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Fabrice Grinda: The First Person to Predict the Collapse of Credit Suisse? | 20VC #886

Fabrice Grinda is the Founding Partner @ FJ Labs, with over 700 investments, Fabrice has had over 250 exits and built a portfolio including Alibaba, Coupang, Airbnb, Instacart, Flexport, and Delivery Hero, and many more. Prior to FJ Labs, Fabrice served as CEO for three multinational companies; including OLX, one of the largest websites in the world with over 300 million unique visitors per month. As a result of his incredible investing success, Fabrice was named the #1 Angel Investor in the world by Forbes. ---------------------------------------- Chapters: 0:00 Everything Great Starts Small 7:35 WTF is Going On: The Market Today 9:47 The Optimistic Case 27:39 The Great Stagnation 38:50 The Catastrophe 49:00 What this Means for Venture 54:22 Quick Fire Questions ---------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Fabrice Grinda: 1.) Everything Great Starts Small: How did Fabrice make his way into the world of investing from founding 3 companies? How does Fabrice feel about founders raising funds with external LPs? Why does Fabrice feel that investing as an angel made him a better CEO? 2.) WTF is Going On: The Market Today How does Fabrice assess what is happening in the market today? What is causing the massive public market drops we are seeing? How do inflation rates and interest rates have such an impact on where we are? How much of this is a result of COVID, the shift to goods from services and supply chains? 3.) The Optimistic Case: How does Fabrice think things could get better from here? What needs to happen? What could the Fed do to enable this optimistic outcome to take place? What would need to happen in geo-politics and Russia for this to happen? What is the probability today of this optimistic case happening? 4.) The Great Stagnation: How does Fabrice think the economy could go sideways from here? What are the core drivers of this? Why is this the most likely outcome of all? What is the probability of this happening? 5.) The Catastrophe: How could this market get so much worse? What level of interest rate change would cause this outcome to occur? Why does Fabrice think that Switzerland is a “House of Cards”? What would this mean if Switzerland fell? What other European countries does Fabrice think are vulnerable? 6.) What this Means for Venture: How will LPs respond to these differing situations? How does this impact how Fabrice thinks about his rate of deployment? What segment of the market is Fabrice most excited for; early or growth? ---------------------------------------- #FabriceGrinda #FJLabs #20VC #HarryStebbings #VentureCapital #Economics

Harry StebbingshostFabrice Grindaguest
May 20, 20221h 6mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Fabrice Grinda Maps Three Futures For Tech Amid Global Uncertainty

  1. Fabrice Grinda recounts his evolution from marketplace founder to prolific early-stage investor and co‑founder of FJ Labs, explaining how investing sharpened his operating skills and market insight.
  2. He lays out a macro thesis he calls “The Great Unknown,” arguing that current conditions can plausibly lead to three very different outcomes: an optimistic soft‑landing, an inflationary stagnation, or a deep global crisis.
  3. Across these scenarios, Grinda explains how interest rates, inflation, geopolitical shocks, and sovereign debt interact to drive asset prices, with particular implications for tech, crypto/Web3, and venture funding.
  4. Despite high uncertainty, he remains strongly bullish on early-stage tech and Web3 over the next decade, while being more cautious on late-stage valuations, follow‑on capital, and LP behavior in the near term.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Use a simple, consistent investment framework and make fast decisions.

Grinda still relies on four core criteria—team, business quality, deal terms, and thesis fit—and structures his process to decide in one or two one‑hour meetings, forcing clarity and discipline.

Expect multiple macro paths and assign probabilities instead of certainties.

He frames the future as 20% odds of a benign soft-landing, 60% odds of an inflationary stagnation, and 20% odds of a severe crisis, and makes portfolio decisions based on this probabilistic view.

In high‑inflation, high‑uncertainty environments, tech still gains share.

Even in a “yucky” stagnation world, he argues that software and internet businesses retain pricing power and continue to take share from the rest of the economy, making early-stage tech relatively attractive.

Separate macro noise from long‑term startup building and early‑stage investing.

For seed and Series A investing, Grinda focuses on 7–10 year outcomes; short-term recessions and rate cycles matter mainly for follow‑on capital and valuation discipline, not whether to back great founders.

Raise and deploy capital cautiously, preserving dry powder for dislocations.

He advises VCs to slow check sizes, maintain reserves for existing portfolio companies, and build a “shopping list” of later‑stage leaders to buy in secondaries if valuations reset sharply.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

History trumps macro. For 200 years, betting on technology has worked despite wars, depressions, and crashes.

— Fabrice Grinda

We’re in what I call ‘The Great Unknown’—I can make a good case for three radically different outcomes from here.

— Fabrice Grinda

It’s so hard to do one thing well in life, let alone two. In general, I would just say: focus.

— Fabrice Grinda

The degrowth movement is bullshit. No one wants to go back to being a farmer with a life expectancy of 29.

— Fabrice Grinda

When you start a memo with, ‘This is a generational company and I’ll regret passing,’ you are. Make the investment.

— Fabrice Grinda

Fabrice Grinda’s path from founder to angel investor and creation of FJ LabsInvestment process, criteria, and how his approach has (and hasn’t) changed since 1998The “Great Unknown” macro framework: optimistic, stagnation, and crisis scenariosInterest rates, inflation, and their impact on tech valuations and crypto/Web3Venture capital market dynamics: fundraising cycles, follow‑on capital, and mega‑fundsTech as a long‑term deflationary force and driver of labor productivityPortfolio construction, selling discipline, and lessons from major investment misses

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