FJ Labs Founder Fabrice Grinda

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (00:00.686) Hello, fellow data nerds. My guest today is Fabrice Grinda. Fabrice is the founder of FJ Labs, a venture capital firm that has invested over 1200 startups. He previously built and sold three companies, the CEO, Aucland, one of Europe's largest auction sites, Zingy, which was a mobile media startup sold for $80 million, and OLX, which is a global classified platform, which operates in over 90 countries and over 150 million monthly users. FJ Labs recently closed a $290 million third fund and is one of the most active venture investors globally. Fabrice, welcome to World of DaaS. Okay, now you and I are long, long time friends, friends for over 20 years. You're also one of the most prolific investors out there. I mean, you're literally making like hundreds of investments every year.

Fabrice Grinda (00:43.272) Thank you for having me.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (00:57.87) How did you end up with that model? Like what made you kind of move to that type of model?

Fabrice Grinda (01:04.574) So the intellectual answer would have been, I have done a tap down analysis of what is the proper way to maximize IRR. And I've realized that because venture follows a power law, the diversification leads to higher IRRs. And if you've done, having done all the research, clearly a diverse portfolio leads to the best returns. And the answer is that is true, but it is actually

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:14.126) Right, exactly.

Fabrice Grinda (01:32.206) not the reason I did that model. I did that model because I followed my curiosity. And whenever I met a founder that was doing something interesting that I'd like to, I was like, I need to back this guy because he's doing something, he's trying to solve a problem in the world. And the world is beset with problems. And I think founders basically see these problems and try to find scalable, repeatable, profitable solutions to address them.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:43.235) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:55.31) And just to jump at what you're saying is like, you see a cool founder, you can't, if you have like a core ownership requirement or something like that, well then you wouldn't necessarily always be able to back that founder because they may not have room. Or if you always want to take a board seat, okay, well can't do that because they may have had someone. So you just kind of backed into it through the other way. Like you just want to back founders, like great founders.

Fabrice Grinda (02:19.038) And whenever I met someone doing something interesting that I thought was solving a problem in the world, I wanted to back them. And when I liked them, I just wrote a check. And it completely bottoms up. I meet someone I like, regardless of stage, category, industry, et cetera. I invest. I don't see. I don't invest. And it just led to this very diversified strategy. I think it's a reflection of my intellectual curiosity. There's infinite problems in the world, and all these founders are trying to solve all of these problems. And I want to help all of them solve it.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (02:24.982) Yeah, yeah, okay, I love it.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (02:42.529) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (02:48.694) And like, how did you like actually operationalize it? Because like doing hundreds of investments per year means you have to know, let's say you, but your, least your team has to meet with at least a 10 X more of those types of companies every year. And you have to kind of think of like, how does one like opt actually operationalize that kind of investing strategy?

Fabrice Grinda (03:11.184) And so it happened kind of naturally and organically because I was a very visible consumer facing internet CEO. So I was getting all this inbound deal flow and was just drinking at the five holes of deals. And I hired a first analyst many years ago and to see, could I actually teach them to filter? Because obviously you don't want someone to pass them the next Uber.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (03:35.917) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (03:36.798) And or send me deals that are not not compelling it and realize that my processes were scalable and repeatable So now we're nine on the investment team. We get 300 inbound deals a week We talked to like 40 because the others are out of scope. They're truly there's too many of them There are they're in cat it we were not ready to make a call on the on that category and I will speak to three to five and so the that filter of 300 and we invest in three every

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (03:53.101) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (04:05.758) So let's say 300 at five and then we invest in three. So we invest in 1 % of the deals we see is something that's worked extremely well.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (04:09.005) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (04:13.292) Interesting. What do think like, is there, is there a, cause at this stage or super early stage, a lot of it's really about the founder or the founders, right? How does one like do some sort of assessment? I mean, you're really probably only meeting them a couple of times, right? Like how does one assess like the quality of the founders?

Fabrice Grinda (04:36.444) Yeah, so it used to be just one hour meeting with me. Now, of course, there's a team. So now it's like one hour meeting with someone else and then a one hour meeting with me. I'll tell you how to not to assess founders. Don't do reference checks. Founders often reference badly because they were not meant to be employees. They were talking back to their bosses. They were working in their startup world or at their job, et cetera. So the way you assess a founder in a one hour call, to me, is easy, actually.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (04:42.04) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (04:56.365) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (05:06.322) I think in one, first of all, humans are inherently social animals. There's one thing I think we do well is we know whether we like someone or not, and we can gauge chemistry within like 30 seconds or one minute of beating just through the first three interactions. And so the Y value to founder is two vector, two metric. I want one who's extremely eloquent and an amazing salesperson. And by the way, introverts can actually be very salesy. I think we are probably examples of that.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (05:31.278) Of course, yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (05:35.665) and very eloquent. So someone who can weave a compelling narrative because they're going be able to raise capital at a higher valuation, they're going to attract better teams, they're going to get better PD, they're going to get more PR. But that's a necessary but insufficient condition because I also want them to be able to execute. And so the way I tease that, whether they're going be able to execute is actually because I use four selection criteria, not one.

And the second one of which is do I like the business? And so I need them to be able to articulate even pre-launch What that total trust will market size? What do they think the customer acquisition costs looks like whether it's sales or marketing, etc? What do they what is the contribution margin of the business? What's the average order value or they in line with the industry number? so I need them to understand know all these things and to be able to articulate what they think the long-term value is relative to the customer acquisition costs and if they haven't

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (06:25.483) You're drilling down on those. Like you're actually asking that specific question. Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (06:30.494) Yes, correct. And usually the ones who know the business world, who thought through it, they actually are on top of the numbers and it naturally. And the people that are just like, they have the vision, but they wouldn't know how to execute, typically don't know how to answer these questions. Haven't thought through these. And they're like, I'll figure it out. And to me, I need both. I need the Venn diagram in a section of like the great executors and the great salespeople. And that is actually pretty rare. I usually find the founders are in one or the other, not both.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (06:59.694) And then there's a, sometimes there is a product, I assume quite a lot of times that you can, sometimes you can play with the product or see the product or how important is that?

Fabrice Grinda (07:10.174) So most often, we're mostly seed investors, not pre-seed investors. And by the way, the reason is I don't invest in competitors. so you're the bet. And so often at pre-seed, I see seed. Seed teams, like ideas are in the air that are doing the same thing at the same time. And I feel it's too early to make the call.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (07:12.652) Yeah. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (07:25.784) So you don't show if you, mean, how narrowly do you define a competitor? Because if you're doing like three deals a week, 150, like there's going to be some competition that happens around that, right? Or no.

Fabrice Grinda (07:37.854) Well, if they end up competing by the series C or B or whatever, because they...

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (07:41.856) Yeah yeah yeah, you're talking about, but even right away, right, there's...

Fabrice Grinda (07:46.012) Right away, no. mean, they can be doing exactly the same thing, the exact same category, attacking the same problem, but usually ideas are in the air. And so if someone's pitching me an idea, I usually have four other teams pitching me the exact same idea within a one week or two week basis. And we'll actually go try to talk to competitors and make sure we're back on the right horse. So we'll wait. So they see there is a product. Product is very important to me. The, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (07:48.343) Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (08:02.167) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (08:14.046) Look, my four selection criteria or team business terms and thesis and product speaks to kind of a lot of these, like do I think you're solving a fundamental problem in the world that I care about? Are they able, have they built something interesting, which means they're probably a good team, et cetera. So it speaks to all of these different factors.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (08:35.032) that a lot of your investments have been historically outside the US. You've been finding these great founders who are outside the US more than most people, or you're shaking your head, so maybe I'm wrong about that.

