Slow Ventures Raised $64M to Bet on Creators - Jack Raines Explains Why

we need to get Jack Raines inside of the show. I am particularly interested in what he has to say about creators. They are doing many things both on the general fund side, all with creators as well. He writes the Young Money newsletter, and his new book is coming forth. Oh, actually, I think his new book may be here. No, still in pre-sale. We need to ask him. Everybody, welcome into the show, Jack Raines, the slot—

happy to be here, happy to be here. Hold up, wait. Come on, Jack! Come on, baby!

That's what we're talking about, man. Jack, we appreciate you making the time and joining us today, my friend.

Uh, humbled and honored to be here. Happy to be here. Um, to answer your first question, I did write a book called Young Money. I got an early copy right here. That's an early copy, comes out, comes out in August. But like, everybody pre-order a million copies. Young Money by Jack Raines, so I can earn out my advance.

My publisher's happy. Well, we've got to Everybody needs to read this book.

That's actually obligated self-marketing right there. What's up, guys?

Happy to be here. That's what we're here for. One of the first things that we say on the show, Jack, is that ads are not bad. They're wonderful. They make the world go round. And Jack, tell us about this book and why everybody needs to buy it. My guess would be is that it is the path for everyone in Gen Z and what they need to do with their money as they get out of college. But I'm just guessing. I mean, give us the promo on the book.

So hilariously, it's hardly a personal finance book. More of a like, how should you make the most out of your 20s book, which does, does involve money. The basic gist is young people are more anxious than ever before. Nobody knows what to do for a living, where to live. AI is going to take our jobs. We're all going to be in the permanent underclass. Well, I think that's all kind of bullshit. My take is that like, there's never been a better time to be risk on as a young person and try and do a lot of interesting stuff and just see what hits and where you want to double down and where you have leverage and like, That could be starting a company. It could be moving across the world. Like there's just like, you don't have to lock in on something at 22 and then spend the next 20 years of your life doing that. Like take some shots, try different stuff. Like the whole point of being young is to be risk on with your life. And like that's Young Money is like the defining decade for people who are a little bit less neurotic is kind of my, my take on it. So anyway, that's Young Money. Pre-order your copy, pre-order 100 copies, as many as you want.

Jack, can you give the people a little bit of the foundation for you and where you have come from in making this moat on LinkedIn? Because some of your posts have been the funniest posts I have ever read in my entire life on LinkedIn. And the fact that people will take them seriously absolutely warms my heart to the nth degree.

So yeah, I would love to go in on the LinkedIn shitposting. So my The brief, brief backstory is I realized at the young age of like 25 that LinkedIn is the best marketing platform on the planet because— Come on. Because everybody has to be on there if they're employed. And nobody's going to post on there because they're worried about losing their job. So if you are willing to actively post on there, you will get an insane number of eyeballs basically for free. Now, what most people do is the whole hustle culture bullshit or like pay some ghostwriter. $10,000 a month, like make them look like a thought leader. Venture capital's full of this. Every VC general partner is paying some kid in like, I don't know, like Phoenix to ghostwrite for them. It's obnoxious. But I realized if you satirically make fun of all the hustle culture stuff, you can go mega viral. And then as your posts blow up, you can link whatever you want and get people to pay for it, subscribe to it, whatever. So I speed ran like LinkedIn satire from basically 2020. I still do it sometimes, 2022 to 2024. Hammering it. Top 3, top 3, top 3 posts. Number 1, claiming I got vaccinated 1,000 times as a side hustle when they were telling people to get the shot in New York. I said I made $100,000 getting the COVID shot. I would go to every clinic in New York and people are commenting like, you're the reason why minorities can't get vaccines. And then I would double down a bit. I would say, no, no, no, the vaccine is actually bad for you. So I'm saving people's lives. I was like anti-vaxxer who was making a lot of money. And I'm like, I get cell service in the subway now. I can see through walls. This shit is crazy.

That is hilarious.

Claiming that the hotel breakfast one is the best though.

Oh, this was you. This was you, bro.

So good.

So hilarious.

So I, a couple of months after moving to New York, New York is notoriously expensive for a broke grad school student. And I have this really long post claiming that like I had a personal finance hack I hadn't paid for food in 3 months in New York because I would go to random hotels around Manhattan, sign off on other people's rooms, get the continental breakfast. I was taking girls to dates at like random like bougie hotels in Tribeca, sign off on room 421, just get out of there. And I was like, there's 250 hotels I haven't hit yet. So I can keep this up for probably a calendar year before having to double down. I mean, the comment section was just like chaos. It's like people are tagging the New York Police Department. They're like, this is crime. I said, what are you talking about? This is just called being thrifty. It's like, I had to meet with the Dean of Students at Columbia Business School because some, some alums had like sent her screenshots of it over email. So I then screenshotted her email and posted that on LinkedIn and said, who snitched? And like, that blew up. It was out of control. I thought I was getting kicked out of school. It turns out I managed to maintain my enrollment status for the next 2 years. But, um, yeah, I doubt it was employed now, but I still like, I don't know. People should have more, a better sense of humor on LinkedIn. And I try to keep LinkedIn fun. It's a boring website. I try to change that.

