The Must-Have Qualities For You To Become A Successful Entrepreneur (feat. Sheel Mohnot)

If I look back in our portfolio, the founders that are successful were really tenacious. So they just like don't give up. I think this comes back to the immigrant thing. Like to make it, you can't give up. Like you said, you had an 11-year journey. So people just like, if you just survive, you increase your odds of success.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Build in Public podcast. I'm your host KP, and on this show I interview world-class entrepreneurs, ambitious startup founders, creators, and builders on the internet who are boldly building the future in public. This podcast is my excuse to take you all on a curious journey to understand, learn, and hopefully be inspired by the worldviews, insights, and stories of these fabulous people changing the world. So far, I've gotten the rare privilege to sit down with incredible guests like Gary Vee, Alexis Ohanian, Kat Cole, Sahil Lavingia, and many more leaders. So check out the full podcast listing at buildinpublicpodcast.com. Now buckle up and get ready for our latest episode. In today's episode, you'll meet Shiel Mahanot. Shiel is a co-founder and general partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures, simply called BTV, a $225 million fund that leads rounds in pre-seed and seed stage fintech companies globally. Shiel and his co-founder Jay Gibson invested for many years together before founding BTV and wrote checks into top startups like Ramp, Flexport, Albert, Unit, Kin, and Mercury, which I love. He tweets under the account @PitDesi, P-I-T-D-E-S-I, where he shares tips for early-stage founders and occasional updates on his recent wedding in the Taco Bell metaverse. Yes, it sounds ridiculous, and yes, he's self-aware. But it is actually quite wholesome. Check it out. Anyway, prior to BTV, Sheel ran the fintech division of 500 Startups for 7 years. And before that, he was a founder, founding 2 companies, and both of them were acquired. Aside from fintech, he also co-founded the podcast The Pitch, which was acquired by Gimlet Media and eventually Spotify. Sheel has an MBA degree from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Science degree from Carnegie Mellon. Finally, as part of this fund, His latest focus is The Mint, which is a fintech-themed accelerator that kicks off on August 1st in SF. So if you're a founder interested to join The Mint, apply at www.themint.vc. My interview with Shiel was such a fun and engaging conversation, and probably one of my favorites this year. With that said, I bring you Shiel. Enjoy. Hello everybody. Welcome to yet another episode of Build in Public podcast. I am super thrilled today to be joined by Shil Mohanout, joining us from Mexico City right now, but typically in the Bay Area. Shil, I could go on and on about your achievements. You're a multi-exit fintech founder. And one of the ways that I sort of, I have the image of you in my head is the metaverse thing. The Taco Bell love.

Yeah.

The Justin Bieber appearance. Basically, I'm going through the list of things that I mentioned to my wife about the guy I'm about to interview. She was like, who's Shiloh? And I was like, well, you know, and then your dad's great immigrant story, first-gen story you posted on July 4th, The Pitch Podcast. Such a, like, I can't, I mean, such a unique combination of things, Shiloh. Like what, How would you introduce yourself to someone who doesn't know who you are? I'm curious, but who's Shiel right now?

Yeah, I, you know, I'm a curious person. I like building and starting things. I get excited about new ideas and helping people, especially as they're getting started in their ideas.

Let's kick off with the fund, you know, $225 million fund. That's insane, man. That's really insane. Congrats. Well deserved. I mean, a bunch of people have been saying, I saw the TechCrunch article, I've seen like when you announced the second round of this, a bunch of people responding and like wishing you well. What are you most proud of, you know, with BTV?

Yeah, I think there are a number of companies that we were privileged to get to work with. And I think the thing that You know, I really feel, I feel like it's so cliché to say it, but I really feel like it's a privilege to get to work with these founders. But I think the thing I'm proudest of is how whenever our, a new prospective company talks to one of our portfolio companies, they're super sold on working with us. And I think that is just really exciting. And it speaks to our partnership with founders. And, you know, our whole team has the same ethos, which I love.

You know, from your tweets and generally the way you engage with people and like your approachability on Twitter, you know, I have the sense that you have very high conviction that hyper-successful people, especially VCs, need to have. But you have very low ego. What's up with that? What's going on? You're breaking the mold, man. This is not accepted.

I can't wait to show this to my wife, this podcast episode, because she doesn't think I have a low ego.