Fabrice Grinda (08:49.246) I have, well, I used to invest maybe 50 % on, so actually if I go back to 2012, because obviously I've been angel investing, investing since 98, in 2012, I think 50 % of our investments were like Russia, China, Turkey, and there are countries I don't invest in anymore because there's been profound geopolitical shifts and we're now in Cold War II. And you know, so.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (08:57.997) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (09:09.475) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (09:16.67) Stopped investing in China after Xi Jinping disappeared Ma and I stopped investing in Russia after Crimea was invaded and Turkey after Erdogan, you know started like

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (09:25.314) She stopped investing in Russia in 2014. Okay.

Fabrice Grinda (09:28.414) Yes. Yeah, I see. I see. We had like several unicorn investments there that after the Crimea invasion, basically the American VCs like stopped wanting to back these amazing companies and then the oligarchs took over the companies for nothing. So we really stopped all these things. Now, because our relax is so big and so many emerging markets, we have a lot of deal for internationally. But no, our we're 50 percent. We've always been 50 percent US and Canada, 25 percent Western Europe.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (09:43.809) Yeah

Fabrice Grinda (09:57.342) 15 % by 10, which used to be mostly Brazil, that is Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, and 10 % of the rest of the world, which is mostly India. So we're still like majority US. But in the US, because I do read inbound, like cold inbound emails, and over half the deals are cold inbound emails, and of course, they're the lowest quality, but also some of the...

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (10:06.518) Okay. Yep.

Fabrice Grinda (10:20.604) the nuggets because it's a non-traditional founder who didn't go to Stanford, it's not connected to the community. He has like series B level traction, but he happens to be in Arkansas and you can invest in like C valuations at a B level traction company and we can help so much because that founder doesn't know how to raise, et cetera.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (10:30.072) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (10:36.854) yeah, for sure. Yeah. So you're, you're actually finding these kind of like Arkansas nuggets type of thing.

Fabrice Grinda (10:43.644) Well, we're also finding the short tail. mean, we were in Baba and Uber and Airbnb and Instacart. So we're finding kind of everything, but we are, some of the more interesting deals, like in Brazil, they wouldn't be the ones from Sao Paulo, but they're like the one from Belo Horizonte and they linked in in-mail messages to the Instagram message would be on LinkedIn and they weren't connected. And we just came in and were able to inflect their business because of the role we play.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (10:46.306) Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (11:09.122) Now when you're investing in like Western Europe, are those companies still like, are they still like Delaware C-Corps often or how do they, how are they set up usually?

Fabrice Grinda (11:18.254) No, they're usually not because most, yeah, they're usually incorporated whatever country they're in. But the good news is now there's robust VC ecosystems around the world. And so we have a VC partners for France, for Germany, for the UK, for Spain, for Brazil, for Mexico. And so we bring the deals to them in those countries and we don't need to go to the US companies.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (11:40.686) It's interesting because I think we've probably done four deals recently where the founders are all based in Western Europe and all four, again, this is like a small N, but all four, they were Delaware C-Corps, even though none of the people were actually based in the US.

Fabrice Grinda (11:58.79) Are they trading the US market though?

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (12:00.782) Well, everybody targets the US market. I mean, it's, know, so and, know, later on, you know, maybe one of the founders, I did eventually move here or something like that. But yeah, that was just a I was just surprised to see that. Is it so easy to set up a Delaware scene nowadays?

Fabrice Grinda (12:14.467) It happens. Yeah. Yeah, it happens. It's not that common. It used to be, the way, many Europeans didn't target the European, the US market. mean, yes, the Finnish and the Swedes and the Nordic people. Yes, but like the French, the Germans and even the Brits would like target the European market. And so they that didn't necessarily make sense.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (12:27.267) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (12:34.21) Yeah.

Now, third criteria you mentioned was price. Like, how does one think about that? those prices for some of these deals, mean, while some of these YC companies are now trading at 30 posts, some of them even higher than 30 posts. Like, how do you think about price these days? And how do you stay disciplined on price?

Fabrice Grinda (12:39.901) Yes.

Fabrice Grinda (12:55.826) The, so we do so many deals where we see the 300 deals a week. We invested 150 to 200 companies every year. So we have a very good sense of what we think the median is. And we also use the look at the data of the median. So we know where the median pre-seed seed, A, B, C deals are out there. And we've tracked it over time and we've stayed very consistent or are.

So right now, the major trend in BC, in Q1, 71 % of investments in the US were in AI. And the AI deals are trading, depending on the category, between 69 % and 300 % premium to the median valuation.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (13:38.286) And by the way, like 100 % of YC companies are AI. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (13:41.982) Yeah, and 100%. That's true. so YC for instance, it prototypically, I would not invest in YC. I go to YC, I look at the best deals there, and I wait around or two, and usually the price normalizes with traction. And so I ended up investing, I just invested in a company, an amazing company called Garage, which is a marketplace for fire trucks. And I think I don't remember the way YC price was like maybe 30 or 40.

We're now two years later, they're doing two million a month and invested at like 50. And so on a risk adjusted basis, investing in the next few rounds makes a lot more sense. But they do filter and find a lot of great companies, but I'm not paying 30 pre. And right now my pre-seed median is roughly six million and my seed is like.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (14:12.674) Yeah. Okay. So way better. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (14:29.506) Whoa, six million posts?

Fabrice Grinda (14:31.964) Yeah, one at five. Precede.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (14:34.208) Wow, that's like, that's, that's the, that's what you and I, mean, you and I, when we were investing 20 years ago together, that's actually what we were investing at. You were investing at six posts.

Fabrice Grinda (14:43.816) No, but those might have been seed deals back in the day, now they're pre-seed.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (14:46.062) Sure. Oh, no, no. Well, I don't think so. I mean, when we did Bright Roll, it was a five pre, six post deal. That was 2006, almost 20 years ago.

Fabrice Grinda (14:54.782) Yeah, but they were, I think they were live the attraction. I think you might've called that an A though. I mean, it was like pretty ridiculous. it wasn't, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm still seeing a lot of those deals. My seed, my median seed right now is like 14 pre-16 posts. Sorry, 12-3 raising three-four, like 15 posts, 16 posts. And my median, by the way, my median A is like 30 and my median B is like 60. And, and, and, and, and.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (15:02.742) Sure, but it was the first Mighty End.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (15:17.57) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (15:23.128) Okay.

Fabrice Grinda (15:24.254) And the difference is the mean is being pushed up by these insane AI deals. the market median is way higher than we are because of AI. And that's the beauty of being contrarian. I've kind of kept, I actually just looked at my valuations at 21 versus 22 versus 2019. And we've actually been pretty consistent across the board. Our valuation ranges were more or less the same, 2019 all the way to 25.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (15:29.153) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (15:52.174) Because you would think like, just to push back little bit, you would think, let's say, the valuation of a C deal should go up every year roughly the amount that the market goes up. So if the market goes up 10%, so you think like every seven years or so that the valuations would double, that's what one would think. But what you're saying is like, they've really been flat. They've not been going.

