our vision of the future of the world? And we have clear visions for the future of mobility, of food, of real estate, et cetera. And we’re trying to solve three fundamental problems, so climate change and equality of opportunity and the mental and physical wellbeing crisis. Are you solving something we care about? And we want all four things to be true simultaneously.

So we need to love the team, love the business, find the deal terms fair, and like the thesis and the problem they’re trying to solve. And if all four are true, after two one hour meetings in a week, we’ll tell you we’re in. We’ll write the $400K check on average. And we’ll be super helpful to you in terms of fundraising and think through marketplace dynamics. But we won’t bother you. We won’t be on your board. We’ll take whatever reporting you’re willing to give us. And yeah, we want to talk to you really once a year when you go fundraise. And we’re going to make sure you nail your fundraising.

Harrison Faull (47:22.234)

Okay, wow. That’s quite a high benchmark. I imagine you have to see quite a few deals to build the portfolio size that you’re after here. Could you give us an insight on how much you actually see and what that actually results in over a 12-month investment period?

Fabrice Grinda (47:37.971)

So we see about 300 deals a week inbound. They come from three sources. We share a lot of deal flow with other VCs. So we’re friends with about 100 VCs. We talk to them once a quarter. So it’s about a VC a day per quarter. And we send them all of our best deals. And they send us in return their best deals. Now, of course, we’re more prolific than they are. So we send them more deals than they send us. But it’s kind win-win-win. When they send us a deal, we give them our perspective.

we’re going to help the founders with their marketplace dynamics, in return we send them a lot more deals and our founders get funded by the best VC, so they love it. And we’re not competing for allocation. They’re writing a $10 million check, we’re writing a $400K check, so it’s not a big deal. So these deals are probably the best quality. That’s about 100 deals a week. Another 100 deals a week are coming from the founders we backed before. 1100 companies, about 2000 founders, they come back from the next company. They send us their friends, they send us their employees. So of the deals we invested in about

Fabrice Grinda (48:33.747)

50 % come from the VCs, about 30 % come in from the founders. Now the last 100 a week come cold and bound, mostly through my LinkedIn, some direct to my email, but frankly Instagram, WhatsApp, I you name it, it’s like kind of all over. Mostly to me because I’m the kind of the vision or the face of the fund, even though we’re four partners, we’re 10 investors, we’re 35, so we’re pretty big. And it is still 15 % of the deals we do.

Yeah, a bit more, like 17%, but whatever. 15%, 20 % of the deals we do come from the cold inbound channel. And while they’re lower quality on average, some of the more interesting deals come from that channel because it’s like amazing founders. They just happen to not come from Sanford and live in SF. They’re in like Albany, New York, or they’re not in Sao Paulo, they’re in Palo Horizonte, and they didn’t go to the right schools. They don’t have connectivity. Of course, it’s better to get a warm inbound, but if we don’t have it, that’s fine too.

And so we see through any deals, we take calls about 50. The other 250 are often completely out of scope, biotech, hardware, et cetera. If there’s not a marketplace network effect type dynamic, we’ll do any industry, but it has to have that. So if you’re telling me you’re building a marketplace for something in space, that’s fine. But if you’re building rockets, we’re less likely to invest. And same thing in biotech, a marketplace for labor in biotech, no problem at all.

for buying or selling components, but if you’re just building a biotech company, not for us. A lot of Out of Scope, a lot is also just too early. Look, we do do pre-seed and pre-launch, but because we don’t invest in competitors, if eight people were pitching us the same idea at the same time, we want to wait until one of them emerge as the early leader before we pull the trigger, because if we’re wrong on the bet in pre-seed, then we’ve shot ourselves out of the category completely.

So we’re more likely to wait until C or A than do pre-seed unless you’re a second time founder or third time founder, and we’ve backed you before, then we’ll do pre-seed. But our pre-seed bar is very, very high. And so we take these 50 calls a week with a 10 % investment team. It’s a one-hour call. We evaluate the four things I discussed. We have a two-hour investment committee meeting on Tuesday, every Tuesday, from 10 to 12. We review the 50 deals. We take a second call with maybe 10 other companies.

Fabrice Grinda (50:52.914)

One of the four partners will take many of the calls, but I’ll take maybe half of them. And at the end of that, we invest in about three new companies for a week. So 300 becomes three. So it’s 1%. It’s 150 new investments per year, not including the follow-ons and the companies we already invested in. And of course, so we have a separate investment committee every week for whatever companies in the portfolio are raising, going public, going bankrupt, whatever, when we decide what to do. And we treat those as net new investments.

Knowing what we know now, the team of the company of the opportunity would we invest in? The answer is yes, we write a check, the answer is no, we do nothing, or if a secondary is available, we might take a secondary opportunity on the way up. And so that’s another maybe 7,500 investments a year. So total, we end up doing two to 300 investments a year, of which 150 are net new on average.

Harrison Faull (51:44.158)

Wow, you’re a busy man. But that is amazing. It’s great to see someone deploying at such scale, at such velocity, because the ecosystem need it. And they’re going to be able to leverage the ones that do pass the benchmarks that you require to get in as an investor, to get you on board, get such great value out there. It’s just,

Fabrice Grinda (51:45.914)

Hey

Fabrice Grinda (52:08.528)

Yeah, and look, and by the way, this is not because I decided, this is the best top-down way to maximize portfolio construction. It’s more a reflection of the founder, my partner Jose, and frankly, the other partners’ personality in us. It’s like, we meet people we like, we want to back them. And each founder is really tackling a problem. There’s so many problems. Like when you say climate change, it’s not one problem. It’s 1,000 problems. It’s like emissions at a cement.

factory at submissions when you’re extracting mineral. mean, it’s it’s a billion different sub problems and each founder is tackling one of them. And there’s as many, there are multiple entrepreneurs and solutions per problem out there. And so there’s a million or thousands of founders we want to back. And so it’s really reflection of personality, even though actually a diversified portfolio leads to the best returns in the business because of the power law nature of venture.

Harrison Faull (53:00.074)

No, it’s a passion. You’re pulling it through. I’m sure you convinced your LPs that they know exactly what you guys are doing, what you’re trying to build, and they’re on board with that journey. Flipping back to founders and advice to founders, given your experience with marketplaces, are there like three top pieces of advice that you’d give a founder who wants to build in the next marketplace for something. What should they bear in mind from day zero?

Fabrice Grinda (53:27.452)

first thing is it’s easier to build than ever before. So don’t overthink it. Just launch and build it. I’d probably build on Shopify, even though Shopify is more for e-commerce than marketplace. And you can then build the seller component on top of it. Don’t overthink the tech. Just keep it simple. Literally, I could probably build any marketplace today if I’m for less than $15k in like a month. Use Shopify. have companies doing hundreds of millions of GMV in revenues on Shopify. It’s not a problem.

It’s not where the key success factor is. The key success is can you make the unit economics work? Can you acquire the sellers and the buyers? Can you match them? Second big recommendation, probably the number one mistake marketplace founders make is they overwhelm their marketplace with supply. so when you start a marketplace, 99 % of the case you’re going to start with the sellers because they’re financially motivated by the platform.