So, Jack, I mean, tell me, the premise for this is totally the case. The reason everybody's so buttoned up and boring on LinkedIn is, you know, is, oh, I'm going to say something that's going to get me fired. But, brother, you're— you've worked with Liquidity. I mean, you worked at Robinhood and now you're at Slo. I mean, your resume is awesome. I mean, and I think you were getting your MBA at Columbia.

I did. I thought I was going to get kicked out. Columbia let me. They thought the shitposting was funny. I thought it was going to terminate my enrollment for a moment there. Yeah. I mean, it's when you double down on a shtick like that, it's actually pretty useful because you start self-selecting for working with and associating with people who like your sense of humor. And like any company that would take issue with, like, for example, I could probably not work at Goldman Sachs now because one of my posts claimed that I won a Goldman Sachs sponsored beer mile to land an internship at Goldman Sachs. I wear— yeah, so it was like, it was when David Solomon was on his whole like DJ shtick and I was like, oh yeah, like he decided to host a beer mile because one, every banker is an alcoholic and two, like he's been hanging out with Coachella too much. That one, that's, it's like probably can't work at Goldman. That's okay. But like places that I have worked and people that I have worked with, like the sense of humor. I got my book deal from a LinkedIn shitpost. An editor at Penguin saw it and found my Substack through that. So it's, it's been a net positive ROI already. So more people should shitpost.

Yeah, that was gonna be my follow-up question is like, who in your life has seen these posts and you've been like, oh my God, this person saw my post? And then how, how many people have these posts reached? I want to say it's like 50 million at this point.

Yeah. I mean, the Goldman Sachs one had several million views alone. Like I would say cumulatively 50 million on LinkedIn is probably accurate. And then I would post the screenshot of the LinkedIn shitpost on Twitter and those would hit like 10 million, like LinkedIn and Twitter combined, probably 150 million impressions. LinkedIn alone, probably. Yeah. It was like Twitter was kind of like an inside joke of like, oh, everybody on LinkedIn is an idiot. Look at this. And then yeah, everybody's like, this guy sucks. I, one of my, one of my now like pretty good friends, got him, David Perel. He's pretty big on Twitter. You guys might know him. I met him like 2 or 3 years ago in Austin for the first time. And he was like, dude, I thought you were an asshole because your LinkedIn stuff. I was like, satire. He's like, I thought you were just being a dick on the internet. I was like, no, no, no, no. Like sometimes I do, but not, not, not that stuff. So you're all, but no, I mean, I, the amount of inbound I've gotten from just like very interesting. Like, like there's, I don't know, like I, like there's been a lot of like founders, investors, just like random people running big businesses that are like, this kid's fucking hysterical. That's been great for me just for my like networking thing, I guess. So between that and like getting, getting a book deal off of it, it worked. I don't know. Like, what more can you ask for?

That's crazy.

Tell me, Jack, I feel like at Slo there's something that you guys are doing about with creators. Is that, is that true? Is that because I think that you obviously have a unique perspective being a creator.

Being a creator myself.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, tell us about that.

So, so we, we have this bet like a few years ago. We, I wasn't working here then. So I'm using we excluding myself. They. Slo prior to me have this bet that like, okay, the internet is getting more and more siloed where like my internet is different from your internet is different from your whatever. And people who have established themselves as like domain experts in like their niche and they have a big YouTube channel or like podcast podcast or whatever are really well positioned to leverage that distribution to make massive companies. Like the way startups always worked was take the really smart weird kid from Stanford who wants to build AI God and give him like $20 million and then he builds a product and hires a go-to-market team. You can kind of like invert that now where you get like a good entrepreneur who's carving out a niche, kind of like what you guys are doing with the show. You get a good entrepreneur carving out their niche, they can build a legit business on top of that, and then they can hire the weird technically talented person to help build the backend tech stack. But distribution is a pretty compelling moat. And we ended up raising a $64 million fund to invest directly in those creators, put money in their holding company. They can use it for whatever businesses they want off their platform. And we've done several deals out of that fund. One of my personal favorites, Jonathan Katz Moses, woodworking creator. He would love the cowboy hats. I mean, he's got a sick business where like the dude just loves like building stuff in his shop in California, but he also has his own KM Tools business that just like crushes. And like, if you look up Jonathan Katz Moses. Yeah.

I'm looking at him.

Yeah.

I think I know this guy. I think I know. I know of him, you know?

Yeah. So that's like the first deal we did. So it's stuff like that. Like person who's like the face of a niche. It's like, okay, you can probably build multiple $100 million businesses off a platform and you can just like, you just own that distribution. So like, why would like, nobody's really tried to tap into that yet. Why? It's like, everybody's swimming in like OpenAI alumni pool. Like here's a billion dollars, like pre-money seed. Nobody's given the YouTubers love yet, but like, they're probably, I mean, all these, they're already like printing cash. Most of these guys are already profitable. It's like, give them a little money to hire some people, build the thing up. Let's see what they do.