Fabrice Grinda (16:21.918) For the last seven or eight years, they've been flopped, and perhaps because 21 was also inflated, and so then it compressed. But in our case, our valuations in 21 were the same as valuations in 19 or 18. The later stage valuations have gone up a fair amount. But we also, because we are so difficult in price, we actually didn't do anything. Look, in February 21, I wrote this blog post entitled, Welcome to the Everything Bubble. And I said, because of overly loose fiscal monetary policy, every asset class is correlated one other way up.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (16:26.134) Yes, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (16:32.045) Wow.

Fabrice Grinda (16:49.882) sell, if it's not anchored to the ground, sell it. I mean, everything private credit, public's real estate, bonds, stocks, and of course, private liquid tech companies. And there were some you could sell secondaries. And now of course, we, we sold, think a 10th of what we wanted to sell, but whenever SoftBank or Tiger came in, we sold. And right now, again, being a trillion, we are doing everything except AI. So if there's a, now every company I invested in uses AI is technically an AI company, but they're not like the

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (16:57.144) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (17:16.622) Of course.

Fabrice Grinda (17:18.91) for underlying LLM companies. Yeah, too much competition, not enough differentiation on the data modes, valuations are insane. I think there's a race at the bottom of pricing because there's 10 of them doing the same thing. And then there's open AI ever expanding and eating at what they're doing. And then there's orthogonal risk of people coming in and disrupting them.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (17:20.588) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (17:39.946) I want to pull on the thread that you were just mentioning me secondary. like as VCs, especially early stage VCs, we're trying to be good at investing, essentially good at buying at some point. And then usually traditionally in VCs just wait until the company does something, maybe the company sells or the company IPOs. And then at that point, they have some sort of DPI and they kind of move on.

But there's another way to be a little bit more proactive, which is to sell secondaries in an ongoing company or to pare down one's exposure. You don't have to sell the whole thing. could sell 25 % of your holdings and stuff like that. How do you, first of all, how do you think about that? Like how does, how does one evaluate the selling side of it? That that's just a, that's a muscle that I'm trying to build myself.

Fabrice Grinda (18:27.39) So we have a different investment committee for choosing investment companies and for follow-on. So we have a portfolio investment committee. In the portfolio investment committee, we present the companies as though we were non-existing investors. Knowing what we know, so it's a completely de novo evaluation of the team, of the company, of the traction. knowing what we know now, the company, of the traction, of the valuation, if we were non-existing investors, would we be investing in this round? And if the answer is no, because they're not doing well, then we do nothing.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (18:43.64) Yep.

Fabrice Grinda (18:56.638) usually can't sell. answer is no, because they're amazing and we love them, but the price is insane. It's 100 X ARR and it's going to take years to grow into it. And we're not to be compounding at our own IR. So we've been compounding at like 30 % IR for like 27 years. So we don't think there's a 10 X that's going to continue compounding. If there's an opportunity, we try to take some off the table. Now these secondaries can happen in two ways. Either there's a round happening.

And there are three VCs whatever Greylock and Greeson and Sequoia that all want in they all want 15 % the founder doesn't want through 45 % dilution But once all three of them in because he doesn't want them to back competitor So that's when there's usually a secondary happening either at a flat or maybe 10 15 20 percent discount to the round and in these cases where it's overvalued we sell 50 % typically just because it's

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (19:49.932) You'll sell you so how does one determine the amount that one's pairs down and stuff?

Fabrice Grinda (19:57.15) If it's massively overvalued and it's like 100 XAR, it's gonna take forever to grow to it, then maybe we sell 75%. If it's, you know, still risky, it's overvalued, but not insane, maybe 25%. But on average, I would say sell 50%. 50%, and there's the magic 50 % is as follows. It goes to zero, I made 10X, I'm happy. It goes to the moon, the 50 % is big enough that it can ride and will keep us happy.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (20:14.36) Okay.

Fabrice Grinda (20:26.376) selling 50 % of these moments and sometimes we'll sell 50%, we'll rebuy in the next round, we'll resell again in the next round, et cetera.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (20:32.898) Yeah, OK. And sometimes you were like, sold some of my I sold, you know, maybe 30 percent of my SpaceX holdings in a secondary year ago. And then since then, you the marks gone up like, you know, so, you know, some you can make you can make. made a mistake maybe by selling earlier or something. Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (20:51.218) Yeah. So, so look, the things that I think can keep compounding like crazy, like open AI or space sucks, I probably wouldn't, stripe or whatever, I probably wouldn't be selling by that because they, don't know where the ceiling is there, but there are many companies where I think there is a ceiling and now they're growing.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (21:01.41) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (21:04.942) Yeah, it's a vertical SaaS company or whatever and it's already worth it.

Fabrice Grinda (21:08.222) You know, it's logarithmic and they're now in the part of the curve where it's slowing down and now they're growing 30 % year on year. Like there's no 10X from here, maybe it's a 2 to 3X and a PE buyer is very happy with that. I'm not happy with that because I need my 10X and so time for me to exit. And % of VCs have not used secondaries yet, partly because if you own 20 % the, 73 % of VCs have not used secondaries yet.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (21:17.73) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (21:23.715) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (21:29.282) Sorry, what did you just say? Seven?

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (21:34.754) Have what, seconders? So they've just never, never sold, never sold. They basically only wait until the company does something.

Fabrice Grinda (21:35.996) I've not used secondaries.

Fabrice Grinda (21:44.19) Well, there are two reasons for that. One is if you're on the board, you own 20 % of the company. If you don't do your parada, the company dies, right? Like it's a negative signal. Yeah, and even if you're not on the board.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (21:49.794) Yeah. If you're on the board, you have to do it. So you kind of like, cause it just like, it just looks weird. You would have to get off the board if you're selling secondary. Right.

Fabrice Grinda (21:56.956) Yeah, but frankly, even if you're not on the board, if you're in 20 % of the company, it's like, what do they know that I don't know why are they selling? Right? Like.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (22:02.262) Of course. Yeah, exactly. So if you own a massive chunk, it's a lot easier for you and I since we own a very small percentage of the company.

Fabrice Grinda (22:09.19) Exactly. By the way, there are two ways to do secondhand. One is in the new rounds, when there's buyers that are interested, the VCs. And then the second way is through the platforms and the brokers, the forges of the world, et cetera. The problem with that is that only works for the very, that's a super short tail. Like there's only liquidity in like 10 names or actually five names.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (22:28.248) Correct.

And you never really know if when someone reaches out to you, if they actually have a buyer, right? So it's always somewhat like, are they just like ginning up a deal and this could be a huge waste of your time.

Fabrice Grinda (22:35.528) Correct.

Fabrice Grinda (22:41.47) Yeah, so we have a disposition committee. the way, the one VC that does this well, that is large and has board seats, is Lead Edge. Lead Edge also has a disposition committee and they make sure that they find exits for companies. Now they do it obviously at a much larger scale. We do it with like, we have two or three percent of the companies, which also makes it easier for us. But the majority of our exits, and so look, first of all, we've had exits in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, when most people have not had exits. And the majority of our exits come in the form of secondary.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (22:56.675) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (23:07.478) Yeah, which is great.

Okay. The majority got it. So you're, you're, you're at your, the nice thing is then you get, get, you get the money back to your LPs and you know, et cetera.