If you kind of go to anyone in any category, it doesn’t matter where they’re selling. They could be selling a service, could be selling a product, and you’re like, hey, I’m creating this store. It’s free for you to be on it. I may have buyers for you. Do you want to be there? Everyone’s going to say yes. Like there’s a very limited cost for them to be on it. But if you just take everyone and you have infinite supply and you don’t have any buyers, then

Fabrice Grinda (54:47.026)

None of these are going to get any value out of your marketplace and they’re not going to have buyers. As a result, they’re not going to be active. They’re going to churn. If I wanted to build a locksmith marketplace in New York City, I don’t need locksmith there in New York. A couple thousand? I could probably call every one of them in a month and get them on a platform, but I’m going to have no demand for them. So they’re all going to churn. If someone places an order, they’re not going to reply. They’re not going be engaged in the platform. So instead, what you should do is you get the very best supply, a good price,

Good operator, depends if it’s a product or a service, but like the very best seller for that product category. And then like a limited quantity, and then you go find them a buyer, you know, spend money. And it doesn’t, I also don’t care what the channel could be. It could be influencers, be TikTok, could be Facebook, could be Google, could be sales team, could be inbound, irrelevant. Just make sure that the economics work. So you find them a buyer and you make them happy. And then they scale the amount of time and products that they put in your platform relative to others.

And once you’ve reached kind of saturated them, then you bring the next seller and you keep scaling your supply and your demand in parallel. You don’t massively scale one side before the other, unless there’s value in having more items, which are some categories you need a critical mass of items before you can actually attract buyers. Otherwise you’re going to overwhelm your supply side. Nothing’s going to convert. The sellers are not going be engaged and everyone’s going to churn. You basically, you’ve drowned your marketplace and you’ve killed all chance of liquidity.

So really scale up the supply and demand in parallel, making sure both sides are happy at all times.

Harrison Faull (56:20.188)

That’s great advice and not something that might become as intuitive to someone that hasn’t built a marketplace before. So thank you very much. Okay, so that’s the founder that hasn’t started. The founder that has started who’s not seeing the cohort performance,

Harrison Faull (56:43.698)

Okay, thank you. Okay, so that’s fantastic advice for the MVP, the founder that’s just about to start their marketplace. When it comes to a founder that actually has taken that step, has taken that leap, they’ve got a marketplace going, they’re seeing some growth, they’re seeing some traction, but maybe their cohort performance is not improving over time. They’re not seeing that next user purchase more frequently. Do you have any advice on what to do then?

Fabrice Grinda (57:13.074)

So obviously finding product market fit is the number one thing that kills or at least success in startups. All I would say is, look, if you’re 20 % away, you’re going to figure it out. You’re going to change the funnels in a way that you can get there. You’re going to get optimizations in your marketing channels, et cetera. If you’re 10x away, you’re probably not going to get there with whatever it is you’re doing today. You need to change something pretty radical. Product, user experience, business model.

distribution strategy, et cetera. if you’re far away from it, probably not going to get there, which is OK. You use that lesson and pivot into something else. And if you’re close, just keep iterating on whatever current approach you’re doing. Now, there are some things you need to realize is something solve themselves automatically through scale. So imagine your economics are underwater because you’re paying the delivery people or they’re being paid on the marketplace $15 an hour, and you’re doing one delivery an hour.

But at scale, you can easily imagine that’ll be three deliveries an hour, and so $5 a delivery, not 15. And there the economics work. Then you can still articulate why you’re going to get there. Now, understand this. VCs like me, want to growth. obviously, we’re not going to fund profitable growth, but not profitable as in you reach underlying profitability. Profitable, you did economic growth. So the objective of your seed is to go to your A. The objective of your A is to go to your B. And from B, then you can go to full-blown profitability.

But let’s say you’re a consumer facing marketplace with like a 15 % take rate. At seed, you’re probably raising the median right now, three and nine pre, and we expect you to be doing 150k with the GMV. And with that, again, 15 % take rate. So if you’re at 5 % take rate, you need to be 4x bigger or whatever, 3x bigger. With that, we expect you to be at 750k in GMV with a 15 % take rate in good union economics, like 66 % margin, let’s say.

for your A. And with that you get whatever 2.53 million a month in GMV for your B. Again, with good economics. So cohorts, we expect the cohorts to improve over time. So the more you go on, the more valuable your marketplace, typically the more valuable the community is, the more items you have, the easier it is transact. And so we would expect new users come in to buy faster, to buy more.

Fabrice Grinda (59:38.643)

and to have a retention that is higher. And so if pretty quickly you see that the new chords are worse than the old chords, it probably, may mean the market is swelter than you think it is because it suggests that you already got all the early adopters and then the rest are not that excited or interested in the category. yeah, chord analysis matters a lot. LTV to CAC models matter a lot. And also making sure you have density in your acquisition channels because

If you’re doing Google almost totally fine, make sure that you can spend not just $100K a month, but like $1 million a month, or $5 million a month, and then you keep scaling. You have proper network effects when your cat goes down over time. If you have real network effects, you start getting more and more organic growth. So your blended cat should actually be declining over time as you scale. If your cat keeps going up and up and up, again, it probably means either you don’t have network effects or the market is more capped than you thought it was.

Harrison Faull (01:00:35.072)

Incredible advice. Thank you. Okay. With this AI boom and tools that are so easy for people to code now, is there anything particularly exciting about applying AI to marketplaces that you’re seeing happen today that hasn’t happened before that could reinvent space or just help that founder put fuel on the fire?

Fabrice Grinda (01:00:58.534)

Well, first of all, every founder should be using AI to improve productivity in their startup. Like customer care, productivity can improve dramatically with AI. Sales, productivity can improve dramatically with AI. Programmer productivity improves dramatically with AI. So you should be using the AI tools. I I take that as a given. Now you could also use AI to improve marketplace flows pretty dramatically. In some categories, now you could just take a photo and the AI can detect the item.

Fabrice Grinda (01:01:27.58)

pick a title, write a description, select the category, select the price, say if it’s real or fake, like poof, in like three photos, 20 seconds, you have a listing. Compare that to the old school way of doing it on eBay, where you do all that work for yourself. It’s like 10 minutes to put a listing, plus you put a credit card details, et cetera. So you should definitely use AI to improve buyer and seller flows to the point that you increase conversion rates, basically.

Fabrice Grinda (01:01:55.739)

In some categories, it’s very easy to do, like trading cards or collectibles where the items can be recognized or unique. In some categories, it’s less easy to do and may not be in the incumbents, rather in a better position to do it than the startups because they have the data. So Rebag, which is a handbag marketplace, has all the data of all the handbags which one are fake or real and what price based on the level of scratches and et cetera. And so they’ve created their AI called Clair to help you list your handbag.

They can do it, but if you were just a startup starting, probably you don’t have the data to be able to do that. But there’s also third party AI tools that can help on the marketplace. So we’re investors in a company called PhotoRoom. And what PhotoRoom does is you take photo of an item, it detects the type of item it is, and based on the marketplace you want to sell it on, it’ll change the background image of your photo to maximize the conversion and sell through rate. So sometimes it’ll put a white background, sometimes it’ll put a nature or whatever. mean, so there’s a lot that can be done from an AI perspective.

And of course, depending on the search behavior, you can improve your search and your recommended listings like, you like this, you may also like this, through AI in a pretty dramatic way. these are the most fundamental ways to use AI in marketplaces.