I think I'm not bullshitting. I know you're direct. I will give you that, right? I'm sure you're direct. And I know you said this, that you were on a couple podcasts, you were like, I'm the asshole in the room, which I give you that you're direct, right? Even in the engagement. But like, I'm sure, I'm sure a lot of, some of your followers, at least a lot of your followers, uh, will agree that you're probably the most relatable VC that I follow, at least.

Oh, thank you.

Let's put it that way.

Yeah, I think, um, honestly, I don't know how to be anything else. Like, this is, this is the guy my parents brought up, right?

There has to be some framework because, you know, the reason I say this, I know it sounds ludicrous on, on even, even to call this out, but, but I think it's worth calling out because I think people always confuse this high conviction. If I have to be like someone who's non-consensus, right? which we all know that's the thing.

Yeah.

But I always think that people think that, oh, it comes with the territory that you also have to be almost like an a-hole on Twitter or a-hole on podcasts or wherever, you know? And I think it doesn't have to be though. Like,

it's unfortunate there are so many VCs who, I don't know what it is about venture capital in particular. Part of it is you have some power. Right? Like, you are funding these companies, you to a certain extent get to decide, you know, pick winners or whatever. And then some venture capitalists are just very insecure. And it's weird because like, some of the most successful guys out there are the most insecure people you've ever met. And it's like, dude, you're already so successful. Why do you have to be an asshole now? You just won the game. It's like, yeah, You're great. I don't get it.

I, I mean, we have to touch on this. I know you've covered a couple, a little bit of this on tweets or here and there. I— it's probably not the right— it's not the greatest topic to touch on, but I think what is going on with our billionaires, you know, in America? I mean, what is going on with Elon Musk? What is going on? Why, why are they acting like 13-year-old school kids, you know, in the playground? Like, I genuinely don't understand this, man. Like, I'm like You already won. You

are

like,

well, there's no winning, right? Like, what, what does, what does winning mean? I think, I think, I don't think there's like ever a having won. There was this thing Elon tweeted, I think just a couple days ago that I saw that was levels of wealth. Like some guys said, you know, first level, you can pay your bills. Second level, you can eat any restaurant. Third level, you can travel wherever you want without worrying about price. And then, you know, Joe Lonsdale said level 7 is you can raise, equip, and independently, indefinitely maintain a sufficient army to deter nation states. And it's like, dude, I don't give a shit about that. Like, who cares? If there's a big problem in the world, like, I'm happy to die with everyone else. I don't give a shit. Like, if the world sucks, I don't wanna be the last one alive. Like, if the world is going to shit, I'm going with it. Yeah. And then Elon said level 9 is to make humanity a multi-planet species and true spacefaring civilizations. And he says that's why he's gathering resources. And hey, that's cool. It's interesting and noble. It isn't something that like really motivates me. It's not something I care about, but kudos to him for that. I would say, look, Elon is an interesting one because up until, I think up until more of the Twitter shenanigans, I thought like he's just having a good time. Like, right. He's funny. Like his humor is of course like childish and, you know, I'm a childish humor guy to be, to be fair. I, I love a fart joke as much as anybody else, but I think his is probably a little one step below.

I felt I think, I don't know. It's like, I feel like there's, I mean, it's probably, it's, that's the, that's my biggest challenge with him to understand it. Because I, by the way, took the, I had a bit of an Elon Musk poster. I took it down after like, you know, the last—

Man.

Yeah. 8, 7 months. And I'll tell you why, because as an immigrant, he's also an immigrant from South Africa. Yeah. I'm an immigrant from India coming over to America, which is the greatest arena in the world, I think. Totally. To be an entrepreneur. Um, you look up to a certain number of people for a certain number of reasons. I think his whole mission with Mars, And his whole mission about, you know, like energy, I think in 2008 and 9, 10, that period was insanely inspiring. I mean, like even 2015-ish, right? Um, but I think just these dick jokes, this, you know, all these like ridiculous things.

My worry is this.

I have a son who's 2 years old, um, Shiel. I always think about this, like, do I want my son to be inspired by Elon Musk? Like the behavior. And people always talk about this bullshit that Oh yeah, but look at the way all the successes— but that's precisely what I would tell my son, is that do not be the kind of person who takes your success too seriously that you would go bully somebody else online, or you would just like razz on someone, uh, in the, in the playfield. That is precisely what we tell our kids.