Fabrice Grinda (23:20.798) Exactly. So we get DPI. So because we're so diversified, we are never going to be a top-down self-fund. Basically, we're at 3X funds every time, or 3 4X, and we're at 30 % IRR. in good times and bad times, we're always that.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (23:36.846) 30 % IRR is not top decile. I know it's not top 5%, but you don't think it gets you to top 10?

Fabrice Grinda (23:42.15) No, it's, we're typically somewhere in that near the top quartile, sometimes in it, sometimes right below it. Now the thing is the problem is people look at us against one fun vintage. They should look at us across 10 fun vintage, right? They should look at us over 27 years. Then we would totally be at the very top. But where we rock is DPI because most, these days venture.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (23:59.703) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (24:09.052) You know, venture is not really a 10, 12 year asset class, right? The 10 plus one plus one. It's really a 20 year asset class, right? Like it's space sex. think I'm in through founders fund too. I think we invest in December, 2007. You know, we're 18 years in, I'm very happy to be 18 years in, but that fund has been extended, extended, extended. I'm happy to keep extending it. The best companies stay private forever. Yeah. The best companies stay private. The best companies stay private forever. Right? Like, and so.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (24:18.328) Yeah.

Yes.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (24:24.684) Yep. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the best performing funds of all time. Like, I've been that fun too. And I'm very happy to be PLV.

Fabrice Grinda (24:37.874) The notion that the SASA class is 12 years is really false. It's really 15 to 20 years, and the best companies keep compounding.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (24:49.206) Interesting. What is there when you think about your LPs that like, is there a certain type of LP that you prefer over others or how do think about it on the other side of the of leisure? You know, that's your quote unquote, your customer, your your other customer.

Fabrice Grinda (25:10.95) Actually, we forgot to admit. So the place where we are top top that cell is DPI because we do second. So we're top that's all the guy. Okay. So. Look, the idea, my, my, the LPs, I, the ideal LP for me would be someone that believes in the strategy we have and just writes us a check every time, in every fund. it kind of like, look, we, we, we love, we love the diversification. We love the performance. We love the fact that you get amazing SVPs.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (25:15.084) Yeah. Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (25:39.558) Amazing deals given they need so much deal flow and and we're here every time I have not found that LP yet Because most LPs I find or pro cyclical in 21

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (25:46.742) You

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (25:52.159) Yeah, they've got their own liquidity issues, they've got their own diversification issues that they're trying to do.

Fabrice Grinda (25:58.11) Exactly. In 21, they're I'm, they're flush with cash. I want to invest like crazy. Invest in tech in 23, 24, 25, when I'm like, this is the very best time to invest in everything except the guy. Uh, give me cash. And they're like, no, we're overexposed to venture. We've had no distributions. Uh, and so people end up being pro cyclical. And that's true of family offices. That's true of pension funds, endowments, socials. I think it's true across the board. It's true of corporates. Now, RLP base has been

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (26:12.749) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (26:26.686) Amazing other founders Like whatever new rational way fair Reid Hoffman like the people mafia like you will be known common the But they write like swell checks every time to family offices often being disrupted by tech So like the Walgreens and coal each other and like three it's been like corporates that that want to buy a lot of the companies that we invest in or one understand whether the trends are so it's been like the

NASPR is process I have into Axel Springer eBay, etc but There's kind of churn across the board and also later stage funds like tiger you wanted like, you know to invest in in in the follow-ons now You know a lot of these corporates we have were bought by private equity And so they're not investing in us anymore the later stage funds like tiger and they're like really that active don't need lead gen They're not they're turning

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (27:08.238) Information. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (27:17.229) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (27:22.15) a lot of the family offices or pro cyclists. I haven't found that perfect investor. Now, I wish and I'm hoping and I'm trying for fund four, we're just opening right now fund four. We just finished deploying fund three. It's a three year deployment schedule. It's a flat $300 million fund. I'm hoping that we can go institutional for the first time and get maybe more permanent capital. The issue we're facing is they don't love diversified strategies because they feel that their job is to get diversification by investing in 20

concentrated funds and then they end up having an implied portfolio of 500 companies. So I'm kind of doing their job for them and so they don't really get it. Even though I'm specialized in like acid light network, effective marketplace, businesses, it's not a strategy that has resonated with that many as usual.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (28:09.238) Yeah. It's interesting because if you are concentrated seed fund and you are not a benchmark, like you don't have the brand name of a benchmark, it's very possible that because if you have ownership requirements, it's very possible that the self-selection of the companies that would let you invest are not the ones you want to invest in. It's very, you know, it's often, it's often many companies have an extra, let's say one to 500 K.

that you can invest in, they rarely have an extra $2 million at the seed.

Fabrice Grinda (28:43.242) Yeah, you and I, because we're writing small checks like 200, 300K, 100K, anyone will let us in. And we're value added, they love us, we're friendly, we decide that quickly, we're not onerous in any way, shape, or form. But yeah, if creating a seed fund and there's slow ventures and benchmark, whatever the other side, yeah, why would they let you in?

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (28:47.394) Yeah, you could always get it. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (28:59.916) And what is it like nowadays? What does it mean to be founder friendly? Like do you, is that a positioning that you take or how does one think about that?

Fabrice Grinda (29:10.066) the, so yeah, I thought long and hard, what is my value proposition, but the founders, right? And in a world where primary or Andre said, have like platforms and like whatever recruiters, I don't know the AUM, I can't afford any of that stuff. And I'm like, okay, what is my superpower? And I think that the core one that we do is we can help them fundraise. And in this environment, especially if not in AI, is super powerful because we're not leading, we're not pricing.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (29:15.426) Right.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (29:23.98) Yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (29:37.822) We have basically these very strong relationships with like 100 VCs where we share a deal flow with them. And we stack ranker portfolio and we will bring them the very best companies that are appropriate for them in terms of stage, category, et cetera. So it's kind of a win-win-win. The founders love it because we tell them, you want to send reporting, great. You don't want to send reporting, that's fine too. I just want to talk to you once a year. Once a year, when you're going to fundraise, let's review your debt. Let's review your pitch. Let's think through if you're ready to raise.

what do we think the correct metrics are for raising, who the correct VC is, we'll make the intro, we'll write the blurb, because we make the intro, it's a 95 % conversion rate to an acceptance. We'll get you to the PISH meeting, we'll then back channel until we get you to a term sheet. So the VCs love it because they get differentiated deal flow that's filtered. The founders love it because they get funded and they get access to the best VCs in the world. And we love it because the companies get funded. And by the way, in return, those VCs typically invite us to their deals and we get the

300k checks here. this works extremely well now. Beyond that, I will spend personal time with the top 20 % of the portfolio in terms of helping them through strategy, etc. like in marketplace dynamics. And of course, they find that extremely bad.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (30:50.496) And how do you think about things like things like pirated rights and some of these other kind of rights that are helpful?

Fabrice Grinda (30:59.164) I ask for them every time like preemptive, right? I said that, but if I don't get them, that's fine too.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (31:04.118) Okay, got it. Interesting.

Fabrice Grinda (31:05.758) So we asked her a side letter, look, we didn't write a big enough track to meet the criteria of majority investor, but would you mind giving it to us? And I'd say over 50 % of the cases, get it. But my learning is that paper is not worth the paper. It's not worth it. Exactly. The founders can do whatever they want. And so if you treat them well, they're happy with you, they're going to let you in. They're going to find a way to get you to invest, et cetera. if they don't like you, even if you have it on paper,

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (31:15.213) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (31:20.674) You still have to help. you're not helping, they're not going to let you.