Harrison Faull (01:03:09.843)

I really like the idea of investing maybe into a startup that needs marketplaces as a customer. So that photo room, obviously you can give them instant scale. You’ve got 1100 portfolio companies, many of which are marketplaces. Bam, instant go to market strategy.

Fabrice Grinda (01:03:21.266)

Exactly. We’re investors in TopSort. TopSort helps marketplaces monetize by selling ads to their own sellers, kind of like Instacart or on Amazon right now. You can buy ads as an Amazon seller. And so it increases your take rate and it’s very high profitable, very profitable. And so we invest in that and of course then we send it to all portfolio companies and it’s win-win. TopSort gets all of our marketplaces as customers and the customers get higher GMB take rate. So it’s amazing.

Harrison Faull (01:03:51.694)

Incredible. Look, Fabrice, I know we’ve already gone over, so let’s wrap things up and just end by saying thank you very much for your time. The wisdom is incredible. For the founders out there that want to approach you, want to get investment from FJ Labs, where would you prefer that they send you DealFlow?

Fabrice Grinda (01:04:10.652)

So if you want to learn more about my thinking, read my blog, fabricegrinda.com. You can actually talk to my AI, fabriceai, at fabricegrinda.com. So fabriceai.fabricegrinda.com to ask any questions you may have and that you approach me directly to send me deals. The best way is to send me a LinkedIn in-mail. And in that message, though, make sure you describe what the startup is, what traction you have, include a deck. Basically, give me every information I need to decide whether it’s for us or

If you just say, I have an amazing story, I’d like to talk to you about it, you will not get a reply.

Harrison Faull (01:04:44.0)

Thank you very much.

Midas Liquid Yield 代币 (LYT):代币化收益策略的新时代

稳定币被誉为加密货币生态系统的基石,可在动荡的市场中提供稳定性,并有望彻底改变支付轨道。然而,在表面之下,稳定币供应的根本原因是链上收益率。

在过去的两个市场周期中,稳定币供应量的扩大和收缩都与收益率直接相关。当链上收益率超过美国国库券(T-Bills)时,稳定币需求激增–最明显的是在 DeFi Summer 之后,总供应量在短短两年内从不到 100 亿美元激增到超过 1500 亿美元 。相比之下,当链上收益率低于美元无风险利率时,稳定币供应就会迅速萎缩,22 年第 1 季度到 23 年第 3 季度的跌幅就说明了这一点。近期增长的原因是加密货币市场的等价交换导致链上收益率居高不下。

资料来源DeFiLlama

问题:稳定币并不稳定
为了寻求收益,稳定币已经发展成为链上对冲基金策略 (”收益型 “稳定币),如 Ethena 和其他公司的发展所示。在这种结构中,收益通过两个代币进行分配–一个是传统的稳定币,它可以被注入到第二个代币中,以获得底层抵押品的收益。之所以出现这种结构,是因为发行 “稳定 “币可以避免被归类为证券或集体投资计划,而这需要监管部门的批准。

通过将这些产品定性为 “准稳定币”,发行者可以钻监管的空子–然而,这是以引入系统性风险为代价的,包括

  • 脱钩事件–如果投资组合表现不佳,流动性短缺会迫使发行商进行火售,从而破坏整个生态系统的稳定。
  • 激励机制错位–发行商为了吸引 TVL 而追求更高的收益率,往往将投资组合推向风险更高的资产。
  • 监管的不确定性–将对冲基金策略包装成 “准稳定币 “会带来合规风险,使投资者对相关资产没有法律界定的债权。

正如 Steakhouse Financial 在其《稳定币手册》中指出的那样:

“稳定币受到流动性和偿付能力的限制。要发挥作用,稳定币必须满足这两个硬约束”。

然而,有收益的稳定币本身就对这些限制造成了压力。吸引 TVL 的竞争会导致两种系统性后果:

  1. 挤占相同的收益机会,降低回报率
  2. 系统脆弱性增加,脱钩风险加大

后果:回报降低,系统风险增加

通过设定 1 美元的负债可投资的有收益稳定币在技术上被限制为零期限抵押品。这就将所有发行者的资产注入相同的交易中,导致收益递减。从历史上看,拥挤交易,如商品市场的基差交易,一直表现不佳。学术界对市场挤兑的影响进行了广泛研究,研究结果表明,市场挤兑会导致较高风险下的较低回报。例如,商品市场的基差交易在 24 年间一直导致较低的回报率。

资料来源来源:《拥挤与要素回报》,作者:康文津、K. Geert Rouwenhorst 和 Ke Tang

对收益率的不懈追求将稳定币发行商推向了风险曲线的更高点。在此过程中,它们引入了系统脆弱性,抵押品池中的一个薄弱环节就可能导致连锁性故障。

此外,稳定币发行商依靠杠杆和再抵押来推动采用。这就形成了一个系统,抵押品结构中的一个部分受到压力,就会引发连锁故障。2022 StETH 折扣UST 崩溃以及最近的 USD0++ 和 USDz 脱钩都反映了这种脆弱性。


解决方案:流动收益代币(LYT)

Midas,我们构建了一种全新的代币化收益方法–液体收益代币(LYT)

LYT 没有将收益率强加给脆弱的稳定币包装,而是为链上投资策略引入了一个专用框架:

  • 浮动参考价值–与稳定币不同,LYTs 没有固定的 1 美元挂钩。其价值根据表现波动,消除了脱钩风险。
  • 扩大投资范围 – 取消 1 美元的负债限制,可以获得更广泛的收益资产,优化风险调整后的回报。
  • 专业风险管理– 每个 LYT 都由机构级风险管理者进行积极管理,并根据市场情况进行动态调整。
  • 共享流动性和自动赎回– LYT 共享一个共同的流动性池,无需分散的 LP,实现 DeFi 的无缝整合。
  • 奖励规模化种植– LYT 持有者可从 Plume、Etherlink 和 TAC 等协议的额外奖励中获益。

流动收益代币(LYT)如何运作

Liquid Yield 代币 (LYT)是通过 Midas 的开放式可组合基础设施发行的。这种方法将发行者和风险管理者的角色分离开来,使用户能够从定制的风险控制中获益。

每个代币的抵押品都由专门的风险经理管理,他们根据特定的授权进行操作,并在链上透明地报告。风险经理将抵押品动态分配给最佳机会,适应不断变化的市场条件,在管理风险的同时获取阿尔法。

LYT 通过Midas 开放、可组合的基础设施发行。与稳定币不同,LYT 代币明确区分了发行者和风险管理者的角色。每个 LYT 都由专门的风险管理者管理,他们将抵押品动态分配给最佳风险回报策略。

每个 LYT 都是作为无权限的 ERC-20 代币发行的,因此完全可以与更广泛的 DeFi 生态系统兼容。

在所有 LYTs 中,Midas 采用了共享流动性池以实现即时赎回。LYT 不需要流动性挖掘奖励,而是专为资本效率扩展和深度 DeFi 整合而设计。MorphoEulerAnja等协议已经支持 LYT。


介绍三个新的 LYT

今天,我们将推出mRE7YIELDmEDGEmMEV,每家公司都由顶级公司进行风险评估。

mRE7YIELD – 由 RE7 Capital 管理风险

RE7 Capital 是一家以研究为导向的数字资产投资公司,专注于 DeFi 收益和流动阿尔法策略。mRE7YIELD 采用成熟的机构级方法,积极管理结构性收益产品。

