I had the pleasure of speaking with Amir Fischer, a Greenwich High Schooler who invests in teenagers.

We focused on my origin story and the decisions that led me to where I am today.

We covered:

• Growing up in Nice and what shaped me early on.
• Leaving McKinsey at 23 to launch Aucland as a direct eBay competitor in France.
• Almost going bankrupt, putting payroll on credit cards, and why I didn’t quit.
• Why Craig Newmark refused to let me run or buy Craigslist, and how that directly led me to start OLX.
• Trying to buy the Alibaba domain from an unknown Jack Ma and ending up an early investor instead.
• How I think about spotting great marketplace businesses at the seed stage.
• What advice I’d give my 16-year-old self.

…and a lot more.

You can also listen to the podcast on Spotify.

Transcript

[00:00] Amir Fischer

This week on Generating Alpha, I sat down with Fabrice Grinda, serial entrepreneur, prolific angel investor, and founding partner of FJ Labs, one of the most active venture funds in the world. Fabrice grew up in France, studied at École Polytechnique and Princeton, and launched his first startup in 1998 at the age of 23. He went on to build and sell multiple companies, most notably OLX, the classified ads platform that reached 300 million users across 40 countries before pivoting full-time to investing.

FJ Labs has now backed over 1,100 startups across six continents, including Alibaba, Coupang, Delivery Hero, and Rappi, with a portfolio valued at several billion dollars. Beyond his track record as an operator and an investor, Fabrice is one of the most unconventional figures in tech and finance, known for his ruthless prioritization of life design, his quantitative approach to evaluating marketplaces, and his willingness to share his frameworks with total transparency.

In our conversation, we talked about growing up in France and catching the entrepreneurship bug, what he learned building and losing companies in the early internet era, why he became so obsessed with marketplaces, the specific metrics he uses to evaluate marketplace businesses, how FJ Labs decides whether to invest or not in under 60 minutes, the difference between being an operator and an investor, how he thinks about life design and optimizing for happiness, and much more.

If you enjoy this episode, please follow the podcast and rate it five stars on Spotify. Subscribe on YouTube and share it with anyone who might find it valuable. I really enjoyed recording this episode with Fabrice and I hope you guys enjoy listening. Thank you.

[01:35] Amir Fischer

Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it.

[01:36] Fabrice Grinda

Thank you for having me.

[01:40] Amir Fischer

Well, I want to start where I always do, the beginning. If I’m correct, you grew up in Nice, but at the age of 22 you were already running a startup out of Princeton. Tell me about young Fabrice, what your childhood looked like and where you think your drive came from.

[01:51] Fabrice Grinda

I’m not sure where ambition comes from. I was five and I already wanted to make a ripple in the fabric of the universe. I was ambitious. My role models growing up were Augustus, Genghis Khan, and Alexander Hamilton, and I thought long and hard about the role I wanted to play in the world.

I considered going down the political path, but in my early teens I realized that it felt corrupting and limited to your nationality. At the age of 10, I fell in love with computers. I got my first PC and it was love at first click. I knew that immediately we were meant to be together, and it would be my form of artistic expression and a way to have impact in the world.

At that time, my role models were Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Their vision, especially Bill Gates saying “a computer in every home,” was democratizing access to information and technology and allowed you to touch billions of people without borders. My hobby became a massive industry that could influence the world.

[03:07] Amir Fischer

And if I’m correct, you went off to Princeton and eventually graduated with a degree in economics. While you were a student, you were running this company called Princeton International Computers. I think it exported hardware to Europe. Tell me about that, and then why you left McKinsey so quickly to start your own company.

[03:30] Fabrice Grinda

As a computer nerd, I was already building computers from spare parts at a young age. I was always taking them apart and rebuilding them. I built a BBS for people to connect, which was kind of the ancestry of the internet.

When I got to the US, I realized retail prices were lower than wholesale prices in Europe. Companies like Intel released products in the US first, and Europe would get them 6 to 12 months later. So there was an opportunity for gray market exports.

I would buy components in the US and sell to retailers in Europe. It worked for high-value, low-weight items like hard drives, motherboards, processors, and memory that you could ship via FedEx. I had no capital because customers paid upfront and I paid suppliers net 30. So I had a cash flow positive business from day one and made about $50k a year after paying for college. I left with no debt.

But I knew I wanted to be a tech founder.

[05:54] Amir Fischer

Tell me about that first startup, Aucland.

[06:01] Fabrice Grinda

Back in 1998, building tech companies required a lot more capital. You needed Oracle licenses, Microsoft servers, and your own data center. Most ideas required infrastructure I didn’t have.

But I studied market design and loved markets. When I encountered eBay, I realized that although it had a chicken-and-egg problem, it was something I understood well—liquidity, supply and demand, and matching them.

It was another love at first click moment. eBay brought transparency and liquidity to fragmented markets like garage sales. At the time, they were mostly a US company, so I decided to bring the idea to Europe. That became one of the top auction sites in Europe.

[08:07] Amir Fischer

After that, you built a mobile media company in a completely different sector.

[08:19] Fabrice Grinda

People like to pigeonhole you, but the skill sets are transferable. Building a business—raising capital, hiring, doing deals—is the same.

The reason I chose that idea was tactical. The bubble had burst. I had gone from zero to hero back to zero. The company I built was acquired, and its stock collapsed from $10 billion to $30 million. I lost everything.

I needed something profitable quickly. I saw that ringtones and mobile content were working in Europe and Asia but not in the US. So I brought that model to the US.

The first two years were brutal. I borrowed $100k on credit cards, missed payroll 27 times, lived on $2 a day, and slept on the office couch. But we turned it around, grew from $1M to $200M in revenue, and sold the company.

[11:20] Amir Fischer

Tell me about that moment when everything was falling apart.

[11:26] Fabrice Grinda

There’s a saying in French—you can’t shave an egg. I had nothing to lose. If you go bankrupt with zero, you still have zero.

People are too risk-averse. The worst case is you go live with your parents or friends and get a job. The real issue is ego—people don’t want to fail. But to succeed, you need to be willing to fail.

In fundraising, you might get 99 or even 299 no’s before one yes. Most people aren’t willing to go through that.

[14:05] Amir Fischer

Tell me about Craigslist and OLX.

[14:18] Fabrice Grinda

Craigslist provided a valuable service but was full of scams, phishing, and unsafe for women. Women are the primary decision-makers in most purchases, and it was not a female-friendly platform.

I offered to run it for free and improve it—UX, moderation, mobile, payments—but they declined. So I built OLX instead.

[16:04] Fabrice Grinda

We launched in 100 countries. It took off in Brazil, Portugal, India, and Pakistan. We focused there, expanded, and eventually operated in 30 countries with 300 million users and 11,000 employees.

[18:12] Amir Fischer

What motivates you?

[18:18] Fabrice Grinda

I’m good at it and I love it. Life is a game. I get purpose from building things and solving problems at scale using technology.

[34:45] Amir Fischer

Final question. What advice would you give a 16-year-old?

[34:51] Fabrice Grinda

Put yourself out there. Try things. Don’t fear failure.

Be your true authentic self. Figure out what you want to do and lean into it.