Fabrice Grinda (31:35.098) They can not give it to you because they'll say, the investors are wondering, whatever. So I think what matters more is be actual, not in theory, but in practice, be founder friendly.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (31:47.118) Now, assuming you're assessing a company, you're meeting with the founders, I assume most of the time it's over video. It's not in person. Is that right? How do you think about that? would it have been, obviously you can't do it in person, but would it be better in person or do you think it's not mattering much or?

Fabrice Grinda (32:05.89) I'm obviously I'm based in New York, right? So I meet the New York founders, but the New York founders of the entire portfolio. Yeah, so of the 1200, maybe I've met 100, right? Like, so we're not even talking 10%.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (32:07.202) Yeah, sure.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (32:15.682) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (32:19.294) I find that actually chemistry, vision, ability to sell, et cetera, comes across well, even in video. I was in early, so I started investing in 1998. I was using Skype. So the first investments were all made over Skype back in the day. And so I was a digital native to investing as an angel. And so kind of nothing changed. Like the Zoom transition in COVID, like I was already there. So is it helpful? Yeah. It would be to build better rapport.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (32:32.909) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (32:40.94) Yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (32:48.606) but I think it's helpful at the margin versus, you know, I think most of what I need gets through and I've source it's on video. It's not just voice. and the way I have these conversations. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, the way I run these meetings, so I'm doing the second calls these days. I don't have them retail the entire story. Like I've read the notes, I've read the deck. I have like questions. I like, I literally go in Q and a, right? Like, so it's, it's always like, Hey,

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (32:56.78) Yeah, a video is helpful because you can see the facial expressions and other types of things.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (33:10.348) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (33:13.911) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (33:15.39) This is my understanding what your business is. Am I right or wrong? If I'm wrong, like correct me. And it's a conversation. And so it's never someone pitching me reading a deck. That you can practice. Someone can actually be very good at like doing the same deck 50 times or 100 times because every VC makes them repeat it over and over again. But if you go drill down like really conversational and we go deep in avenues and you don't comment, et cetera, then I get a much better sense for like, know, are they really at the top of everything?

And because I know Marketplace as well, I'm going to ask them about the elasticity of supply and demand and how do they think it's detailed enough because I know what I'm about that I can evaluate whether there's a there there.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (34:00.524) You've written a lot about that so many of these great companies were founded during recessions during the years. why is that true? Is it really true? If so, why is that? Like, why would that be?

Fabrice Grinda (34:14.984) So it is true, it's not, amazing companies are funded in blue beers as well, to be clear. Now, some companies, I can make arguments for why they are really the product of recession, right? Like in Airbnb's case, it really takes, it took a cultural shift to be willing to have someone come and live in your house or stay in your house, whether you're there or not. And the fact that people were in financial,

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (34:19.808) Yes, yeah, yes.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (34:41.752) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (34:45.082) Dire straits in 2008 2009 2010 men they were more willing to actually monetize their primary asset Which is real estate in a way that they weren't before it's anything with uber right? Like if you if if you need an extra source of income your it was an easy way Easy-ish way to make 20 30

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (35:01.986) Yeah, or even a Zynga like more people were willing to they want they needed free entertainment. So playing like a free to play game or something like that was probably a thing.

Fabrice Grinda (35:08.894) Exactly. And so in this environment where cash is limited, you're willing to find ways, new ways to monetize and were to entertain yourself that are cheaper. And so it's helpful on multiple levels. It's helpful there. Number two, it's helpful because instead of having 27 companies funded doing the exact same thing, which basically brings the economics and brings off the cost of equity and costs, you bring pricing down and destroys potentially the value of the business because there too many competitors, you only have one or two.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (35:27.917) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (35:38.282) And it's not fair weather founders. You have like the true believers of doing it because it is their life's mission and they need to do this no matter what. And as a result, they're more likely to win the category and they're more likely to succeed. And so I like it. You're coming in at a more reasonable valuation. There's less competition and people are more willing to try something.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (35:44.941) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (36:00.046) Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Okay. I like that as well. And even like hiring talent, might be easier to get great talent during that time. Um, now is there, I assume you track deals that you've passed on that did well, right? Uh, something that we do is we, we track things. Okay. We passed on this deal. We did well, or, you know, sort that we also even track on deals we didn't even see that did well. We're like, why didn't we see that deal? Like, how do you, do you have a

Fabrice Grinda (36:05.955) Absolutely. Absolutely.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (36:27.15) process of actually going back in time and looking at these things to get better.

Fabrice Grinda (36:32.604) Yes, but I'm not sure I would get better and well, a few things. So many deals that are amazingly passed on because of price and they went on to do very well. But when I actually look at all the other ones I passed on because of price that ended up not doing well, often because of price, like they didn't go into valuation, the blended return of that anti-portfolio is actually lower than my current return. And so I don't regret passing on price even though

There's a few exceptions. The exceptions are, you know, like I passed on the $2 billion Uber round. They were doing 100 million GMV, 18 million net revenues, losing 18 million a month. Right. So was looking at the numbers and I'm like looking at these numbers and they're raising 2 billion. And by they were growing like this and I love the product and I love the two. I loved everything. And I started my investment memo debrief by saying, I will regret this decision for the rest of my life.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (37:14.94) yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (37:30.6) But having looked at the numbers, I cannot in good conscience justify investing in two billion valuation. Listen to myself. When I start a sentence, I say, I will regret this decision for the rest of my life, you make the investment. You hold up your nose and you make the investments. So when it's something magical and special on a rocket ship, go like whatever, OpenAI, SpaceX, you do it.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (37:34.734) You

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (37:39.854) For the rest of my life, yeah. We probably should have asked, yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (37:58.536) There's very, very, very few.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (38:02.478) One of the other things we do at Flex Capital is we track deals that we didn't see that, you know, later seem to be doing well or whatever. And then we try to go back like, why didn't we see it? What was going on? What was happening? know, I know you have most of your deals through inbound. We, you know, we do a lot of outbound as well. So like, are you are you looking at any of those things? It's like, OK, this is a clear winner. Like, I wish we would have seen.

Anthropic, for instance, like we never saw anthropic as a deal. would have been great to have seen it. You know, even if we decided to pass on it, it would still have been great to have seen it.

Fabrice Grinda (38:41.086) In marketplaces, network, and fact sheet businesses, we see probably 97 % of the deals. Very few we don't see. And if we want in, we get in 95 % of them. Now there are a few we don't get in. Despite the fact that we commit, all of sudden, Andreessen, Securag, Greylock get too ownership hungry and we end up getting cut off even though we only want a couple hundred K.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (38:47.884) Whoa, okay, it's crazy. Yep.

Fabrice Grinda (39:10.942) It happens very rarely. on the 1200, like how many of these deals were there have been? Maths 20 more. So it's not a big source of concern in our case, but obviously we don't, we're reasonably narrow from the things we look at. So we didn't see entropic nor would we've looked at it or expected to see it either.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (39:18.189) Okay.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (39:31.212) Yeah, yeah, totally. Switching topics. You are super interested in gadgets. You have a gadget guide. And, you know, a lot of them are like, you think just like one of things I love about you is like you're, you're about like having fun. know, so many people like have these gadgets like for productivity and stuff like that. But so many things you care about are really just like to have nothing to do with productivity. They're literally just about like having a good time.