  • 当前年利率:20.83
  • 机构级结构性收益战略
  • 积极管理,捕捉市场低效

mEDGE – 由边缘资本进行风险管理

Edge Capital 是一家领先的数字资产对冲基金和 DeFi 流动性提供商,为机构投资者和加密基金会管理资本。其市场中性策略旨在产生稳定的高风险调整回报。

  • 当前年利率:20.12
  • 2.3 亿美元以上资产管理
  • 经审计的四年业绩记录,夏普比率为 3.5

mMEV – 由 MEV Capital 进行风险管理

MEV Capital 是一家专门从事风险管理、DeFi-native 收益提取策略的投资公司。凭借在流动性供应和结构性收益产品方面的专业知识,它为分散市场提供了获取高收益的机会。

  • 当前年利率:17.53
  • 3.5 亿美元以上资产管理规模
  • 多个连锁店中 10 多个精心策划的公共保险库

您还可以在我们的Twitter 线程LinkedIn 帖子中找到有关流动收益代币 (LYT) 工作原理的简要概述。

有关媒体报道,请查看The BlockCoindesk 上的新闻稿。

我们欢迎您提出任何问题或反馈意见。

独角兽面包店对话:B2B 和 B2C 市场的 2025 年趋势

我有幸与 Unicorn Bakery 的Fabian Tausch进行了交谈。我们讨论了风险投资市场的现状、B2B 市场的崛起、人工智能对初创企业的影响,以及为什么许多公司仍然难以实现首次公开募股。

我们讨论了

  • 为什么风险投资市场在多年停滞后,于 2025 年开始复苏?
  • B2B 市场如何改变行业,以及为什么它们仍处于早期阶段。
  • 人工智能在提高市场效率和重新定义商业模式方面的作用。
  • 为什么 IPO 仍然充满挑战,公司上市需要做出哪些改变?
  • 创始人如何在市场中建立防御能力并创造网络效应。
  • 2025 年的主要趋势包括即时商务、跨境市场和中小企业数字化。

章节:

(00:00:00)法布里斯在撰写论文时会考虑哪些时间框架?

(00:02:20) 2024 年的 “回顾-感想 “与 2025 年的 “展望

(00:07:11)要使IPO市场重新具有吸引力,必须改变什么?

(00:10:38)市场动态如何改变风险投资行业?

(00:16:23) 新业务的当前趋势

(00:29:52) 人工智能对可防御性的影响

(00:35:06) 如今创办市场会遇到的障碍

如果您愿意,可以通过嵌入式播客播放器收听本期节目。

除了上述 YouTube 视频和嵌入式播客播放器,您还可以在iTunesSpotify 上收听播客。


文字稿

法比安-陶施

[0:00] 欢迎收看新一期的《独角兽面包店》。今天我们将探讨市场和展望 2025 年,因为这一年正在加速,一切都回到了正轨,每个人都在重新工作。因此,我决定请来法布里斯-格林达格(Fabrice Grindag)。迄今为止,法布里斯与 FJ Labs 一起完成了 1192 项投资,他可能是谈论市场平台的最佳人选。FJ Labs 3 是一个即将结束的基金、我现在称其为 FJ4,因为它更快地结束了超过 355 次的退出,确切地说,包括部分退出,这可能是我在过去几年中听到的最荒唐的故事之一,可能用词不当,但却是最荒唐的故事之一,也是最独特的角色之一,即使背后有一个我认识的庞大团队,因此我认为 Fabrice 我们今天必须谈谈市场平台,我非常高兴你能再次参加节目,谢谢。

法布里斯-格林达

[0:57] 感谢您邀请我

法比安-陶施

[0:58] 所以,你自己也是创始人,现在你在投资,你是如何评估的,就像你知道这两个角度,你是如何评估一年的时间框架,你看,当你做出决定,并建立论文的论文,所以我们是我。

法布里斯-格林达

[1:14] 自下而上型基金的意思是,我们没有预先构建投资组合,比如我们想投资很多公司,而且必须以这个为主题。我认为更多的是,如果我们遇到我们喜欢的创始人,我们就投资。如果不喜欢,就不投。在 21 年这样的年份,我们觉得所有东西都被高估了,我们投资的公司就少了。而在 23 或 24 年这样的年份,除了人工智能之外,市场都比较低迷,我们却疯狂投资,因为我们觉得机会很大。我们的理论也是类似的。我们有自己的视角,我们看到了趋势和公司的发展。我们看到了趋势的演变,因为新的创始人提出了新的模式和方法,随着时间的推移,我们的论点也在不断演变。我们看到市场平台从双承诺模式开始,然后变得更加垂直化,所以它们是水平市场平台和垂直市场平台,然后它们是管理市场平台,然后我们有了市场精选型市场平台。

法比安-陶施

[2:20] 2025年的情绪如何?为了深入探讨这个问题,当你回顾 2024 年时,…回顾2024年的情绪,然后在此基础上展望2025年。

法布里斯-格林达

[2:34] 让我来谈谈风险投资领域的大环境,21 年当然是一个泡沫年,一切都很泡沫化,一切都被高估了,随着利率上升,因为风险投资是一种风险资产,所以出现了大规模的裁员,风险投资实质上一直处于衰退甚至萧条之中,甚至在过去几年里一直处于寒冬之中。因此,在23和24年,风险投资总额从高峰到低谷下降了66%到75%。当然,也许 21 年的峰值被高估了,但随着投资数量的减少、支票规模的缩小,以及基本上没有退出和流动性的获得,风险投资正在大规模缩减。所以说,这是一个双城记。整个风险投资行业就像深陷低谷。而人工智能领域则异常火热,充满泡沫,而且仍在继续。因此,我实际上认为,如果回顾24年,我预计深度科技衰退会持续下去,而它一直在持续。利率居高不下。流动性机会仍然有限。

法布里斯-格林达

[3:41] 并购受到限制的部分原因是,公司在人工智能之外的现金并不充裕,而且并购主要受到监管制度的抑制。美国证券交易委员会(SEC)、美国联邦贸易委员会(FTC)、美国联邦通信委员会(FCC)等机构基本上限制了大量并购。因此,大公司不会收购其他公司,IPO 市场也一直处于关闭状态。因此没有流动性。许多 LP 觉得风险投资风险过大。因此,除人工智能外,风险投资整体上一直处于低迷状态。在人工智能领域,许多人看到了开放式人工智能的迅猛发展。他们觉得自己会错失良机,而且他们基本上没有全身心投入,一直都是人工智能,并没有真正理解他们在投资什么,也没有区分那些并不那么神奇的神奇产品,他们往往投资于我认为还不错的工具,但就像联合飞行员或其他什么的,但它们并没有真正的差异化。它们没有差异化的数据集、差异化的法律硕士,没有可行的商业模式,最糟糕的是,估值太疯狂了。因此,我认为,尽管人工智能将改变我们的世界,但在人工智能投资领域,总有一天会迎来清算之日。但事实并非如此,人工智能领域一直是泡沫,其他领域则是低迷。现在是 25、