Totally. Yeah, it's, it's— I think having kids gives, gives you that, that interesting perspective of like, who are, who are role models? And I think what you have to say is There are people that you can respect for what they've done, but maybe not who they are. And so, there's nobody, nobody's perfect, right? So, it's, I will say, you know, a lot of kids grow up in America idolizing sports figures. And let's be real, KP, your son is much more likely to be a great entrepreneur than to be a professional sports player. So, I think— The Indian

genes. Unless maybe pickleball or something. Who knows,

man? Yeah,

you could be the LeBron of pickleball. Come on.

Yeah, it's true. It's true. It's funny. The first time I played, actually the second time I played pickleball, we had a team outing for our team a couple years ago. And we went to this court and we started playing on our own. And then these ladies came over and they were like, oh, hey, do you want to play like teams, team up against each other? And these ladies were all in their 70s because it was like a weekday daytime. And dude, they smashed us. They like beat the crap out of us. It was so embarrassing.

So that is where the humility comes from, I think, you know, basically being owned by a bunch of—

We literally, they had to invoke the mercy rule. It was so bad.

So tell us about your dad's story. Let's get there. I'm actually, I was really surprised that I don't know if you've shared that before, this July 4th, which I know you posted once.

Yeah, you know, it came up in— there's a magazine by Mercury called Meridian. And so they wrote an article on me that was very kind. But the really cool thing was they spoke to my parents and they wrote about So they wrote about my dad's, my dad, by both my parents' story. And so she actually covered a lot of that stuff in her article after speaking to my dad. And, and that, that was really cool because I think a lot of people, you know, there's only so many things you can say about a person. So if somebody's written about you, like, what's, what's new? It was cool that she thought, hey, can I speak to your parents? And I was like, wow. Yeah, of course you can speak to my parents. That's cool. They, of course, they love it. That's awesome. Yeah.

That was such an NPR move to do, right? It was such a cool thing. I'm curious, actually. So one question I have about that post, which audience will see when they get to see the thing, is what was for you the most awe-inspiring part of that story?

You know, some of it—

There were several, but what was the one you would pick?

I think the main thing is, it's not a part of the story, but the broader thing, which is like, realizing the immigrant struggle is something that I didn't have a good understanding for until I became an adult. Like, my parents, you know, my dad especially grew up in like poverty, but like did all this stuff so I could have a great life. Like, I didn't grow up in all these hardships. And so that's, it's amazing all the things he did through You know, and being this like, you know, very short Indian guy, I can't imagine him going door to door selling encyclopedias in the '70s in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Yeah. Like, I don't think I could do that today. Yeah. And this, this guy just came from India and was like, I need to make money. I gotta figure it out. I'm gonna sell encyclopedias. To pay back loans and buy an apartment. It's wild.

That fearless drive, there's something there.

Yeah. And I think, you know, I think immigrants come with a hunger of like, I gotta make it. And there's a chip on your shoulder. And I think a lot of the best founders have a chip on their shoulder. And I think immigrants do. So, it's kind of like it goes along with that.

So we want to remind me the name again. I want to give a shout out as if he ever gets to. What's what's your dad's name?

Shanti Monod, and he would. I'll send it to him.

And and you know Uncle G. You know we're rooting for you. We're grateful. We're grateful you came over to this this promised land. We're grateful for how you raised Sheel. And like you know I think that's also the ripple effects, right? I always consciously think about you know being a parent, and like now that I have a son, I consciously think about what decisions I'm making. How I'm carrying myself, how I'm like influencing him, because it does, you know, impact the the next generation. I'm sure like how you are giving a, you know, after like how so many years you're still talking about his early story, you know, and how he has carried himself and things like that. So it's it's a it's it's fascinating all the ripple effects that you know his move, his drive to do the encyclopedia thing now resulting in you to do the things that you're doing with BTV and like the maintenance crazy man, right? Yeah, the other thing about immigrants, like you said earlier, my wife's American, and until we got married, she didn't really realize how much paperwork we carry casually.

Oh yeah, dude, all these forms, man, just to travel.

She she's like so pissed at the American government. She's like, "Why is every like how many?" And her biggest pet peeve until then was going to the DMV, and I was like, "That's." That's nothing. Going to the DMV was like nothing, you know, in terms of bureaucracy, in terms of how much paperweight, paper shit you have to carry. If you just try to pass through the port of entry as a non-citizen, and you'll realize like the real, you know, the difference. But the longevity thing, I think the fire, the hunger is something I've noticed across all of my sort of portfolio, I mean, friends and like peers. There's something about being an immigrant that just— you have a flame that's hard to put out.

