Background
Grinda was born in Boulogne Billancourt in France and grew up in Nice, where he graduated high school C Massena in 1992.
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Fabrice Grinda
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Education
Princeton University.
Career
Grinda has had $300 million in investment exits. While at Princeton, Grinda created Princeton International Computers, exporting high-end computer equipment from the United States. to Europe. He then worked as a consultant for McKinsey from 1996 to 1998 before returning to France where he co-founded the company Aucland.
Aucland
Aucland was one of the three largest auction websites in Europe.
In July 1999, in exchange for 51% of the company, Grinda raised $18 million for Aucland from the venture fund of luxury-goods magnate Bernard Arnault. In 2000, he sold the rest of the company to Arnault’s fund.
Zingy
In 2000, he returned to the United States where he founded Zingy, a mobile media start-up which he grew to $200 million in revenue. In, 2004, Grinda sold Zingy for $80 million Japanese media conglomerate Foreign-Side.
He remained Chief Executive Officer until 2005.
OLX
In 2006, Grinda and Alec Oxenford co-founded OLX with the goal of becoming the largest free classified advertising website in the world. In 2010, the site was acquired by the South African group Naspers, with Grinda remaining Chief Executive Officer until 2013. OLX became the largest classified ad website in India, Pakistan, Brazil, Portugal, Poland and Ukraine.
While he was still Chief Executive Officer, OLX had a presence in more than 90 countries, in 50 languages, with over 150 million unique visitors per month.
As a serial angel investor, Grinda and his team analyze more than 100 companies a week and make a new investment about every 15 days. He has made about 200 start-up investments.
His most recent investments are focused on marketplaces connecting buyers to sellers, such as Beepi, a used car marketplace, and Lofty, a marketplace for works of art His portfolio is about 70% in the United States and 30% in the rest of the world, including Brazil, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia, China and Turkey.
Among Grinda"s investments are:
Grinda’s blog, "Musings of an Entrepreneur", is also carried by Business Insider.
Grinda has written about raising money from VCs, the future of technology in shaping the world, and working as a serial angel investor. Grinda has been a featured speaker at many conferences, including Le Web, IDCEE, Louisiana Red Innova, TechCrunch Italy and SIME.
Achievements
