The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Grinda: Employer reference checks on startup founders are a negative signal
“We tried doing reference checks on founders and realized that they were a negative signal. Some of the very best founders were horrible employees. They would talk back to their bosses. They would work on their startup at their job. They had the worst reference…”
Grinda: FJ Labs restricts VC introductions to 5th-35th percentile portfolio companies
“Now, we don't do that for all of them. We do it typically for the fifth to 35th percentile companies in the portfolio. The top five percent usually don't need us, and the bottom 50th percentile will tell them where they send, will tell them what we think they …”
Grinda: FJ Labs blindly backs previous successful founders in their next ventures
“And number three, founders we backed in the past that have done well for us, we will back them blindly in whatever they do next.”
Grinda: FJ Labs is too diversified to ever be a 10x fund
“We will never be a 10 X fund just because we're too diversified for that. Any one fund will never be top to sell.”
Grinda: LPs are too rigid and fail to back unconventional high-performing funds
“Now, the investment side, I definitely have a pet peeve, which is you would think that with a track record that we have, it'd be actually reasonably easy to raise capital. You would think investors or LPs would be more for it thinking and more creative in term…”
Grinda: FJ Labs takes no board seats and ignores ownership targets
“We don't lead, we don't price, we don't take board seats, we write small checks, we're not competing for allocation. In fact, we're not even ownership sensitive per se.”
Grinda: FJ Labs generated a 300x to 400x return on Brazilian startup Méliuz
“An example, we invested in a rewards company in Brazil called Milius that was in a tertiary city. They had extraordinary traction, but because they were in tertiary city, and they were not very eloquent, and their English wasn't great, no one wanted to back th…”