In case you observe fintech on X, it’s very possible that you’ve come throughout the account of Sheel Mohnot, co-founder and basic accomplice of Higher Tomorrow Ventures.
With over 150,000 followers, Mohnot has constructed a powerful presence on the social media website. Apparently, lots of his posts don’t have anything to do with enterprise capital.
Mohnot began Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV) after co-founding a number of firms, together with FeeFighters, which bought to Groupon in 2012.
BTV, which has $300 million beneath administration, focuses on investing primarily on the pre-seed and seed stage in fintech startups. It additionally operates an accelerator, The Mint.
Since its November 2019 inception, BTV has backed the likes of AngelList, Charlie, Coast, and Unit. Mohnot personally has additionally invested as an angel for over a decade, writing checks into firms reminiscent of Flexport, Ironclad, Ethos Insurance coverage, and Residence Record.
I hopped on the mic to interview Mohnot to file an episode of Fairness Podcast, and we mentioned subjects like how he constructed such a big following on X with viral posts, how he ended up showing in a Justin Bieber video, what areas of fintech he’s most enthusiastic about, and his ideas on the place synthetic intelligence is basically working within the fintech world.
This interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
Apart from being considerably of an influencer on social media, your major job is investing in fintech startups out of Higher Tomorrow Ventures. Let’s discuss briefly about what BTV considers to be a fintech firm.
We expect much more issues are fintech than different individuals do. So for example, we take into consideration vertical SaaS as being fintech. And if you consider the Toasts and Shopifys of the world, over 80% of their revenues are monetary providers. So we consider these as fintech firms. After which additionally B2B marketplaces, we consider as fintech firms too.
OK, we’re going to return again to fintech. However first, I’d like to speak about your social media technique. You will have over 151,000 followers on X. How did you turn into a social media star?
I don’t know if I’m a star, however I do get pleasure from it. I first signed up for Twitter a very long time in the past, however I actually was not very energetic till the pandemic. Within the early days of the pandemic, I used to be energetic on Clubhouse — as I used to be so bored at residence. I turned tremendous energetic there and accrued a loopy variety of followers. I believe like 3.3 million. However in fact that’s not likely related anymore. The one technique to write to individuals on Clubhouse was by way of Twitter. In order that naturally led to doing stuff on Twitter and extra followers there. I simply began to write down, and located that I actually preferred it. I like sharing concepts and getting suggestions from individuals.
What have been your most viral posts over time?
My spouse really posted about herself being in a meme on the Folsom Avenue Truthful with an expression on her face the place she’s like, “Why? How did I find yourself right here?” That obtained 250,000 likes. However the one from my account was within the midst of me seeing loads of pitches for web3 founders attempting to unravel some type of drawback that didn’t actually exist. I noticed a video of a man who had sliced the again wheel of his bicycle into two and made it nonetheless rideable. And I used to be like, “Why would you do that?” And so I captioned it with one thing like “Web3 founders fixing issues that don’t exist” and it went wild. Folks went wild for it.
Apart from investing, you’ve additionally made headlines for some very attention-grabbing issues reminiscent of your wedding ceremony in 2023 being a TacoBell Metaverse wedding and your making an look in a Justin Bieber video in 2021. How on earth did these issues occur?
I obtained engaged in 2022 and we had a reasonably enjoyable engagement story which I posted on Twitter. Lots of people noticed that I used to be engaged, after which Taco Bell had a contest the place they needed to search out one fortunate couple to marry within the metaverse. And a bunch of individuals noticed that I used to be engaged and likewise knew that I like Taco Bell, and mentioned, “Hey, Sheel, that is good for you.” They ended up selecting us.
As for the video, I used to be on this courting present through the pandemic referred to as the Zoom Bachelorette. I didn’t win however I obtained the viewers’s vote and within the viewers was Scooter Braun, who was the supervisor for Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande. We chatted on Clubhouse, and he ended up placing me within the video.
