Team
Fabrice Grinda
Fabrice Grinda, co-founder of FJ Labs, is among the world’s leading marketplace entrepreneurs and investors with over 150 exits on over 600 angel investments. In 2018, Forbes named Fabrice Grinda the number one angel investor in the world based on publicly recorded investments and exits. Mr. Grinda was previously the co-founder and co-CEO of OLX, one of the largest online marketplaces worldwide, with over 300 million unique visitors per month and a presence in 45 countries, of which a majority stake was sold to Naspers in 2010.
Prior to OLX, Mr. Grinda founded Zingy, a mobile media start-up which he grew to $200m in revenue and was sold to Japanese media conglomerate For-Side in 2004. Mr. Grinda received a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Economics from Princeton University.
Arnau Porto
Arnau Porto is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Greentrail Capital.
Previously, Mr. Porto co-founded Blueport Capital, a California-based investment partnership backed by the Robert Bass family office.
Before that, he was an investment analyst at Viking Global in New York and he started his career as an institutional investor at Blackstone in London.
Mr. Porto holds an MBA from Stanford University.
Aleksander Baranski
Mr. Baranski has over 15 years of experience in the financial sector. Most recently, he worked at Optiver, a leading proprietary trading firm. Previously, Mr. Baranski invested in private technology companies.
Prior to that, Mr. Baranski worked at Smith Cove Capital Management and Perry Capital, where he invested across the capital structure. Mr. Baranski also worked at The Blackstone Group. He began his career with McKinsey & Company. Mr. Baranski holds an MBA with honors from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Jeff Weinstein
Jeff Weinstein is a Principal at FJ Labs, where he co-heads the fund’s 600+ investments. , which have included Alibaba, Flexport, Rappi, Betterment, Fanduel and Delivery Hero, and manages external fundraising efforts.
Mr. Weinstein was previously a Senior Associate at Lux Capital, a venture capital firm with $2.5 billion assets under management that invests in emerging technologies in the physical and life sciences. Mr. Weinstein holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Advisors
Juan Villalonga
Juan Villalonga is a Partner at Lutetia Technology Partners and a Strategic Advisor of SparkBeyond. In addition, he currently serves as an advisor to the board of directors of Aiola and Lutetia Capital. Mr. Villalonga has strong operational experience as the former Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Telefonica Group, a Spanish multinational telecommunications company and one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world, which he grew from $12 billion to over $100 billion in market capitalization. In 2010, the Harvard Business Review ranked Mr. Villalonga as #33 on the list of the top 100 performing CEOs in the world. Mr. Villalonga holds an MBA from IESE Barcelona.
Robert Perdue
Robert Perdue is also a Partner at Lutetia Technology and is a Strategic Advisor to three venture-backed artificial intelligence companies. Additionally, he serves on the Board of Directors of Impact, Inc., the leading SaaS platform for enterprise partnership automation. Mr. Perdue is the former Chief Operating Officer and Board Member of The Trade Desk, where he grew the company’s enterprise value from $20 million to over $15 billion. becoming the #1 performing technology initial public offering stock on the NASDAQ over the last five years. He holds an MBA from Georgetown University.
Gabriel Silva
Gabriel Silva is the former Chief Financial Officer of Nubank, where he helped to build and scale one of the world's largest FinTech companies. Previously, Mr. Silva was a partner and Chief Financial Officer of Pravaler, Brazil's leading provider of private student loans, and before that a Managing Director at York Capital, a New York-based hedge fund. Mr. Silva holds an MBA from Stanford. He is also a member of Fundação Estudar, a Brazilian education non-profit organization.
Michael Zeisser
Michael Zeisser is the Managing Partner of FMZ Ventures, a growth equity investment fund focused on Experience Economy and marketplace ecosystems. Michael is also a strategic advisor to the International Olympic Committee, Airbnb, and Reddit.