Yeah.

2011, as I was— we were riffing about before I joined, uh, we recorded the episode. I came to America in 2011, Shiel, um, on 100% scholarship. I couldn't have afforded it anyway. Uh, on that flight, I decided I'm going to be founder CEO. I want to start a company in America. This is the greatest place to start a company.

Yeah.

It took me 11 years, 6 months To be that. And you have to be fucking patient to really, really want it. And with the day I got my green card, the day I applied for LLC, I felt just as hungry as 2011, August 10th, which is when I moved here. And so I think the other thing about immigrants is that there's such a longevity. I think they have like this chip on the shoulder thing you mentioned, that they truly play the decades, not days game. Which I think carries itself really well to like IPOs or building big startups and long-time, you know, things.

Yeah, it's interesting. There was a thread recently, somebody said, somebody posted some like media figure journalist posted about how Indians make great CEOs later, but they're not the founders of these companies. And It's total bullshit, right? So what it is, is of course, of course, you know, we don't have to go through all the successful Indian CEOs, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, et cetera. But, you know, nobody, we all, everybody knows that. But somebody said like, oh, it's because they're good at following directions, but not starting something. Fucking bullshit, right? The reason is people come here on a visa. Yeah. And if you're on a visa, you need to have a job. And then the other reason is, even if you're not on a visa, like actually you need some comfort in your life that you can, like, you can't, it's hard to start from actually scratch and be a CEO. Like you need some cushion, some comfort that immigrants often don't have. So naturally you end up—

It takes longer.

starting in a job and all these awesome people have worked their way up. But of course they could have started companies. And I think we can do a better job of helping people to do that.

But this is, this is why the way when, was it Sam Altman, I think on July 4th was tweeting about how like the lowest hanging fruit America can do is simply just fix this, you know, legal immigration pathway for Founders, I mean immigrants who want to be founders, right? Like that's the lowest hanging thing. Like it's not like there's lack of desire to start companies among these first-gen immigrants like me. 2011, I'm telling you, 2011 August, I knew that I wanted to start a company, but it took me a long-ass time because I had to first finish my master's, then get my student visa, you know, and then OPT, which is another 18 months. Then on H-1B, got, had to be picked by the lottery. So, there's so many dominoes had to fall right. And ironically, eventually the way I got my green card is obviously I married an American. That's the dumbest thing. And it didn't happen, but like, that's the dumb— if I didn't do that, it would've taken another 15 years. So, I'm like, what the hell is this? You know, this whole game is rigged.

Yeah.

But I feel like, you know, regardless of how it comes out to be, I think that the way when I look back is, The thing, the things that I'm grateful for is that's why I'm not worried about Q3, Q4 results. You're like, as an immigrant, you just have this decades mentality that you want to, you know, play the long game, partly because you don't have a choice, but more importantly, you realize that great things often take a long time. You know, if you— Totally. It's just, you have to build your own foundation, whatever you want to do. So tell us about, switching gears, tell us about the 500 fintech experience. What were 2 or 3 specific lessons you learned from being in charge of that 500 fintech accelerator?

Yeah, so the backstory is 500 had invested in the first company I was part of called Fee Fighters. And then they, after the second company I had got acquired, they asked me to join them. And they said, hey, come hang out with us, help out, figure out if this is something you want to do. So, I hung out for a few, a couple months, and I said, hey, I love this stuff. I love helping. The cool thing about an accelerator is you get to help founders at the earliest stages, and a lot can change. So, the idea can change, the market they go after can change, all these things can change. So, really, at an accelerator stage, you're really investing in people. You're saying, is this a team that can execute? Yeah. And that's what you're investing in. And then you get to shape that, you get to help decide if that team, or you can, you help point them in different directions. So I love that aspect of it. So after a couple of months, I said, hey, I'm going to do this. And so we struck a deal where I set up a fund. And the deal was, in all the companies I chose, we would split it 500 would put up half of the capital and I would put up half of the capital. Originally, it was my own capital and then I raised a small fund, $15 million fund that bought it out.

Yeah. So any top investments you remember from that journey? Like your— like, yeah, you were like bangers.