法布里斯-格林达

[4:50] 事实上,宏观形势一直不错。我们降低了通胀,实现了充分就业,经济增长和生产率增长也相当不错。现在,当我展望 2025 年时,我猜想会有更多的相同之处。宏观方面,我们不再处于宏观驱动的环境中。我们正处在一个略微降低利率的环境中,这个环境更温和一些。在合理的低通胀、高就业率、低失业率和相当不错的生产率增长之间,总体基本面仍然相当不错。我希望,并购市场和首次公开募股市场开始重新开放,我们最终能看到投资组合中最优秀的公司退出。我认为这将从 25 年开始,一直持续到 26 年,并希望在 26 年和 27 年加速。因此,我认为,2025 年,除人工智能外,风险投资市场将大规模或开始走出低谷。因此,我实际上比过去更看好 25 和 26 年的风险投资市场。是的,我在这里暂停一下。

法比安-陶施

[5:56] 在风险投资市场重新开始加速发展之前,退出是否必须首先发生?还是说,由于预期这将在 25、26 或 27 年发生,比如确切的日期,每个人都更有可能,LP 也更有可能再次向基金投资?那么,这里的动态是什么?

法布里斯-格林达

[6:17] 我认为两者都有。很明显,随着退出的发生,LPs 获得了流动性,他们更愿意向风险基金重开支票。但总的来说,由于其他资产类别,尤其是公开市场,表现相当不错,因此存在一定程度的流动性,利率也开始下降。因此,我猜测,即使没有退出的早期迹象,相对于 23 和 24 年,25 年的风险投资和风险投资也会有更大的增长空间。很明显,退出会加速风险投资的发展,但如果退出还没有出现,我认为也没有关系。

法比安-陶施

[6:55] 我最近和凯文-哈茨(Kevin Hartz)做了一期简短的节目,你可能也认识他,凯文说目前没有上市的动力,这就是我们正在讨论的问题。他还说很快就不会有了。我就想,为什么一开始没有,你同意吗,我觉得这是第一个问题。第二个问题是,需要改变什么,才能让首次公开募股市场再次对你提到的优秀公司更具吸引力,你说,嘿,我们投资组合中最好的公司目前还没有退出或首次公开募股。那么,需要改变什么呢?

法布里斯-格林达

[7:30] 人们不想上市有不同的原因。首先,如果我们是投资组合中最优秀的公司,而且你的复合增长率非常快,你就没有理由上市,对吗?如果你是 SpaceX 或 Stripe,而且你已经可以通过二级市场获得流动性,投资者正在向你抛出资金,不管你已经价值数千亿美元(就 SpaceX 而言)……那么推迟首次公开募股可能是合理的,尤其是因为你不想面对上市的所有弊端,不想让所有的信息公开,不想遵守 404 条款和 SOX 法案,不想面对所有的监管制度和上市带来的痛苦。因此,我想我们在 2007 年就间接投资了 SpaceX 公司,现在已经过去了 18 年,不知道有多少年了,17 年了,他们仍然没有上市,也不会很快上市。有些公司无法真正上市,因为它们在 21 世纪以非常高的价格筹集资金。而如今,公开市场的估值实际上低于私营品牌。因此,对它们来说,上市并不吸引人,除非它们确实需要资金,而且它们被私人市场淘汰了。但坦率地说,它们也许不是最佳人选。但是,我认为有一些公司已经准备好上市了。

法布里斯-格林达

[8:49] 相对于上一轮融资,他们的价格还算合理,而且上市对他们的投资者、创始人和 LP 来说是一个流动性事件。另外,他们的上市时间已经够晚了,实际上,他们现在已经是 G 轮融资了。因此,也许在私人市场上没有更多的资本真正有意义了。对于这些公司,我认为上市是有意义的。像 ShipBob 或 Flexport 或 Klarna 这样的公司,我认为它们会在 25 或 26 年的某个时候上市。话虽如此,但上市有意义的公司范围比较有限。现在,有什么办法能让上市在成本和监督方面都不那么繁琐呢? 也许吧

法布里斯-格林达

[9:32] 除非你的身价达到 50 亿美元以上,否则上市是毫无意义的。否则,你就没有流动性,也没有无尽的保障。而这在过去是非常不同的。我认为微软上市时的市值是 2.6 亿美元。如果你今天的市值是 3.6 亿美元,你就无力上市。上市每年要花费几百万美元,而且没有保障和流动性。那么,我们是否要再次降低这个价格呢?也许吧,在这种情况下,这需要一个相当深刻的制度、监管制度的变革,而我认为这是不可能的。因此,我认为至少在美国,上市的门槛仍然会很高。没关系。我认为这是对公共市场投资者和普通大众的一种保护,当他们购买袜子时,他们不会购买坏公司。不过,这也意味着他们可能会被高增长公司拒之门外,而大多数高增长公司都是在私人市场上出现的。一旦它们不再是高增长公司,它们就会上市。因此,如果你是公共市场的投资者,这就有点糟糕了,因为这意味着大部分价值都由像我这样的私人投资者获得。从结构角度看,情况就是这样。

法比安-陶施

[10:38] 对于像你们这样经营基金的人来说,整个动态意味着什么?这些基金通常以 10 加 2 为基础运作,因此 10 年的投资期限可以稍作调整和延长。但是,看到所有这些动态都在改变公司的生命周期,直到未来发生流动性事件,这会给风险投资行业带来什么变化?

法布里斯-格林达

[11:05] 从投资到退出的时间急剧延长。在过去的 20 年里,它一直在增长。是的,今天,如果你投资种子公司,对于最优秀的公司来说,你可能会超过 12 年,即 10 年加 2 年。而且,你还必须从你的 LPAs 那里获得进一步延长的信函。事实上,这样做也许是有道理的,因为它们的复合增长率很高,你不想过早退出。从风险投资行业的角度来看,问题在于投资回报率(DPI)一直很低,因此,我们在发展过程中获得了多少退出资金,募集资金和获得资金之间的时间差,可能会有三个基金的滞后。我们现在正处于第四期基金,即将在 25% 的第一季度募集。

法布里斯-格林达

[11:56] 我们的一号基金现已全部分配完毕,这意味着我们已经返还了 1 倍的资本。因此,从某种程度上说,一号基金退出后,我们的DPI处于前十位。因此,大多数基金从投资到退出之间可能会有四、五、六个基金的滞后期,这是一个巨大的负现金流。不过,这对我们这样的人来说意味着什么呢?我们之所以能够在某种程度上摆脱高DPI,是因为我们开的是小额支票。我们通过二级市场获得了大量的退出机会。因此,二级市场实际上已经爆炸了。因此,风险投资的一个大趋势是,无论是公司还是基金,都有越来越多的二级市场。有新的投资者从其他 LP 手中购买全额头寸或 LP 头寸,尤其是后期基金或已部署 10 年、12 年或更长时间的基金。此外,还有人购买基金 GP 的头寸。因此,二级基金的规模越来越大。随着人们对流动性的追求,Forge、Equities、InsurancePost、纳斯达克、私人市场等二级市场也变得越来越大。所以这是一个大趋势。我认为,现在投资二级市场基金很有意义,因为流动性正在溢价。因此,你既可以以很好的折扣价买入公司的头寸,也可以以很大的折扣价买入好基金的头寸,比如那些希望获得流动性的人以资产净值的 40%、50%、60% 的折扣价买入。

法比安-陶施

[13:26] 这对作为创始人的我应该如何确定我想要接纳的投资者有什么影响?