Until April 2018, he was Chairman, U.S. Investments for Alibaba Group and led Alibaba’s strategic investments outside of Asia. Michael joined Alibaba in 2013 prior to its historic IPO and was Alibaba’s most senior executive in the Americas. Michael deployed over $1.5 billion in growth capital for Alibaba Group. He led stage-agnostic investments in private companies including Lyft, Jet, Snapchat, Fanatics, Magic Leap, 23andMe, Amblin Entertainment, and in public companies including Zulily and Groupon.
Jeff Epstein
Jeff Epstein is an operating partner in Bessemer’s Silicon Valley office where he primarily works with chief executive and financial officers to share and implement best practices. He was the former Executive Vice President and CFO of Oracle, one of the world’s largest and most profitable technology companies, with a market value of over $150 billion. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Epstein served as CFO of several public and private companies, including DoubleClick (sold to Google), King World Productions (sold to CBS) and Nielsen’s Media Measurement and Information Group. Today Mr. Epstein leads the CFO Advisory Board at Bessemer where more than 100 portfolio company CFOs meet in person and online to help each other improve their effectiveness. He specializes in marketplaces and B2B software companies. He serves on the boards of directors of Kaiser Permanente, Twilio, Shutterstock and several other private companies. Mr. Epstein served on the Board of Directors of Booking Holdings/Priceline for 16 years until 2019. During this time, Booking stock appreciated 180x from $10/share to over $1,800/share. He holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Brian Cook
Brian Cook has over 20 years of experience within mergers and acquisitions, business development, and strategic planning across a wide range of industries. Mr. Cook began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers (“PwC”), where he was responsible for providing business and financial due diligence and transaction structuring services to financial sponsors and corporate clients on a global basis. While at PwC, Mr. Cook’s transaction experience included Viacom’s acquisition of CBS, Ingersoll-Rand’s disposal of Ingersoll-Dresser Pump and Ford Motor Company’s acquisition of the Volvo Car Corporation. Following his tenure at PwC, Mr. Cook served as the Vice President of Corporate Development and subsequently Global Head of M&A at Honeywell, in which he oversaw a global team of approximately 25 people. Over the course of his 17 years at Honeywell, Mr. Cook aided or led the execution of over 60 buy- and sell-side transactions. During 2018, Mr. Cook led the execution of the tax-free spinoffs of Honeywell’s Home Automation (Resideo) and Turbochargers (Garrett Motion) businesses.
Alec Oxenford
Alec Oxenford is a serial tech entrepreneur and is regarded as a top technology sector entrepreneur. He is an active angel investor in the technology industry with a focus on emerging markets. Prior to founding Alpha Capital, in 2015, Mr. Oxenford co-founded and served as CEO of letgo until July 2020 when its United States operations were merged with OfferUp and its Turkey operations were simultaneously acquired by OLX. Under Mr. Oxenford’s leadership, letgo grew to over 100 million downloads and 400 million listings according to Techcrunch, and became a unicorn. Prior to letgo, Mr. Oxenford co-founded with Fabrice Grinda and led the unicorn OLX. In 1999 during the early days of the Internet, Mr. Oxenford founded DeRemate.com which was acquired by MercadoLibre in 2005. He received his MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School in 1997 and was elected Young Global Leader (2006-11) by the World Economic Forum.
Paul Gardi
Paul Gardi has extensive entrepreneurial, operations and investment experience. He has been a lead investor in CNET Networks, Personifi and was a seed investor and CEO/ Chairman at Playlist.com. He held the CEO position at IAC/InterActiveCorp Advertising Solutions and COO at Teoma. At Ask Jeeves he was the Executive Vice President of Strategy and Operations. Ask Jeeves was the top performing stock on the Nasdaq in 2004 (shareholder value increased by over 40x) and was later acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp Advertising Solutions Other significant investments include: Uber, Canva, Thras.io, Produce Pay, Ant Financial, Happn, Fanduel, Ecosense, Flexmoney, Comtravo, Viajnet, Heritage Restaurant group. He was on the American Express Advisory Board, the Vix Media Board and the IAB Board which sets the standards for internet advertising. Mr. Gardi is a graduate of Harvard Business School.