Yeah. I mean, so the top companies from that portfolio are Chipper Cash. It's an African payments company. Albert, albert.com. It's a financial services product for the younger people. Kin, it's a homeowner's insurance company in coastal states. Indio is a— got acquired, but was a workflow tool in commercial insurance. And so these were the top 5, but there are several more that are still looking really good. These top 5 were each 50x or more return from where we invested, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. Do you believe a lot of that experience of working at such early stages parlayed into BTV and now to The Mint?

Yeah, I think getting started, you know, I think it gave me an appreciation for the accelerator stuff. Like, it was fun, man. It was, you're more than an investor to these companies. Like, they still say it, like some of these founders, when you listen to them on podcasts, they say like, they're super kind to me. And I think it's just because Like the first person to believe in you. And, you know, some of these guys are like way more successful than me.

Yeah.

And, but it's still like one of them, I went out for a drink with one of them and he, this is cheesy, but it's true. We were at a bar and there was a drink called the Golden Ticket. And he's like, I'm gonna get this golden ticket. You are my golden ticket.

Aw.

And it was so sweet.

So I think, Philippe, you got to send it to your wife, not my intro.

So it was really sweet. And I think it's, I think people really, people love the first person that believed in them. It really is a special thing. And it's a kind of thing that you don't get at later stages. So I love investing early. And people say, you know, as you grow up

in the dream, yeah.

Yeah, totally. And many, many folks, as they sort of grow up in venture, so to speak, they start out making investments in seed companies, and then they work their way up or something like that. That's not our aspiration. And it's because I love this stuff. I love helping from the earliest stages. And then some of our companies that are now early companies I invested in are now 7, 8 years old. You know, some of them 500, 600 people, but most of the early team is gone. And so the CEO still feels like, now I'm catching up with them more because they're like, you know, you're one of the only people that remembers what it was like in the early days. That's really fun too.

I love that. Like I said, sticking with the seed stage through and through, you know, as a thesis, I think is It's fascinating because like you said, it's, um, I feel like growth stage and later, it's, it's more of a mathematical investment. Like it's more of a logical or rational, like, oh hey, this is gonna make, you know, this much money. There's a lot of proof. There's a lot of, you know, credibility already about a particular startup. In the seed stage and pre-seed, it's like, just, you have to have that instinct, killer instinct. That's why I wonder, I feel like some of the best investors are, I generally obviously biased, but I think are in the pre-seed and seed stage because you need that instinct, less data, more of an instinct on identifying the killer entrepreneur or the killer opportunity as opposed to, you know, cities B or C, you know?

Totally.

Yeah. Also the highest returns too, no? Like investing in pre-seed at Coinbase or seed at Coinbase would have been, would have returned the whole portfolio. All right. So tell us about the Mint. I'm curious about, so let's talk a little bit on sort of this whole trend of YC for X. I don't know if that's how you would phrase, you know, the Mint, but like, what's the sort of the genesis of wanting to create an accelerator program that's different from B2B?

Yeah. So a lot of the founders from my first time from 500 FinTech were telling me, hey, my friend is starting a company. Where can I send them to have the experience that I had? And there really was no good answer. And so that was part of it. Part of it was we had a lot of fun and a lot of success last time we did it. So why not do it again? And there was a gap in the market for a fintech-specific one. And, you know, I think YC does a great job, but it's a huge thing. Hundreds of companies. And it's kind of like, it's not geared towards fintech in particular. And it's kind of the same advice for scale, which is what makes sense for them. But

I

think we could do something a little bit different that's more bespoke.

So tell us more about when does it start? I think it starts in August. No, the next one?

August 1st. Yeah. So we still, we closed applications. But actually, you know, if people are still interested, you know, reach out to me, we'll figure something, we could figure something out maybe. But it starts August 1st, it goes for 3 months and in through October. And I, you know, I'm pretty excited.

Demo Day in metaverse? What's going on?

Demo Day in real life. It's in San Francisco, October 12th. And we have a bunch of Bunch of companies selected already. We're just going through the final, final couple of things and it's looking good. I'm really excited about the batch.

That's cool. That's awesome. So in terms of, you know, the accelerator program or just like B2B, if you reflect on the sort of the top percentile, maybe the top 10 founders, what would be some of the interesting patterns? Traits that they have? Like, how would you describe, like, among so many great entrepreneurs who seem to be rising up to the top, what defines—

What are the traits?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, the traits are, if I look back in our portfolio, the founders that are successful were really tenacious. So, they just like don't give up. I think this comes back to the immigrant thing. Like, to make it, you can't give up. Like you said, your 11-year journey. So people just like, if you just survive, you increase your odds of success, right? Yeah. So some companies like aren't scrappy enough to just keep surviving. And I think that tenacity really matters. Some of these companies that I mentioned earlier, like what they ended up doing is different than what they were doing before.