法布里斯-格林达

[13:34] 一般来说,首先,挑选大使就像结婚,对吗?他们是你的首席大使。他们是你的董事会成员。你将永远和他们在一起。因此,要挑选一个喜欢你、了解你在做什么、支持你、无论顺境逆境都会与你同舟共济的人。从风险投资公司的资本结构来看,我选择的风险投资公司基本上都是长期投资者。无论他们是在 5 年、10 年还是 15 年后退出,在某种程度上,这对他们来说都无关紧要。因此,你不会被逼着提前退出。当然,拥有无限长期资本的老牌公司可能是最好的选择。Benchmark、红杉,这些品牌公司的基金拥有长期承诺资本,他们不会急于退出。事实上,他们已经将自己的基金从私募基金转变为公私基金,可以永久持有公共证券。要知道,这就是红杉不是爱尔兰共和军的原因。但这有那么重要吗?我认为一般来说,并不重要。大多数风险投资公司都会独立制定自己的资本结构,让创始人见面,对吗?就像在一天结束时,你最不想做的事情就是强迫一家公司过早出售,因为它是复利的。所以我不太担心。顺便说一句,我们 FJ 的 DPI 很高,是因为我们拥有这些公司 2-3% 的股份。我们可以去找第二家公司。事实上,很多风险投资人都会问我们,嘿,你介意卖掉一部分股份吗?我们想要更多的向上运行的所有权。因此,创始人会问我们是否愿意出售。

法布里斯-格林达

[15:02] 但如果你是领头风险投资人,拥有公司 20% 的股份,并且是董事会成员,你就不能做二级投资。因为如果你试图出售,那就是一个负面信号。他们对公司有什么了解是我们不知道的?这样就会毁了公司因此,这种方法对领头风险投资并不奏效。他们需要等到首次公开募股。事实上,他们甚至不能在上市后出售,因为他们拥有公司太多的股份。他们出售的价格会崩溃。因此,对于领头风险投资人来说,他们会被锁定很长一段时间。只有像我们这样持有少量股份的人才能在价格上涨时出售。老实说,我不认为这对创始人有多大改变。只要选择支持你并有资本跟随的人就行。现在,我认为更重要的一点是,风险投资公司能否继续支持你进入种子期、A 期、B 期、C 期等?因为在人工智能之外的世界里,资本已经越来越难获得。因此,你希望成为有足够资金的种子公司,让他们可以进行下一轮融资。因此,在种子基金之前,我不会担心这个问题,因为种子基金就是种子基金,他们不会为你做 A 轮融资,因为他们没有足够的资金。但一旦你进入 A 轮基金,很多基金都会交叉投资,他们会做 A 轮和 B 轮,等等。所以,想想左侧车道吧。他们会做 A、B、C 等。或者 Andreessen 或红杉。唯一的例外是像 Benchmark 这样出色的 A 类专用基金。尽管他们不一定有足够的资金来领导你的 B 基金,但没关系。我还是会选择他们。他们很棒。

法比安-陶施

[16:23] 2024 年,你与 FJ Labs 首次投资了 100 家公司。因此,你考察了成千上万家公司,尤其是市场平台。因此,在评估新企业时,你目前正在识别、观察和关注哪些趋势?现在有哪些事情越来越多地出现在你的视野中,让你觉得 “嘿,2025 年可能是一个机会”,并在市场平台的这一趋势中大显身手?

法布里斯-格林达

[16:52] 我分开说。首先,我们按我们所看到的交易的 1%进行投资。因此,在 100 笔投资中,我们看到了 1 万笔交易或损失。但当然,其中有很多是超出范围的,你知道,我们的发展,等等。因此,我们没有采取,我们采取了300个电话,交易,我们得到了一个星期,我们采取了50个电话。然后我们投资了三个。所以,这就是那种1%。所以,我们只花了电话 像五分之一的那些左右。所以,也许2000。现在,我会把趋势分成两类。一是大趋势,这是我们看到的一个总体类别。然后,比如,为什么不把那些有趣的、可以形成更大趋势的事物归为一类呢?让我来解释一下两者之间的区别。作为一个类别,我们看到的大趋势是 B2B 市场和 B2B 供应链的数字化正在成为一个巨大的趋势。因此,想想你的消费生活,你可以在 DoorDash 或 Uber Eats 上订购食物,15 分钟内就能收到。你可以在 Instacart 上订购杂货。你可以在亚马逊上订购。你可以在一天到两天之间收到所有东西,有时甚至当天就能收到。

法布里斯-格林达

[18:07] 你可以预订 Airbnb。你可以在五分钟内叫到一辆 Uber。你可以在 Booking.com 上预订酒店。在你的消费生活中,数字化已经以一种非常巨大、有意义的方式发生了,软件已经在吞噬这个世界。

法布里斯-格林达

[18:25] 但在 B2E 领域,情况并非如此。无论是大型企业还是中小型企业,都不是这样,对吗?我分别举两个例子。大型企业,比如,如果你想购买石化产品,就没有可用的产品目录。所以,我甚至不是说亚马逊,你现在就有一个。我说的是一个列表,只是一个可用产品的列表。此外,也没有与工厂的连接,无法了解制造能力和延误情况。 没有在线订购。 没有在线支付,没有跟踪,也没有融资。每个行业、每个垂直领域、每个类别都需要这样。现在,我们在所有这些方面的渗透率都低于 5%,通常低于 1%。当我想到这些类型的投入时,我指的是大投入,如汽车零部件、建筑、化工、能源,但也可能是成品。这些都还没有实现数字化。其次,如果你想想中小型企业主的生活,就像一个小店主。想象一下,你拥有一家餐馆。开餐馆的人喜欢做什么?他们喜欢做饭。他们喜欢与顾客闲聊。然而,他们今天要做的工作是什么呢?他们需要创建一个网站。他们需要在谷歌、Yelp 和 TripAdvisor 上回复评论。他们需要建立一个销售点。他们需要记账。他们需要管理库存。

法布里斯-格林达

[19:42] 他们需要发工资。他们需要与 Uber 和 DoorDash 谈判。因此,中小企业数字化,老兄,所有这些中小企业不喜欢做的工作,也是一个大趋势。我给你举几个例子。在中小型企业方面,我们投资了 Slice 公司,该公司帮助比萨店老板管理他们所有的后台办公室。现在该平台上有 20,000 家披萨店,销售额超过十亿,利润丰厚。我们还有为理发店做同样事情的 Freshia。Sense 也为洗衣店或干洗公司提供同样的服务。我们还有一家为水疗中心和普通瑜伽馆等提供服务,比如 “寒冷时刻 “等。因此,我们正在进行垂直化。在投入方面,我们在诺迪为石油化工企业提供服务。在德国,我们与一家名为 ShootFlix 的公司合作,这是一个三方市场,目的是获取砾石。

