Fabrice Grinda

Comments (4)

VentureVillage did a quick and fun interview following last week’s fun profile of me in the New York Observer:

VV. Any strange feedback to The Observer article?

Grinda. I thought people would ask for my autograph, girls would proposition me in the streets, and extraordinary entrepreneurs would line up for me to invest in their companies. Unfortunately, it was pretty much life as usual. Reading the article did make me extremely grateful to my friends. They said such nice things, I was yet again reminded how lucky I am to have them as friends!

VV. “I like him a lot…Very smart guy,” Gilt CEO Kevin Ryan wrote about you in an email to the Observer journalist, ostensibly “without a trace of annoyance, despite the fact that [you] invested in ripoffs of two of his companies. What did you think of that?

Grinda. I think he realizes that the real value lies in execution rather than the idea. As Edison once said: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. Besides Gilt is itself a copy of the French company Vente Privee. Our entire society is essentially built by resting on the shoulders of the improvements that came before. Even Apple which is seen as a paragon of innovation copies and improves the ideas of others. Steve Jobs often quoted Picasso who said that: “Smart people plagiarize, but geniuses plunder and steal”. Picasso himself was copying Matisse regularly and vice versa. Besides the quote is not particularly original given that Oscar Wilde essentially said the same thing.

VV. The Observer article includes a thorough rundown of your many clones, including not only Aucland but a Booking.com for Russia, a Diapers.com for Germany, a Jetsetter for Turkey, a Stubhub and Eventbrite for Spain and Latin America, a Warby Parker for France, and a Shoedazzle, an Expedia, a Gilt and a PayPal for Brazil. It also suggests you’ve cloned the extroversion of others. Is this true?

Grinda. I have personally observed how our personalities are plastic and can be molded. I essentially forced myself to go from being an introvert to an extrovert. I’ve written the full back story of the transformation on my blog, which could prove useful to anyone trying to do the same.

VV. Your first company, Aucland, was an eBay for France. You’re French. What did you know about French people ahead of time that you took into account when building the company?

Grinda. I was born in Paris and grew up in Nice. I realized that French people had the same need to sell things they no longer used and buy used goods or collectibles as Americans. The details varied relative to the United States: French people traded wine and collectible Asterix comics rather than pez dispensers, but the underlying principle remained the same.

VV. Your former McKinsey colleague and current member of the Isreali Knesset Einat Wilf said of you: “He wants to run the world…He has the notion that he could be an enlightened ruler.” Who is the world’s most enlightened ruler, currently, according to your analytical mind?

Grinda. It’s a difficult question to answer given the political constraints most rulers operate under. Right now, Mario Monti, the current prime minister of Italy, gets my vote. He has had the courage to tell the truth to the electorate about how dire the situation really is, to implement difficult reforms and to face down populist opposition.

You can read the full article at:
http://venturevillage.eu/the-observers-featured-clone-collector-chats-with-venturevillage

Comments (9)

Adrienne Jeffries, the reporter, did a very thorough job. She interviewed many of the CEOs whose companies I backed and many of my close friends for a portrait that I find, in all objectivity of course, to be funny, endearing and accurate.

The article again highlighted how blessed I am to have such amazing friends! I am also glad that there is no talk of the “evil Grinda brothers” :)

Read the entire article at:
http://www.betabeat.com/2012/04/18/the-clone-collector-meet-new-york-superangel-fabrice-grinda-master-of-digital-knockoffs/?show=all

Comments (2)

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by memeburn a few weeks ago. Topics included the following: which emerging markets are most attractive, why tech clusters are no longer required to create successful startups, and why copying concepts and implementing them in new places still requires innovation.

Read the entire interview at:
http://memeburn.com/2012/03/the-emerging-markets-internet-craze-memeburn-speaks-to-super-angel-fabrice-grinda/

Comments (7)

I love Bagheera!

Comments (0)

Join me in welcoming the newest member of the family! She weighs in at 3,084 pounds and is extraordinarily healthy!

She also seemed to make fast friends with my friends and family!

Comments (26)

I just watched all the episodes of The Big Bang Theory and the conclusion is ineluctable: I was the original Sheldon Cooper! The people who know me today find it hard to believe because they see me as a socially confident extrovert. They don’t realize that this is the result of a deliberate exercise I undertook 10 years ago to foster my extroversion and social skills, followed by 10 years of practice.

Friends, who knew me in my late teens and early twenties, would tell you I had exactly the same delusional sense of self-worth and condescending and arrogant self-centered world view. I could not conceive of why other humans spent time chasing girls, listening to music or watching movies when there were more intellectually stimulating endeavors at hand. Combined with a total lack of social awareness, empathy and understanding of social norms, my human interactions took awkwardness to a whole other level.

Sheldon and I even have similar mannerisms and we kind of look alike! I should be asking the writers for royalties!

On another note The Big Bang Theory is fantastic and I can only encourage you to watch it. The dialogue is witty and sharp and I have been astounded by the inclusion of recent scientific discoveries in the show. In a recent episode Sheldon was commenting on the potential discovery of neutrinos traveling at faster than light speed at CERN, a discovery that had only been made public weeks earlier!