Right.

Like, all of them actually. So like, Albert started in one space, moved into another, moved into another, moved into another, moved into another. And they're all related, but they're all a little bit different. And now they figured something out that works incredibly well, Series D company. And then I think that's true of many of these companies. So, okay, so tenacious and scrappy, sort of put those together. And then bias for action. So if I think about the companies that didn't work out, it's always, they just don't have a sense of urgency. And a sense of urgency is just so important.

Do you feel like one startup that comes to mind that's like has this crazy bias for action is like OpenAI, man, just watching them ship like that.

Totally.

I feel like that's like my North Star. You know, if I ever start a company, like just take that photo, like logo and like ship like these guys because it's so crazy, right? The velocity at which they ship, which I think Sam Altman talks about all the time. It's like, it's literally the one factor you can look objectively and say, are they going to make it or not? Right?

Totally.

The number of times.

And people who don't ship make up all sorts of bullshit excuses. I'm not ready. The business is not ready. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're valid.

The problem with excuses, the problem is that they're valid. Mm-hmm. But bullshit, right?

Bullshit. Yeah, exactly.

Okay, so tell me about this. A lot of pre-seed and seed founders who listen to the pod, there's this confusion slash conflict about how much time should they be spending building versus talking to users, at least in the pre-seed level. What is your— is there a magical ratio or is there any advice on how much time should be in building versus talking to users?

I think it's a mix of both. At the earlier stages, you want to spend a lot of time talking to users, but You gotta also build the product. So it, I would say, you know, like we have a company right now that's really executing fast and they're talking to users during the day and building at night kind of every day. So I think it has to be both. Yeah. Equal weighting of both in the beginning.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Awesome. So bring us to this whole metaverse wedding thing. Tell us, I wanna, I wanna touch on that for a little bit.

Yeah.

How did that come about? Is it one of many shields, you know, serendipitous things or what happened there?

Yeah, I think it is one of many serendipitous things. I think I usually say yes to like crazy ideas that seem like fun and interesting experiences. So this was another one of those. I was on a road trip with my now wife and a bunch of people started tagging me on Twitter like, hey, you should do this. Because Taco Bell had this contest to apply to get married in the Taco Bell metaverse. And they were like, oh, you're a big Taco Bell fan, you should do this. So, you know, I brought it up to her and, you know, to my surprise, actually, she was very, she was open to it. She was like, let's make a video. What's the harm? So we made a video, we submit it, and then ultimately they tell us that we've won. At that point, we were like, oh, we don't know if we actually wanna do this. But then they convinced us to do it by saying we'll be part of the Taco Bell family, which is very exciting. So all of that stuff was great. And then, you know, then we go into this thing and it's this like metaverse product.

Isn't there a studio somewhere? Where was it? Like location-wise?

Oh, where is it? So, so what I meant was we go into building this thing. So for, for like several months, they're like building this metaverse thing for us. So this, it's in Decentraland, which is an existing thing. And then they built a specific arena for us, which was like had an Indian mandap and all this other stuff. So we had an Indian wedding in the Taco Bell metaverse, and I rode in on an elephant. It was cool. It was wild.

That's so cool. That's so cool. That's so cool. I'm

always cool because people around the world got to participate. You know, I actually Met somebody like two days ago at a party in Germany, and he said, "Hey man, I was at your wedding." I was like, "That's cool."

I didn't, Shield. Frankly, I didn't know about you at the time as much, but I would have definitely joined in because that definitely sounds like the the kind of shit that I get into normally. You know, and also what's what's amazing is in this whole thing, shout out to your wife too for yeah getting about

seriously

right. Just like saying yes to— I know you would say yes. I could.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. It's funny. So we joke because

the

WhatsApp

blew up. Yeah, totally. Did the family WhatsApp blow up?

Oh yeah, it all went wild. What's funny is I'm a venture capitalist. So my job is to say yes to crazy ideas, right? That's what I do. And she's a lawyer. So her job is to say no to crazy ideas. But fortunately, we found something in the middle that kind of works.

