The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.
Building with AI Outside the U.S.
Advice from the #1 Angel Investor According to Forbes for Winning in Emerging Markets
My guest today is Fabrice Grinda, cofounder of FJ Labs and one of the most active angel investors in the world, with 1,100+ investments, such as Airbnb, Alibaba, and Flexport.
Before creating FJ Labs, Fabrice built several companies, among them Zingy, which went from the brink of bankruptcy to being sold for $200M, and OLX, a platform he took to 300M users in 40+ countries before it was acquired by Naspers.
Today he runs FJ Labs. He operates like an angel investor, but at the scale of a venture capital fund. He reviews hundreds of opportunities every week and invests in 150 to 200 startups a year, with a fast process designed to make life easier for founders.
🗒 Show Notes
- [01:00] - Why being CEO of a public company stopped being interesting
- [22:00] - Is AI going to kill marketplaces? The real impact on e-commerce
- [27:00] - The next big bet: buy offline businesses and multiply them 10x with AI
- [33:00] - The trillion-dollar opportunity in B2B digitization
- [49:00] - Do AI startups really need less capital?
🧠 Key Takeaways
#1 Stop Chasing “Success” if You Hate Your Tuesdays
Fabrice built an enormous company, achieved financial freedom, and dominated his market, but he was miserable. He understood that success is not scale or recognition, but whether you enjoy your day to day. His “life audit” forces founders to ask themselves: do I still enjoy the work that this success demands? If the answer is no, the problem is not the business, it is the role.
#2 the Biggest Gains from AI Will Come from B2B Workflows
According to Fabrice, the real gold of AI is not in flashy industries, but in the analog processes that operate the global economy. Factories, suppliers, logistics, marketplaces, and purchasing still run on email, Excel, and phone calls. AI will create more value by modernizing these slow and invisible flows than by reinventing consumer apps.
#3 Do Not Compete in “the Game of Kings”: Choose a Vertical You Can Actually Win
Founders outside Silicon Valley should not compete with OpenAI or Google on foundation models: they do not have the capital, the talent, or the infrastructure. The winnable path is to go deep into a vertical, master its processes, and use AI to improve them. Investors should avoid infrastructure dreams and bet on applied AI companies with real customers and real problems.
#4 AI Is Not Going to Kill Marketplaces, Because Buying Is Human, Not Logical
Fabrice argues that GPT will not replace e-commerce because people do not only search; they also browse, discover, and entertain themselves. And the chaotic backend of payments, fulfillment, and logistics is not something AI is going to control. Marketplaces are not dying; they are getting stronger with AI.
⭐ Favorite Quote:
“Most investors see AI as the race to replace human work, but the operational reality is very different. When I look at how companies are implementing AI, I do not see mass layoffs; I see teams hiring even more engineers in order to build better products, and faster. Technology has always reduced costs and increased efficiency, and even so, historically it has created more employment, not less.
The real value is not in eliminating people, but in redefining roles: AI does the diagnosis, the doctor offers empathy; AI delivers the lesson, the teacher becomes a guide. The change will be profound, but it will happen much more slowly than people believe, and its final impact will be far greater than what we imagine.”