1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Fabrice Grinda, Founding Partner at FJ Labs (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do some examples of what you’ve invested in that are representative of your investment thesis. Pick one that you are proud of and one that would tell us more about your company. 

Fabrice Grinda: First of all, we are thesis-driven, so we think through and ask ourselves, “Okay, where is the world heading?” Our answer is in marketplaces and meta trends. We have a specific thesis of three things that are happening right now in marketplaces.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Fabrice Grinda, Founding Partner at FJ Labs (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Fabrice Grinda, Founding Partner at FJ Labs, discusses his firm’s investment thesis around marketplaces.

Sramana Mitra: We are going to start today’s session with a conversation with Fabrice Grinda, the founder partner at FJ Labs. Let’s get you acquainted with our audience. Tell us a bit about your background as well as FJ Labs. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashmeet Sidana, Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about areas in which you are looking for companies.

Ashmeet Sidana: There are two recent trends that I have observed and have started talking about. One builds on an old trend that data is the new oil. This is where data is an important commodity that drives businesses like Google, Twitter, and Facebook.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner at Speciale Invest (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: There are a lot of SaaS platforms that are entrenched in enterprise workflow and they have a lot of customers. The one that you are talking about is going after customers that are deeply entrenched in Zoom for example.

To what extent is a company like this leveraging that deep penetration of another platform? How close is the partnership with Zoom for example? 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashmeet Sidana, Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: A few weeks ago, I talked with an old friend of mine who I’ve known for 20 years. His name is Murli Thirumale. He’s done several startups in the storage space. He built Portworx and sold it to Pure Storage. Pure storage is like an old storage company that was a hardware company that is trying to go from hardware to software.

They are trying to climb up the stack and the Portworx acquisition is perfect for their mode of going up the stack. I was telling Murli, “You guys should do Platform-as-a-Service so that you can be considered the center of innovation at that layer.”

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner at Speciale Invest (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What about companies that are uniquely Indian? What about enterprise software that is facing the global market? India is facing e-commerce and the whole digital commerce world. What about categories or styles of companies that are uniquely Indian? Is that on your radar?

Vishesh Rajaram: If they are on the enterprise side, they will be on our radar. The Indian enterprise market is still early. I think the SMB market and their ability to pay is still early in the Indian market.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashmeet Sidana, Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The motivation for the infrastructure layer, whether it’s storage, security, or networking, is not very different. Timeline-wise, it’s behind. Let’s play out the argument with me for a second.

For an application layer SaaS company that has achieved $200 million ARR by selling one product, there are a lot of companies in the $100 ARR range with one product. They do not have to move out of that one product and broaden the portfolio to be a successful public company that goes to $1 billion in revenue.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner at Speciale Invest (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the second company? What sector was it in?

Vishesh Rajaram: I’m not going to name the second one too much. This is a company that was developing tools to enable developing 3D and VR content for e-commerce. They were acquired by a large retail e-commerce group. 

Sramana Mitra: Also in India?