Fabrice Grinda (39:52.295) You

Fabrice Grinda (40:00.102) Life should be fun. Look, it's a game. I'm a gamer and perhaps because I'm a gamer, I see this world through the lens of gaming. Now you only get one life with this avatar, but it really feels to me like it behaves like a video game. So it's kind of hard to take a lot of these things seriously. And I love what I do, right? And so the, I don't know, like the philosophy of Alan Watts, like the Zen, Taoism, where...

you know it's a game, but you play the game and as a result, and you do it with like zest and humor and grace, I think always resonates with me. Like having kids, so I have a four year old and a one year old, like allows me to be an even bigger kid. Like I actually wouldn't like, when he's building train sets, I realized I like building train set. I like building the magic tiles and like we have remote control cars and planes and helicopters. Like we have the best time ever.

Like, I don't know, people take this world and this life way too seriously. Like, I love what I do because I think it's doing something meaningful and purposeful in the world, but I do it again with fun. I, and.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (41:10.814) more of a macro question, but like, do think people are more serious today than they were 20 years ago or is the same or less or like are people silly enough?

Fabrice Grinda (41:23.126) I think the answer people want to give intuitively is, oh, people are taking these things, oh, so seriously today, et cetera, and they're not having fun in levity. I don't think that's true. People have always taken the world affairs very seriously. And if you think back, like 1960s, or like the desegregation movement, the anti-war riots, like people were taking things.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (41:46.018) Yeah, you had violence in Europe all over, and you know.

Fabrice Grinda (41:48.894) We had like, you know, like the lines for oil and like people were taking things were very massive researches like very somber I think things extremely serious. I don't think people were taking like the game of the life is taken more seriously. I think that people should take it and and yeah, so I think in all times people were too serious like you should should have more fun and play with things and you age better. You have a much better life frankly like

To me, it's all the game. I realize that I'm speaking of a position of privilege. even if you're, imagine you're a bus driver and you have to drive a bus every single day. If you see it as like, this is this dreary thing I need to do on an ongoing basis. Yeah, you're going to burn out. But if you make a game out of it, it's like, okay, how quickly can I do the route? like today I like, you know, only do it just saying the right, like whatever, like gamify your life and make it fun.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (42:44.466) Toy. I just I was just in Italy. So I come in on I came in on one day and left on the next day to kind of a quick trip on the one day I come in and the immigration guy, you know, this Italian immigration guy, this guy stamps your passport. He was hilarious. He was making jokes. He was making like we were having fun. I was with my son. They were like it was just like he was just like all and then like on the way out, we had this like super grumpy guy, right, which is very grumpy. It's like

Fabrice Grinda (43:01.523) Yeah!

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (43:13.132) You want to be the first guy. Like the first guy was just having such a good time. had the same job, but like he just clearly enjoyed his job a lot more. Yeah. Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (43:18.448) Exactly. It doesn't matter what you do, just just have fun with it. Like, don't take it so seriously. And that's why I know I look I love kitesurfing. I love playing tennis. I playing paddle. I like camping backcountry skiing. Look, I've taken my son to do all these things and paragliding and like, we have a blast like saving people take parenting too seriously, like for the most part, you're not going to kill your kid. And it's good for them to take like controlled risks. And so good to like, don't stop living your life become parent.

You do all the things you used to do and you do it with your kids. Like it's one more thing you can do together. It's amazing and it's fun.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (43:54.286) What have you, because you're a relatively recent parent, you also have an adopted daughter, but you're relatively recent on the zero to one parenting side. How has that changed you?

Fabrice Grinda (44:10.59) hasn't really changed me in any way. I still do the same things.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (44:11.95) Yeah, don't seem, you don't see, mean, I've you for a long time, you don't seem to be that much different.

Fabrice Grinda (44:16.51) No, it's like it's allowed my inner child to express itself even more, right? Like I would roll around the road, the mud with my puppies and my dogs and other people's dogs actually. But now like I can even play more like it's yeah, it's like it's an excuse for more play and more fun in life. And and yeah, we have a blast now. I have an amazing life partner who is clearly I'm the gut cop and my role is play.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (44:20.813) Guess.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (44:32.183) Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (44:41.758) And I've embraced that role and I will embrace it for rest of my life. And it's amazing!

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (44:41.764) huh.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (44:48.782) Now, you're also like personally using AI. What are you kind of like using it for that you think other people could use it more for?

Fabrice Grinda (45:00.668) I use AI for, like I have hours long conversation with GPT every day. yeah, philosophy, research. So I'm thinking of move.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (45:06.924) hours.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (45:12.95) And what does that take in the play? Was that taking place of like when you were reading? that taking place of conversations you have with other people? What is that? What's the time displacement happening?

Fabrice Grinda (45:24.114) The, first of all, it's replaced Google completely. It's right there. That was quick. Yeah, it's rabbit holes. It's replaced Wikipedia rabbit holes for sure. YouTube, to some extent, but it's actually also so much more efficient. So let me give you an example. I'm toying with the idea of moving out of Turks at KCOS.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (45:27.458) Yeah, yeah, but that was quick. That wasn't that much time. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (45:34.484) or wiki old Wikipedia rabbit holes are going down.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. OK. You do rabbit holes. Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (45:51.582) And somewhere else and so I started having conversation with GPT but like where else would have the same quality of beaches but not of the dance sides of things I don't love in terms and it ended up suggesting four countries which narrowed down in two countries four islands then it identified like base of what I'd be the off-grid community and trying to build like actual land that was available based on an analysis of the master where was open then it found me the owners and he said you know what I actually think you should go and buy this hotel because it's like decrepit falling apart in three star

And here's my comparative valuation analysis of how much it's worth based on multiple analysis. I've done a bet. I've created, I've created a financial model of what I think your P and L looks like based on their published rates on Expedia and booking for like several years times the average occupancy of the country times the labor costs for these types of hotels. This is the P and L this is what I think they're worth. By the way, it's a three star all inclusive resort. This is the multiples at which these start these resorts have been trading at.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (46:25.792) Holy mackerel, this is so cool.

Fabrice Grinda (46:51.262) for the last five years in the country. Therefore, on a comparable analysis, things were this much. So these are the owners. This is much it's worth. If you want to buy, maybe offer 20 or 30 % more. But don't start there. Start at market value and then be willing to pay 30 % 40 % more. This is a deep research project, obviously. And it took hours to get me the results. But it's basically a McKinsey analysis, McKinsey level results.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (47:10.839) Yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (47:17.262) through several hours of interaction, it is mind-boggling. And I've used it for, if I need coding help, it gives me the answer. If I need research on medicine, supplements, I'm trying to heal my tennis cell bones, we had deep conversations on peptides and whether or not I should use peptides to heal my tendon and where the person comes from.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (47:25.4) Yeah, of course.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (47:36.195) wait, what did you come up with at the end of the title?

Fabrice Grinda (47:40.318) Um, so I've done PR beside a rich PRP and we, we shrink the tear from one centimeter point three centimeter. And now we're doing BPC one five seven with TB 500 peptides because they're not growth or money and where they injected, where does the right quantity, how do you get them? What, what, which, uh, yeah, all that stuff came through from interactions, Dr. GPT, you know, it's like mind boggling. You can use it for everything. And by the way, what's here's something that's interesting. Like two years ago.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (47:55.452) wow.

So cool.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (48:03.704) That's so cool.