法布里斯-格林达

[20:33] 我们在材料银行,我是说,在其他许多地方。我认为,B2B 行业的另外三个趋势是将供应链迁出中国。我想这是一个大趋势,我称之为 “法国转移”,尤其是转移到印度。举例来说,如果你是 H&M 的老板,你想购买服装,你想在印度购买,问题是在印度,有成千上万的小型生产商。这些小制造商想做什么呢?他们只想生产。他们不知道如何输入 RFQ。他们不知道如何开具发票、制作原型等。因此,像 Ziad 这样的市场将为他们完成所有这些工作。因此,我们投资了所有这些市场平台,帮助供应链走出中国,主要进入印度,但显然也包括墨西哥、越南、菲律宾、印度尼西亚等国。

法布里斯-格林达

[21:18] 第四,有大量的劳动力市场。它们的出现是为了支持 B2B 的崛起。因此,我们加入了 WorkRise,这是一个面向所有服务业工人的市场。我们加入了面向欧洲蓝领工人的 Job and Talent。我们加入了针对护士的 Trusted Health。

法布里斯-格林达

[21:39] 最后但并非最不重要的,实际上还有两个,那就是再商业。当然,电子商务现在在消费领域非常流行,实际上也正在进入 B2B 领域,这既是出于降低成本的考虑,也是出于绿色环保的考虑。我们是一家名为 Ghost 的投资公司,它允许你购买多余的库存。所以,你是一家小店,你可以以九折的价格从大品牌的多余库存中购买服装,然后再出售。而在历史上,这是不存在的,因为这些商店不可能购买一百万件。但现在,你可以购买1万件,并让它发挥作用,但至少支持这一切的基础设施还不存在,所以支付基础设施,如stripe或快速自动化机器人机器人化基础设施,如帮助人们实现自动化的formic,或工厂中机器人取代人类劳动力的figure,他们在德国宝马公司用一个年产量9万件、每天工作20小时的机器人取代了25万名机械师,还有像Flexport、ShipBob、Shippo这样的航运公司,甚至还有我们投资的跨境公司,如Portless。所有这些都是 B2B 领域的大趋势。现在,除了这些 B2B 领域的趋势之外、

法布里斯-格林达

[22:50] 我们看到一些有趣的公司正在做一些事情,这表明还会有更多的事情发生。因此,市场的其他大趋势,比方说,跨境商务终于成为现实。想想 Vinted。Vinted 之所以能在这么多国家取得成功,实际上…在过去,当你有像 eBay、Klein & Zagen 这样的分类信息网站时,Klein & Zagen 只在德国发布信息。而 Le Boncoin 只在法国发布信息。而且还不能跨国发货等等。但 Vinted 基本上是将列表、用户之间的聊天翻译成跨境综合运输和跨境综合支付,因此他们首次创建了真正的泛欧市场。他们在欧洲创建的市场让欧洲看起来像美国。它是完全一体化的,一种语言、一种货币、一种一切,但实际上是真实存在的。使用起来非常方便。我很喜欢是啊,他们很成功,对吧?GMB里有60亿用户

法布里斯-格林达

[23:47] 我认为他们在英国和欧洲赚得盆满钵满。巨大。这种情况也发生在其他类别。我们投资了一家名为 Ovoco 的公司,它是立陶宛的汽车零部件市场,在东欧,如波兰和立陶宛等地采购汽车零部件。他们在法国等地也有销售。他们在法国等地的销售也非常火爆。因此,跨境正在成为现实,尤其是在欧洲。欧洲终于开始像美国一样了。下一个大趋势是现场商务。现在,在中国的淘宝网上,25% 的销售额来自视频直播。在美国,这种情况只出现在一个类别中,那就是收藏品。有一家叫 WhatNot 的公司,我们不是它的投资者。他们刚刚获得了 50 亿美元的估值。

法布里斯-格林达

[24:32] 但对于收藏品来说,这是有道理的。但这种情况现在也出现在其他垂直领域。我们是一家名为 “棕榈街 “的公司的投资者。这家公司基本上是在小店里销售稀有植物的专业消费者。他们每周有两期节目,每月销售价值约一万美元的植物,购买这些植物的女性每半年花费约 1800 美元,这非常漂亮,因为人们在讲述植物的来源,或者你如何照顾它等等,这创造了一种丰富的体验,所以实时视频购物终于来到了西方,而这家公司绝对是一鸣惊人,所以我可以想象其他类别,现在他们自己也在扩展其他类别,铁晶体和稀有陶器等。然后,我们看到了新的垂直行业的诞生。我们加入了一家名为 Alpaga 的法国公司,他们正在创建…

法布里斯-格林达

[25:21] 他们是一家 B2B 餐饮设备市场。有趣的是,过去如果你是一家餐馆,你会购买新设备。餐馆经常会倒闭。然后他们会更换菜式,等等。他们拥有这些设备。他们卖不出去,因为很麻烦。无法运输而且更难安装于是,他们建立了一个由服务提供商、运输商和安装商组成的网络。现在,市场开始运转了。他们从酒店、万豪酒店厨房等处获得供应。因此,在现有类别中添加一个服务层,可以从零开始创建一个市场。因此,我们在一些事情上也看到了这一点,比如,我想,绿化是一个大趋势,每个人都想绿化自己的房子。但从历史上看,如果你想绿化你的房子,你会去 Thumbtack 这样的地方,你需要雇佣承包商,他们会给你报价,我们要安装一个热泵。这非常复杂,你需要管理20个标书,然后你通常会被搞砸,投资者是一家名为Tetra的公司,基本上只需要拍几张照片,比如你的系统是什么,他们就会说这是供应商,这是你的价格,然后他们就会为你做,同样的事情,他们在市场上增加了一个服务层,以其他方式销售你安装的热效率或能源效率,他们正在粉碎它,所以我想,增加服务,使复杂的交易行为变得简单,是另一个大趋势。我想我还会给大家介绍一些趋势。新的商业模式正在出现。我们是法国一家名为 “La Bourse Olive “的公司的投资者,这是一个图书市场。

法布里斯-格林达

[26:49] 这里的独特之处在于,他们从图书销售中抽取 90% 的佣金。你会问,为什么有人愿意把90%的佣金让出来?这是因为他们不是在追求价格最大化,而是在追求效率最大化。如果你是新手家长,你有很多书。所以你可以在亚马逊上一本一本地卖,但这很麻烦。你需要扫描、列表、销售、发货。在这里,你基本上可以把所有的书放在一个盒子里,然后寄给他们,就大功告成了。你还能得到10%的折扣,用来购买其他书籍。基本上在一年之内,他们就成为了法国领先的二手书销售商,销售率高达90%。惊人的经济效益,惊人的业务,都集中在便利性上。因此,我们再次看到了新的趋势或通过增加新的方法和便利性来攻击现有类别的方式。人工智能开始出现,我将举两个人工智能的例子,然后我将在趋势方面就此打住。

法布里斯-格林达

[27:46] 人工智能,显然每个人都在用人工智能来做客户服务,每个人都在用人工智能来提高程序员的工作效率。在市场上,我们看到人工智能应用最多的地方是重新定义上市流程,对吗?所以,如果你想在 eBay 上卖东西,你需要一部手机。拍一堆照片,写一个标题,写一段描述,选择一个类别,输入一个价格,然后等上一两个星期,然后它就卖出去了。