That's a great thesis.

Are there any, you know, could you name any specific creators that you're super bullish on that may not be in the portfolio itself that you're like, gosh, I, I totally love what this guy is doing for the past year and some change?

Yeah, I mean, one of my personal favorites, and he's like, like, he's already crushing it, he's going to continue to crush it, he's like too big for us, but like, this is what a win would look like, catching somebody like this earlier, like Ryan Seacrest, the New York real estate broker. I mean, that dude is like the man. Like he, like being able to parlay both building a massive real estate business, but also Netflix specials. He's incredibly charismatic on camera. Like he, you want to talk about like, like a lot of people talk about MrBeast. MrBeast just figured out how to like, when, like he's so good at algorithm slop. Like if you ever watch a full MrBeast video, it's pure brain rot. But he's better at brain rot than anybody. Like, oh yeah, there's like, like, there's like, like, people watching those videos, they're like not gaining anything from it other than pure like brain rot entertainment. Like, Cyrano actually has a business that he's turned into the platform. So like, I think he's like just getting started too, but people like that, like, he's my textbook. This guy crushes, wish we were invested. Um, that's kind of the like, uh, that's the playbook.

Yeah, that's a great point.

As a part of that too, he got some VC money on the tail end of that too. Yeah, like season 2, a perfect example of like, okay, this guy is building into this and then he actually gets the VC capital. Yeah, which made for like great content too.

The way, the way you would want to play it, something like that, is like if you caught him spiking on like— and I don't remember which platform is his first because he's been in the game for a while— but like, right, take, let's say somebody like, let's say there wasn't like a Ryan Seacrest, he's coming around today Um, you, if you catch this guy, like Instagram, he has like 200,000 to 500,000 followers in like a month and it's like, oh, this guy's crushing. We would like meet with him and then he's like, I'm building out real estate business. I want to do the show, blah, blah, blah. But before he actually takes off, it's still kind of a seed stage investment where like you could be involved in like all of it from like the idea originally. Yeah. Versus he's already big and now it's almost like a growth equity play where like I have no idea what that deal was valued at, but like he can make a push for like several hundred million billion dollar business at this point. Like, I don't know the numbers, but he's big, right? But being able to find something like that at the seed is like, you know, dream come true. So that's, that's what we search for. I love it.

Smart, man. So Jack, is this going to be the lane that you swim in forever here forward?

I mean, if I— I mean, dude, I like swimming in a lot of lanes. VC is sick. Creators are sick. I like writing. I'm excited for my book to come out. I'm very much in the camp of, I don't know, I'm like a perpetual opportunist, but yeah, I love it right now. I mean, I think one of my hotter takes is I don't know that I like VC that much, but I think Slow as a VC fund to be at is awesome. So it's very much like if you're working with the right people on the right stuff, it's a blast. So yeah, it's a sick lane.

I dig it. I love that.

I love that.

I think, uh, I think, Jack, next time you come to Austin, Texas, I think we need to get you live in studio, my friend. I mean, I think we need to get you right here. Uh, we will be soon. We will be soon. I think Colin— I think he's—

listen, Colin, where are you?

I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Nice. Yeah, you should move to Austin and then get—

oh, live on the show, Colin! You know, Colin used to live here. Colin used to live here.

I lived, I lived there for 3 years.

That's how we became friends.

Hit Ctrl+Z, just undo it. You can go back. It's the one city where, like, where real estate prices are dropping, so it's probably more affordable now than it was when you left.

Yeah, Chris just talks about that a lot on the show.

I think so.

It is very affordable.

Maybe, maybe a little more affordable than, uh, SF or NYC, you know.

NYC is like the cheapest city in America. That's great. I live in like a $4,000 a month shoebox. I'm sitting there right now.

It's great. There we go. There we go.

Well, Jack, man, we look forward to the book coming out.

I'm gonna go order my copy right now. Well, you know, I should do it on the show. I should do it while we're live. I'm gonna do it live. And then, uh, man, tell everybody where to find you, where to follow you.

Of course you're going to be viral on everybody's feed, but tell them where to find you, follow you, and work with you and talk Yeah, I mean, if you just look up Jack Raines, I should be at the top of the search results at this point, but in no particular order, most importantly, Young Money by Jack Raines. Pre-order the book. It's on Amazon, Barnes Noble. Like the COVID looks like this blue, got a scale with money on one side and the other. My Substack is also called Young Money. So hit me there. Twitter, Jack_Raines. LinkedIn, Jack Raines. I'm now hammering Instagram, trying to grow that. Oh, let's go. Jack Raines Writes is actually the Instagram to follow. First reel is going to hit 10,000 views with like no audience, so I think I can, I think I can play the video game on that well. Uh, yeah, hit me out. Listen, everybody follow me on every platform. I love yapping on the internet. I think I'm an entertaining follow.

You are the Yap King. We appreciate you coming, Young Money. We can't wait to have you back, brother.

Listen, next time, next time we're doing it live, right?

That's right, that's right.