FJ Labs

FJ Labs is a U.S.-based investment firm established in 2015 by Fabrice Grinda. The firm operates with a stage-agnostic approach, primarily targeting marketplaces and consumer-facing startups. FJ Labs focuses its investments on seed and Series A rounds, with a financial commitment ranging from $50,000 to $5,000,000. The firm has invested in a variety of notable companies, including Alibaba Group, beepi, BrightRoll, Betterment, and ADORE ME.

Matias Barbero

Investor

Zineb Belghiti

Associate

Camila Bustamante

Analyst

Andres Santos Cantu

Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Investor

Agapitos Diakogiannis

Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Investor

Nancy Dong

Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Investor

Vivian Graves

Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Investor

Fabrice Grinda

Founding Partner

William Guillouard

Venture Partner

Arne Halleraker

Partner

Mark Lurie

Venture Partner

Jose Marin

Founding Partner

Martin Pustilnick

Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Investor

Guimar Vaca Sittic

Venture Partner

Luke Skertich

Investor

Kelly Tully

Head of Platform / Investor

Jeff Weinstein

Partner

Andrea Xu

Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Investor

Past deals in Beverages

Bottomless

Series A in 2021
Bottomless is a company that has developed a WiFi-enabled scale designed to enhance the coffee subscription experience. This innovative scale allows users to track their coffee consumption and automatically reorder freshly roasted beans when supplies run low. By syncing with the scale, consumers can specify their preferences, enabling the platform to learn individual caffeine habits and provide personalized coffee selections. This approach ensures that customers receive fresh coffee at optimal times, avoiding the stale offerings typically associated with traditional coffee purchases.

Drizly

Series C in 2020
Drizly is an e-commerce alcohol marketplace and the best way to shop beer, wine, and spirits. With the speed and convenience of on-demand delivery and shipping, Drizly partners with retailers in 235 markets to offer consumers of legal drinking age unrivaled selection and a transparent, personalized shopping experience. Backed by world-class institutional investors, Drizly partners with retailers to bring their shelves online, helping them to reach new customers, tap into key market and customer insights, and diversify their business to grow sales.

Blank Street

Pre Seed Round in 2020
Operator of a coffee shop intended to offer caffeine products with zero waste and zero emissions. The company's product line includes different flavors of coffee, baked treats, pastries, and tacos, and lets patrons place their orders from a mobile application, enabling consumers to order their favorite sips of coffee with a single click.

Verb Energy

Seed Round in 2019
Verb Energy, Inc., founded in 2015 and based in Lexington, Massachusetts, specializes in the production of caffeinated energy bars. The company's flagship product, the Verb Caffeinated Energy Bar, is designed to provide a healthy and convenient source of energy. Each bar incorporates caffeine derived from organic green tea, combined with carbohydrates and protein to ensure prolonged energy release. Verb Energy aims to deliver tasty and nutritious energy products that cater to a wide audience, promoting a lifestyle of health and vitality while remaining affordable.

Truebird

Seed Round in 2019
Truebird was founded with the mission to bring quality coffee to as many people and places as possible. Truebird's fully-automated, contactless espresso bar makes delicious coffee with a mesmerizing experience, and it can go just about anywhere. Consider it a total re-imagining of what a vending machine can be. It was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.

Hooch

Seed Round in 2018
Hooch Inc. operates a subscription-based mobile application that provides its members with access to cocktail drinks at a network of bars in New York and Los Angeles. Available on both Android and iOS platforms, the app is designed to enhance the user experience by offering rewards, including cashback and exclusive perks, when members travel, shop, or dine with global partners. Based in New York, Hooch aims to create a unique social experience for its users while promoting local bars.

Firstleaf

Venture Round in 2018
Firstleaf is America's most personalized wine company that uses millions of data points to produce and curate each shipment of award-winning wine from around the world so that members can explore new bottles and discover new favorites tailored to their tastes. The company, which was founded by Philip James, a wine industry veteran and Oxford-educated chemist, offers a subscription service that unites the art and science of wine. Firstleaf brings together proprietary technology, expert winemakers and a WSET-certified concierge team, to build a unique Wine Profile for each member and curate each shipment individually. With no preset packs or boxes, Firstleaf has over 82 million combinations of wines possible and 98% of its monthly boxes are unique. Its team of winemakers sample over 10,000 wines each year across 5 continents and 12 countries to select only the finest bottles. With more than 700,000 12-bottle cases sold last year, Firstleaf is the #1 trusted wine brand in consumer rankings. Nearly one million people have tried Firstleaf since the brand's inception. Its wines have won over 2,800 awards, including over 300 90+ point scores, and 92% of its wines are award-winning. This year, Firstleaf was named one of Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies in the data science category and recognized as one of Wine Business Monthly's 50 Largest Wineries. This came on the heels of being named Wine Company of the Year in Winemaker Challenge International's 2021 wine competition, one of the only U.S. wine competitions judged exclusively by professional winemakers.

Endless West

Series A in 2017
Endless West is a beverage startup using scientific production methods to create its own original blend of wines and spirits. Its winery uses molecules from plants, animals, and substances for taste, smell, and color and combines them to create sustainable wine without any grapes, yeast, or any kind of fermentation. The company's first product, Glyph, is the first aged-style spirit made using flavor and aroma molecules extracted from more efficient sources in nature. Glyph is made without aging or barreling which means significantly less wood, water, and land is used in its production process. Endless West was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Flaviar

Seed Round in 2014
Flaviar, a spirits tasting club, offers a subscription service that helps members discover new liquor products through sample tasting packs. Subscribers are given access to rare and original spirits, invite them to great events, and keep them educated and entertained with booze-themed content and receive personalized samples and complimentary bottles every month. Flaviar was established by Grisa Soba and Jugoslav Petkovic and was headquartered in London, England since 2012.