Fabrice Grinda (48:09.424) I used mid journey, used runaway, used so many other AI tools and now I just use GPT for literally everything. Okay, cursor recoding, and even cursor I could see in future, a GitHub and Copilot will just offer it for free and maybe even GPT will just add it. And so...

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (48:11.608) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (48:26.51) Yeah, or you'll use Windsurf, is an open AI product or something like that, potentially.

Fabrice Grinda (48:31.294) Yeah, exactly. So I don't know. I only use OpenAI these days.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (48:34.946) You don't use any of the Google tools. You don't use perplexity. You don't use. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (48:39.838) I've done A-B testing. Once in a while I go to Grog and perplexity and entropic and deep seek, et cetera. But I'm so happy with my interactions with OpenAI and GBD. And by the way, now that's.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (48:42.936) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (48:50.318) Yeah, I certainly don't use, I certainly stopped using mid-Jersey like about a, I don't know, maybe a year ago or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (48:54.91) Yeah, Valley is great. Yeah, who needs to venture in it? so the open AI is eating the world. think it's an existential threat for Google, by the way. Like I have stopped using Google completely. Like I'm 100 % there.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (49:05.592) Bye.

Well, you probably, I mean, you probably still use Google Docs and Google Mail and, you know, the suite and you've got, you know, your company's probably still use a lot of them still use GCP and you're, you know, you're a lot, you know, a lot of your people use Android and they've got a lot of things going.

Fabrice Grinda (49:20.126) Yeah, actually we were always on, we were always on Microsoft Exchange for a variety of reasons versus Gmail.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (49:29.154) Well, why? Why are you on stage? Just to control your own emails, like for security or.

Fabrice Grinda (49:35.26) Yeah, no, it's not. No, no, not at all. Google has 50 gig mailboxes. I've been I have emails since 90 whatever to I have like several terabytes of emails and it does. Now they don't they don't. And Google doesn't like folders and subfolders. And the thing is, if you have several million emails and you do search, you get way too many results. So actually, I have a hierarchy of things organized and structured and that and so

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (49:47.104) You could pay a small fee to get.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (50:02.698) interesting. I'm looking at my Gmail right now and I have two terabytes in there. Yeah. Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (50:10.384) Okay. So maybe they fixed that, but back in the day, maybe a decade ago, it was limited to 50 gigabytes. and, and so for a long time there was a size limitation, but then just everything for me is structured in, in like folders, subfolders by company. like, Alex, I have like product. Yeah. I flattened the hierarchies in my brain thinks in these hierarchies and folders and subfolders, et cetera. And so it's really not, it doesn't move. So it's more a reflection of the way I like to work.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (50:15.768) Okay.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (50:26.092) Okay, so like moving would be just be a hard to move or something.

Fabrice Grinda (50:38.63) My inbox is my to-do list, right? So I try to be in inbox zero. I really happen to like the UX UI and the way work with Exchange. So it's a personal preference, same way I prefer iOS to Android. yeah, whatever.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (50:52.374) Yeah. Now at some point, I forgot where this was, you know, 10 plus years ago, you were leading a more nomadic lifestyle, where you're having fewer possessions and things like that. What did you learn from that journey?

Fabrice Grinda (51:09.79) So let's start by why I did it. I did it because as we get older, I find that our friendships fray. They don't have the same quality as they have. When you're in college, you're seeing your best friends every day. You're talking about future of life and philosophy. You go really deep. As you get older, because you get busy with work, with husbands, with wives, with kids, whatever, you start seeing each other every six weeks, eight weeks, and it becomes a biographical update.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (51:20.973) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (51:33.986) Yeah. People live, if they live in different cities, you know, much less. Yeah. Yeah. I was just trading emails with one of my best friends from college. realized I hadn't seen them in like six years.

Fabrice Grinda (51:38.758) Exactly once a year. Yeah. Yeah, so it's even more

Fabrice Grinda (51:46.586) Exactly. So I felt that the quality of these relationships was fraying. And I'm like, you know what? I just sold my company. And the other thing is you have a default, right? If you have an apartment, you live there. If you have a job, you go there. If you live in a city, you stay there. And do you ask yourself at first principles, absent any constraints, where would I want to be? What would I want to be doing? Who would I want to be seeing? And so I'm like, you know what?

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (52:10.509) Yep.

Fabrice Grinda (52:13.37) I happen to be in a very privileged position at this point in time where I actually can be anywhere, see anyone, do anything. Let's iterate, let's throw spaghetti in the world and figure out how I would want to actually structure my ideal life. And so I started by like couchsurfing and friends couchsurfing to reconnect with them, which actually was a dismal failure because of course embedding yourself in their lives when they have jobs, kids, et cetera. like, and I'm also infinite energy.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (52:39.745) Yeah, yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (52:42.43) So my vision of like we're gonna play tennis from like whatever 8 to 10 p.m We're gonna come home and we're gonna you know, think through like the whatever geopolitics macro I need to get a sleep. I'm tired. I think we were like different like different life stages as well Even though we're I was we're the same age. I was like single and so it's very different that didn't work But I kept iterating and iterating and then I realized you know what?

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (52:49.966) Right, they're like, I gotta bring the kid to school tomorrow. Yeah.

Fabrice Grinda (53:11.174) I like, I find that each city has a time where it's best enjoyed. So I love New York like September, October. The weather's pleasant, have all the new tech weeks, the events, et cetera. I love New York in April, May, June. Okay, so why don't I live there in like Airbnb's in that period? in the summer it's too hot, it's humid, it's oppressive, and no one's there. They're in the Hamptons, and I don't like the Hamptons. Okay, let's go the south of France for a month. let's go to Canada in August to go.

climbing, rock and hiking and camping, et cetera. And then November, December, let's go to Turks where I'm kite surfing. And in January, February, let's go to British Columbia where I'm back country skiing and Mars, let's go back to Turkey. So I started creating through iteration where like one week, one week, two weeks, two weeks, two months, two months, I started creating this life where I realized, you know what? I love New York because it's the center of the world and it's a haven for creative.

social artistic professional endeavors. It's where I host my dialogue dinners every like two to three weeks. It's where I feel the most fulfilled, but everything every social interaction is professional and after two months there I am burned out. And also if you're doing you're not thinking. And so then taking a step back and going to Turks and Caicos, you're going to British Columbia where I'm working during the day, of course my life is zoom calls, but then there's none of the rest of the distractions of New York and I'm like

meditating, reading, writing, doing my podcasts, writing on my blog, reading my books, and just being very healthy and being reflective is my personal work-life balance. And so I ended up iterating, creating this life that is perfect for me. I'm not saying it's universal, if I was just in Trix, I'd go crazy. If I was just in Reykjavik, I'd go crazy. If I was just in New York, I'd burn out. And so that combination of mountain, beach, city, in the right time ended up being perfect for me.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (54:51.02) Yeah, yeah, be optimized something.

Fabrice Grinda (55:03.824) And I came through it just because I had this acid-like lifestyle where I could actually try it. And it took me many iterations. I started in the Dominican Republic, not in church. That was a big mistake. But again, you learn from trying. You don't try exactly.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (55:15.47) Yeah, you're like, Now, you and I, one the things we share is like a love for dinner parties and stuff like that. What have you found? Like, what's the formula that you figured out that works well?

