OLX.com Co-Founder: Fabrice Grinda

Thank you to Fabrice and his staff at OLX.com for assisting in this 2.0 interview!

I’ve had a chance to review your site OLX.com on my other blog Jennifer’s Review.  While I haven’t yet placed an ad on your site, I did some scouting in your real estate section since real estate is my background.  Very impressive!  You claim to utilize social media marketing for your classifieds … and you truly do!

ME: While you have founded a very successful Zingy, Inc. and other online auction sites of Aucland and Deremate previously – what was your inspiration to start OLX.com which is a free classified site?

FABRICE: Craigslist was our inspiration. We loved its simplicity, speed and ease of use, but felt that we could do a better job from a product, business model and global deployment perspective.

To address each of those separately:

· Product: We made it easier to include pictures and videos in your listings, we added cool search features especially in real estate and cars, we built a fantastic mobile version and we gave users tools to promote their ads on Facebook & Twitter. We also implemented neat scam control ideas.

· Business model: Craigslist charges for real estate and job ads in certain cities. We felt it was better to be 100% free in order to have as many listings as possible.

· Global deployment: In most countries newspapers still dominate classifieds and charge an arm and a leg for them ($200+ for very small ads!). This limits their usefulness to high valued transactions. Free is magical as it allows users to find roommates, babysitters or whatever else they might need!

ME: You started OlX.com in March of 2006 and since then you’ve created an impressive presence globally in a short amount of time. You have 140 employees present in 90 countries and are branding yourself as the next generation of online free classified ads. What do you attribute to that success? (beside the funding which Techcrunch reported on in May of ‘09 – also impressive!)

FABRICE: We have grown three ways:
· Online marketing – we have been reasonably aggressive advertising on Google.
· Partnerships – we run classifieds for Friendster, Hi5 and many others!
· Acquisitions – we bought 8 free classified sites.

ME: Your press release title was “Olx.com – the largest free classified ad site that no one has heard of!” and that’s true, until I was contacted – I had not heard of your site. When I got there I can completely see how this is going to grow! Its craigslist and social media marketing all in one package for your free ad. Globally, you got it, but what will it take to make the US market for you?

FABRICE: We’re hoping that the combination of free, a better product and good scam control will allow us to get some traction in the US.

ME: Last year you joined forces with hi5 further solidifying your global clientele. Can we look forward to more integration of OlX.com within US based social networks?

FABRICE: We run classifieds for MySpace Latin America but have not yet convinced MySpace in the US or Facebook to let us run their classifieds offerings.

ME: Since my background is real estate related, one fun question I ask all the people I talk to: Money no object, where would you like to call your second, relaxation, vacation home and why?

FABRICE: I actually like diversity in my vacation experiences so instead of owning a home in 1 fixed location I would spend my vacation time doing different activities: heli-skiing, kite boarding, playing tennis and doing adventure travel. To give you an example of adventure travel, I recently came back from a walking safari in Tanzania. Before that I went rafting, hiking and biking in Costa Rica and raced dune buggies in the Baja in Mexico.

Thank you Fabrice!  Look forward to doing more on your site!

Below is an interview Fabric did on Money for Breakfast - Fox News.

Always a pleasure to learn more about the people behind great companies!  You can follow Fabrice on his blog: Musings of an entrepreneur, find him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.

@JennStinnett

Tagged as: business interview, fabrice Grinda, interesting interviews, interview, olx.com, start-up company