I do know not your whole posts relate to investing or fintech, however I’m positive it’s one way or the other impacted it. Has it helped you entice founders chances are you’ll not have in any other case attracted or helped you win offers?
Yeah, I believe so. Initially, I might say, I’m not doing it for these causes. I’m simply having a great time and posting what I believe is attention-grabbing and thought-provoking and may get individuals to show me one thing after the very fact, however I do suppose it has been useful.
The primary time I noticed it was once I emailed a founder that I used to be actually enthusiastic about. I do know a bunch of different buyers had been reaching out too, however once I reached out, they responded instantly, and mentioned, “I believe we’ve got the identical exercise routine.”And so they had been responding to a tweet I had posted that had that went viral, which was when Chamath [Palihapitiya] had posted a tweet of him with his shirt off, and I used to be simply making enjoyable of myself and him by posting a reply to it. And so these guys had been like, “Hey, we actually like your fashion. Let’s get it. Let’s start.” And I believed, “Oh, wow, that’s fairly highly effective, like they know who I’m, and it’s gone on to be tremendous useful.”
Now, on the subject of Higher Tomorrow Ventures — what number of funds have you ever raised up to now? And I hold listening to that fintech is again. Would you agree with that? What are you bullish about?
We’re investing out of our second fund now, and we’ll quickly be investing out of our third fund. And yeah, I believe the fintech market is sizzling once more and we’re going to see extra exits within the close to future. I believe general, the fintech world is fairly poised to have loads of outcomes within the close to future.
I’m enthusiastic about loads of the stuff that we at all times believed in, which is “the every part is fintech story,” which persists as we speak. As I discussed earlier than, vertical SaaS and B2B marketplaces have gotten fintech firms, and there’s loads of alternative to allow these of us. I’m additionally actually enthusiastic about accounting. We now have three firms behind this thesis that there’s an enormous scarcity of accountants on this nation.
It’s attention-grabbing you say that contemplating that on the finish of final 12 months, an accounting startup referred to as Bench shut down unexpectedly earlier than it obtained acquired a number of days later by this firm referred to as Employer.com. Lots of people can debate what went unsuitable with Bench, nevertheless it seems like what occurred there doesn’t appear to be impacting your general views on the area as a complete?
It’s attention-grabbing. I consider Bench as actually an accounting agency, moderately than it being a venture-backed accounting agency, like they’d a bunch of people doing accounting work. And an issue with that’s it’s actually arduous to scale, to construct like a enterprise scale enterprise and proceed to develop at enterprise scale. And so ultimately, I consider I’ve heard from prospects like they ended up slicing corners. Issues didn’t actually go as individuals had needed, and they also had a bunch of challenges.
Not too long ago, the massive information that dominated was DeepSeek. It was all over the place. All people’s speaking about it, OpenAI gave the impression to be freaking out. What do you suppose — is DeepSeek actually this massive risk, or is it only a bunch of hype?
There are a selection of issues to unpack inside DeepSeek. One, it’s from China. One other is that it’s open supply, and one other is that it’s supposedly accomplished very cheaply.
I believe we’ve at all times believed that the price of inference, the latest modeling prices, had been going to return down. However I believe DeepSeek launching helped the fee come down fairly considerably. And so, now you could have a little bit of a worth battle on the foundational mannequin stage, which is nice for our firms which are constructing on AI. It’s phenomenal.
What concerning the hype round AI generally?
There are such a lot of firms that pitch us the identical approach that they pitch you, they usually inform us that they’re AI firms, and also you look and there’s nothing AI about them, or little or no; I believe only a few firms are literally AI firms. After which I believe there are much more firms which are seeing large worth from AI however aren’t, “AI firms.” We make investments throughout the spectrum. I do suppose there’s this notion that you have to be an AI firm to get consideration. And I don’t suppose that’s true. I believe it’s simply vital to be trustworthy about who you might be and what you’re doing.
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