Fabrice Grinda (55:28.158) Well, there you can take all the credit because I basically copied the dialogue dinners. And so I host Jeffersonian dinners where it's one conversation only a lot of the time. I have a round table. I've always had round tables, even prior to dialogue, but I have a round table where we're eight.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (55:44.238) And so you're capping at a certain number of people.

Fabrice Grinda (55:47.678) Correct, so we're eight to 10. Sometimes we could be 11, but very, very smart, ambitious people, or Tennessee the Alpha don't like to be listening for as long, for very long. And so I've actually had 20, 30 people, Jeffersonian dinners, but they're hard to moderate on a long table, and it's hard to keep one conversation centered. And so I'm like, you know what, just for simplicity, we're gonna be six to 12. But unless on average we're eight to 10. I'm the moderator.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (55:49.582) 8 to 10.

Fabrice Grinda (56:15.87) This way I don't have a lost slot for moderator. Pre-assigned topics, either personal or open-ended or topical, like reinventing democracy of the 21st century, often helped by the dialog organization effect, in terms of finding the people that are coming to them, et cetera. So it's a combination of my friends and dialogers, and there's massive overlap between those two. And yeah, you need to show up on time. Your phone needs to be off.

You can, yeah, and after two hours, I tell everyone that the dinner is completed and that they're free to go and some people stay and that model works very well. The differences I've done is like, I used to be very strict, like your phone rings once you're out, you're never coming back. You showed up one minute late, you're not allowed in. Now I'm like, you know what? Show up seven to 730, we start at 730, then you're not allowed in. And it's 730 to 930 and 930, I end the proceedings and you can stay or not if you want.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (56:57.998) You

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (57:05.966) Okay.

Fabrice Grinda (57:10.718) And if your phone happened once in a while, I'm like, yeah, people have kids, etc. They can have emergencies. It's okay. I'm no longer as dictatorial as I used to be. But I do care about like,

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (57:17.499) You

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (57:22.126) And yeah, if you do, you obviously that, that makes a lot of sense for exploring like intellectual topics or business things. Have you done for like social, like a similar thing for social, we have couples or other stuff as well.

Fabrice Grinda (57:27.826) Yes.

Fabrice Grinda (57:35.23) Oh yeah, like what's the, how to be, you know, what's the best way to deal with aging parents? How to be a parent. I'm doing one with another, Stein, another dialoger on non-dualism in July. Non-dualism, yes, the fact that we are all God. And so, yes, I do them on a wide, wide variety of topics.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (57:39.502) how to be a better parent or something, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (57:51.638) non dualism. Okay.

Okay.

Fabrice Grinda (58:03.39) know, religion in 21st century, life in a post-singularity world, which is completely, I mean, no one knows, right? Like so, it's like you're limited by sci-fi in your imagination or, yeah, books you've read, like whatever, like very wide range and I mix the personal and the, but again, it's a reflection of partly like me. The reason I do them is I'm very intellectually curious and our jobs or, you know, we live in a world that rewards specialization.

So it's a way to express my intellectual curiosity in polymath.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (58:35.244) Now, a couple questions we ask all of our guests. What is a conspiracy theory you believe?

Fabrice Grinda (58:41.752) answer indirectly because it's not a conspiracy theory but it's a belief I have that I've experienced that I cannot prove but because conspiracy theories, you for the most part it's like I can like if you look at the moon you can see that we have like flag and like stuff we left there so and it was probably the most watched event in history like kind of hard to fake you know or the earth is flat you can kind of prove but it's not in fact people knew it was around like

Thousands of years ago, you know, you see the boat going over the horizon and past disappearing. So not many of these But through the use of psychedelics I have felt Very deeply primarily that we are like that this reality is kind of a simulation dream matrix

we're basically an otherwise bored immortal omnipotent omniscient deity, as created to have new experiences and we're all here to entertain each other. And so we're living this dream of life and I can't prove it. And I've never even, but was aware that there were a few philosophies out there that, that, that, that suggested that the, this belief is, which is why it's interesting because like, you know, in a Christian type tradition,

the God human relationship is like of like whatever kings or whatever owner and slave, not one where we are God. And I felt that we are all basically an expression of God and that this, which is why you can manifest, can, some rules, like in the matrix, in this simulation, some rules could be bent, others can be broken. And I felt a sense of unity and oneness on.

acid on ayahuasca on mushrooms that is mind-boggling and like literally I would think of something it were like what happened it where I would meet that person I'd like a bird in it or whatever like now can I prove that this is true no but I I've like lived it and felt it like once I accidentally took ten drops of acid like I felt like I lived I witnessed the creation of the universe and earth and looked through the creation of everything I had total ego that if I breathe the individual disappeared

Fabrice Grinda (01:01:00.966) and I became a mother, a surfer. It was beautiful and mind-boggling. And so it's not a conspiracy, but it's pretty crazy. It's pretty crazy. I can't prove it to be right. It could be an epiphenomenon of my brain, but I have lived it. I have had a divine experience. It felt like I communed with the divine. And that's what I think is missing from modern-day religious occurrences.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:01:09.292) Yeah, no, no, I like it. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:01:26.83) Okay, this is cool. Last question we ask all of our guests, what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Fabrice Grinda (01:01:36.094) So I've thought about this one. In fact, it was on the dialogue dinner I had Thursday last week. was one of the questions in the dialogue dinner.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:01:40.439) Okay.

I bet for the people on this or those is dialogue is something you and I do together to kind of like explore intellectual curiosity with some very other interesting people.

Fabrice Grinda (01:01:59.089) So I think there's some piece of advice that can be correct for some that can be incorrect for others. So one of the common pieces of advice and wisdom is like follow your passion and see where it leads and everything will be right for the world. And it is true if you happen to have a passion that you love and it's monetizable.

and you can make a good living out of it, it's amazing. Like if you feel that you're playing like I am, and probably you are, like every day I feel like work is play and it's amazing. But there are two cases where I think this doesn't work very well. One is if you have a passion and a hobby and you turn it into your job, you may actually lose the joie de vivre. It may no longer be something that you love doing, right? Like think of Agassiz and Tempest as father like.

basically beat the joy out of tennis for a minute. He started hating.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:02:53.56) By the way, his book, Open, is like, think one of the best autobiographies I've ever written.

Fabrice Grinda (01:02:58.832) Exactly. And he was miserable. And so turning your passion into a job is not always a great idea because you made it maybe meant it's better as a hobby. And if you turn it into a job and it becomes work, you may hate it. And so you need to really be thoughtful about that. And then second thing is the job you should have is like something where you're good at it. The world values it as such. It's monetizable and you're happy to be doing it. You're happy to be doing it on a repeated basis.

And it could very well be that if you're whatever hobby is like Art history, you know, there's only one Met curator, you know So you may not be in a position to monetize it very effectively So I would be thoughtful about that So but are there cases where the common wisdom advice works? Absolutely, and it's way better if you love what you do, but There are cases where it really doesn't work. And so I'd be I'd be very thoughtful

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:03:36.856) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:03:54.37) Yeah, and going back to that bus driver or the passport stamper, like you can find joy in many things, you know.

Fabrice Grinda (01:04:03.176) Absolutely.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:04:04.174) Alright, this has been amazing. Thank you Fabrice Grinda for joining us on World of DaaS. I follow you at Fabrice Grinda on X. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage you there. This has been a ton of fun.

Fabrice Grinda (01:04:15.592) Thank you,