Watch the show!

Comments (19)

After the fundamental structural changes in my life in 2010, 2011 was more the logical continuation and buildup on the changes from last year.

I moved into my new amazing week-end house in Bedford in January, but kept to my nomadic lifestyle as last year’s New Year’s resolution of traveling less came to naught and I found myself on the road more often than ever before. As a result, I decided not to get a new apartment in the city and have essentially lived in hotels for the past 18 months. While cost efficient relative to the insane apartment I had before as you only pay for the nights you spend there, and despite the amazing personalized service at The Mercer which is the hotel I “live” in in New York, I do miss having a home. Moreover, it may not be sustainable for the long term especially as my New Year’s resolution for 2012 is to be on the road for no more than 6 months!

OLX continued to grow slowly but surely, passing the 150 million unique monthly visitor mark. Working with Naspers has actually proven to be a pleasure relative to the horrid experiences I had with the Zingy buyers. They let Alec and me run the show while pushing us and financing us to be ever more aggressive in Brazil and India.

I was given the chance to give a keynote at Leweb this past December where I spoke about everything I learned about operating and angel investing in Brazil, Russia and around the world.

On the personal side, I am glad to report that for the first time in 3 years my knees are starting to hold up after much rehab and I finally was able to restart playing tennis, padel and skiing towards the tail end of the year! I look forward to 2012 bringing lots of sports oriented adventures! Heli-skiing, here I come!

2011 was the year I really improved at kite boarding thanks to an amazing trip to Bonaire in the spring and a trip to Prea in Brazil in the fall. These were the only real vacations of the year, because I tried to spend as many week-ends as possible in Bedford playing padel, paintball, Xbox, racing RC cars and much more! I look forward to 2012 bringing more of the same!

The best books I read in 2011:

• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely

My best blog posts of 2011 were:

• A SuperAngel’s Investment Guide
• Angel Investing Secrets
• How to minimize human misery in recessions or the macroeconomic implications to hedonic adaptation
• Cameron Rules, Sarkozy Sucks

I became an ever more active angel in 2011 making 37 investments and 12 follow on investments. I also sold 5 companies, 2 successes and 3 failures. I still have 74 companies in the portfolio excluding OLX.

My predictions for 2011 were by and large correct:

• While I fretted about the looming sovereign debt crisis in the West and global economic imbalances, I suggested the day of reckoning would not occur in 2011.
• Despite all its growth, it’s still too early to tell how successful OLX will be given our global war with Schibsted.
• 2011 was an amazing time to be an Internet entrepreneur as the early stage startup scene became awash with capital while M&A and IPO activity picked up significantly.

2012 has much more risk for the global economy. Europe is going to have a recession given the austerity budgets and the uncertainty around resolving its sovereign debt crisis. Despite the huge structural problems in the US, the US will continue to muddle through given its position as the only safe haven in these difficult economic times.

I am hopeful that at some point in the coming decade a new productivity revolution will spur growth and allow us to put our problems behind us. Things look bleak now, but if we think back to 1979 with raging stagflation and high oil prices, the outlook seemed dire for the West. Yet a period of 30 years of low inflation, stability and growth lay right around the corner. Even though I can imagine countless scenarios for the coming years that end with economic Armageddon and/or war, the rising wealth in South East Asia and Brazil combined with continued technology improvements and eventual structural changes in the West (e.g.; increasing the retirement age to 70, public pension reform, end of life health care rationing, eliminating farm subsidies, etc.) will spur a similar era of growth and stability. Unfortunately, while I suspect this period of growth is coming in the next 10 years, it won’t help us in 2012.

Given the interconnectedness of the global financial system, there is a greater risk that the euro crisis will trigger another round of financial Armageddon in 2012, possibly worse than the one in 2008-2009 given that the state finances have significantly deteriorated since then, than there is a probability of a positive upside.

Until a new financial crisis happens, the Internet will remain the place to be. As the engine of productivity growth and hence economic growth, it will continue to attract a disproportionate share of talent and capital. 2012 will see the IPO of Facebook, the creation of countless new startups and hence the introduction of many amazing new ideas. I look forward to witnessing all of that and hopefully investing in a few of them!

Comments (5)

The video of my fun interview with David Lerner for Venture Studio and Mashable is live.

We cover a wide variety of topics: OLX, advice to CEOs of consumer facing Internet companies, the attraction of Brazil and Russia and much more.

Enjoy :)

Comments (2)

I had the great pleasure of being invited to give a keynote at LeWeb 2011 on angel investing in Brazil, Russia and around the world! I really enjoyed the fireside chat I had with Loic Lemeur at LeWeb in 2009 and was really looking forward to the opportunity to share all the lessons learned over the course of the past few years and explain why Brazil and Russia have been such an important part of my professional life in the recent past.

I hope you enjoy it and avoid all the mistakes I made!

I am also attaching the PDF of the presentation for your reading pleasure.

You can read Techcrunch’s take on the speech at:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/09/serial-entrepreneur-fabrice-grinda-on-angel-investing-brazil-and-russia/

Comments (2)