法布里斯-格林达

[28:13] 新模式是我们在美国投资的一家公司,名叫 “Hero Stuff”。你只需拍摄几张照片,然后制作一段视频,描述产品。通过人工智能,他们会将你的描述转换成完整的列表。实际上,他们会选择价格、类别、标题和描述。他们会创建一个 15 秒的 TikTok 视频,你可以在你的社交网站上发布。然后他们会在 eBay、Facebook Marketplace 等网站上发布。我们看到现有的公司也在利用他们的数据重塑上市流程。我们正在投资一家名为 Rebag 的手袋市场。他们所做的就是创建了一个名为 “克莱尔 “的人工智能,因为他们拥有所有的数据。你拍几张照片,他们就会告诉你,好吧,这个包是真的。这个包是今年的款式吗?噗,你点击一下,它就卖出去了。一分钟后,你的包就卖出去了,因为他们会以市场价帮你买下,这太不可思议了。因此,我们看到了人工智能用于提高市场效率的新趋势。所以,是的,有很多令人惊叹、令人兴奋的趋势。是的,我希望这些只是开始,以后还会有更多。因此,实时商务将进入其他类别。跨境将超越我举的这两个例子。新的商业模式也将出现,通过增加服务和注重便利性,你可以获得更高的收益率。

法布里斯-格林达

[29:36] 增加服务将开启新的类别,而在过去,这些类别的交易太痛苦了。这些就是 B2B 市场趋势之外的大趋势,正如我所描述的,这是一个大趋势。而我们还处于零起点。因此,所有这些都需要 10 年的时间来实现。

法比安-陶施

[29:52] 很多事情同时发生。因此,你提到的一件事是,每个人都在使用人工智能来增强编程能力,以及在这里和那里。在这里,人工智能提高了公司建设的生产力,增强了产品建设和其他一切,当产品本身的交付和第一个 MVP 以及一切都建立起来时,作为一个市场,你如何建立可防御性,建立可防御性的动力如何因人工智能而改变?

法布里斯-格林达

[30:31] 在过去的 25 年里,建立公司的成本和进入门槛不断下降,这是一个大趋势。当我创建第一家公司时,我需要甲骨文数据库和微软网络服务器。 我需要建立自己的数据中心。 当时没有 AWS,但也没有 Rackspace。后来我们有了开源、MySQL…php,然后我们有了云计算,你可以使用AWS,现在随着新的人工智能革命,你有了无代码低代码,或者人工智能辅助代码,启动一家初创公司的成本比以往任何时候都要便宜和低。如果你是一个面向消费者的市场平台,你不妨使用 shopify,他们有所有的工具,价格便宜,操作简单,你可以嵌入一切你需要的东西,比如跟踪属性测试,一切都在那里。

法比安-陶施

[31:44] 有趣的是,我从没想过这个问题,但这是有道理的。

法布里斯-格林达

[31:46] 是的,当你推出一个市场时,产品并没有护城河,护城河实际上是流动性,是你的执行力,是你获得买家和卖家,是你拥有高净值,是你有效地匹配他们,是你创造了飞轮,更多的买家带来更多的卖家,更多的卖家带来更多的买家,你建立的品牌才是护城河,是你的实际执行力,产品本身无论如何都不是护城河,因为它是可复制的。基本上,在任何垂直行业,任何产品都是可以复制的。最重要的是你的执行力。这就是为什么创意有一定价值,但价值并不大。真正有价值的是执行力。

法比安-陶施

[32:25] 我想你已经谈到了许多话题,但我很想再次把它们结合起来,建立成为第一的品牌,建立供需双方的模式,真正成为我所在行业的第一市场。

法布里斯-格林达

[32:45] 你需要取悦客户。因此,我会从一开始就去找供应商。你去找供货商的原因是,他们有经济动机加入这个平台。所以,你要去找最好的供应商,告诉他们,听着,我们正在推出一个新的市场。我们还没有多少客户,但我们可以免费加入。你们有兴趣加入吗?每个人都会答应。所以,实际上,你可能犯的最大错误就是供应太多。实际上,你只需要非常有限的供应量。然后,你要测试各种营销渠道。可能是销售团队,可能是谷歌,可能是 Tech Talk,这都没关系。你把他们的需求和你匹配起来。

法布里斯-格林达

[33:21] 基本上,根据不同的类别,如果你是一个二手商品交易市场,你希望该商品的销售概率至少达到 25%。如果你是一个服务市场,你希望至少占供应收入的 25%。但你要让他们高兴。你希望供需双方的 NPS 都非常高,通常是通过一定程度的管理和服务层来确保他们都非常满意。一旦你做到了这一点,他们满意了,你的 NPS 高了,卖方和买方都满意了,你就可以再增加几个卖方,然后再增加几个买方,并保持同步扩展。通常,这样就会产生飞轮效应,突然之间,你就会得到网络效应,越来越多的买家会带来更多的卖家,卖家会带来更多的买家。当你的 CAC 开始下降时,你就知道你拥有了飞轮。许多所谓的市场平台并不是市场平台,因为它们花费大量资金购买卖家和买家。它们的规模越大,CAC 就越高。这意味着它们没有网络效应。这意味着有些东西从根本上没有发挥作用。我希望联盟的经济效益非常好。但 “取悦你的第一批客户,继续为他们打造产品,确保他们满意 “这一总体思路不仅适用于市场平台,坦率地说,也适用于每一家初创企业。现在,你在市场上的起步方式可能会因所在市场的不同而不同。也许你需要在一个邮政编码内,但也许你是一个全国性的产品,对吗?那么,你该如何做呢?

法布里斯-格林达

[34:45] 首先,很明显,如果你从事的是服务行业,你可能需要超本地化。如果你销售的是二手商品,也许不需要,尤其是如果这些商品可以运输的话。所以,这真的要视情况而定。但重点是让客户满意,确保他们看到卖家,看到需求。如果他们是买家,他们看到足够多的他们想要的东西,他们可以在这里交易。

法比安-陶施

[35:06] 今天,当我创办一个市场时,我可能会遇到的第一个障碍是什么?

法布里斯-格林达

[35:14] 不管是今天还是 20 年前,你遇到的第一个障碍就是鸡和蛋的问题,即我有一个很棒的网站,很好的用户体验,但我什么都没有。我没有买家,也没有卖家。我该从哪一个开始呢?在 99% 的情况下,我的建议是先从卖家入手,因为他们在经济上有动力加入平台。如果他们在那里,他们就会赚钱。但是,正如我所说的,我将对卖家进行高度筛选,挑选出最优秀的卖家,让他们参与进来,让他们乐于测试,让他们回复买家的要求,让他们满意。公平

法比安-陶施

[35:48] 就时间而言,我认为这是一个非常敏锐、非常密集的观察集,其中有很多趋势,当你在思考这些趋势时,你可以深入研究,这很有意义。我可以从这里挑选一些想法,用在我自己的市场业务上,并在此基础上发展,因为我可以研究不同的行业。所以,我知道你在自己的播客上也做了一集市场趋势,我会把它链接到下面,所以如果有人不能从你那里得到足够的信息,所以我链接了你的linkedin,当然还有FJ实验室和你的播客,还有更多的节目,你应该听所有的节目,例如像外包的那一集,我真的很喜欢,所以Fabrice它一直是这样的快乐,感谢您分享您对2025年市场的所有见解和想法,并期待着很快赶上。

法布里斯-格林达

[36:37] 谢谢你们邀请我。

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