That's a great balance to have, right? Okay, so we touched on a lot of things. Let's talk about the pitch. I'm actually really curious about sort of how that got to come about and what was your experience like doing that?

Yeah, so this is in 2015. I was hanging out at home, I was sick. And I turned on the TV and started watching Shark Tank. And I was like, oh, this is kind of entertaining, but it's not real. These aren't real startups that people would invest in. This is like a towel with a hole in it. That's not a venture capital investable business, you know. And, and then I thought, hey, why don't I, why don't I just start recording people who are pitching me? I was an angel investor at the time, not professional or anything like that. And so started out that way. I reached out to this guy Josh who ended up doing the production behind it. And it was just people pitching me and me giving feedback. And then we had other people giving feedback alongside me.

Was this peak podcasting 2015, you said, right? Like, was it just like—

Yeah. So, yeah, I'm trying to think. There was the The Serial podcast. I don't remember when that came out, but it was around that time. So it was like podcasting was getting started. Right. And it was getting big. And so we launched then and it went pretty well.

Was it audio only for listeners? Was it a video component?

Audio only. We had no video. We just had a photograph of every episode. No. No, no video. It was, it was a good experience. It was super fun. In 2017, January 2017, Apple featured us at the top of the podcast app as like a podcast to listen to.

Wow.

And that just skyrocketed our listenership. And from that, we got just so popular that Gimlet Media recap.

How many episodes? I'm curious, how many episodes did you do by the Apple moment?

About 50-some. 55, I think.

Nice.

So we were doing, I think we were doing every other week. Yeah. And then this Apple thing came out and then we got a lot of hype very quickly. And then And then, and actually, I should say, first, our first hype was actually on Product Hunt. We published on Product Hunt in July 2015. And that got us a ton of listeners. And then we didn't really get to grow that much from there until this Apple thing, then we grew a lot. And then Gimlet Media reached out. And they said, hey, like, would you like to join forces? And we said yes. And so they acquired us. And then Gimlet got acquired by Spotify like a year later. And then, you know, that was a journey. We had, we went from just being this like kind of bootleg operation to having like editors and all this other stuff. It was cool. A real studio.

That's wild. It's just, I feel like you just attract a lot of serendipitous luck, man. It's just such a great thing to watch. I mean, it's a good, in a good way. Like you, I think because You know, part of this building public thing I'm working on, just, I feel like you just, you're putting yourself out there a lot, taking some shots. There's a lot of upside than the downside. The downside is that you may look a little silly here and there.

Totally.

A person, an average person. But that's the price sometimes you gotta pay.

Yeah, I think you have to be willing to look stupid and to screw up. And if you're not willing to do that, that's the like no that leads to not having urgency. That's the like, oh no, I'm not gonna do this. And, you know, sometimes of course that's right, but then you miss out on a lot. And—

Can I tell you about that too?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you wrote, I don't know which thread, but one of the threads you wrote like a month ago was when I first thought I wanted to have you on the pod. But then I thought, I don't know, I'm not a real, right now, a startup founder, like in the sense that I'm not a venture-backable startup founder. I'm not building anything that's like a venture-backable product. I thought maybe I'll wait for 2, 3 years when I want to get there to talk to Shiel, because you would be one of the first few people I'd reach out to, you know, if I ever like go down the venture path to just have a chat. I was like, let's talk. And then something about it made me think that who cares? He seems like a fun guy to talk to. Yeah. At least we'll have good content. We'll have a lot of good clips from it. He seems like he's done a lot of fun things, a lot of really ridiculous things. It would be fun to just chat. And I'm so glad I reached out to you and DM'd you and you immediately said yes. I appreciate it.

Absolutely, man. Happy to. This has been fun. You did your homework. So I think that, I mean, you know a lot. So it's a fun, easy conversation.

So I got one last question for you, Shiel. You know, the classic, this is so cliché that every VC gets asked this, but I gotta ask you this, request for startups.

Oh yeah, good question.

Do you have it already in your Apple Notes by now to be like, to pull it out and just say, you know what, I predicted this, this is such a, you know, predictable question, KP, I'm gonna just shoot them, or do you not get this question a lot? Because I feel like every VC is practically asked this right away.

I don't have a ton off the top of my head right now. Every so often I will go into this phase where I'm like, oh, this idea is the best thing ever. I want to do it. And like, I can tell you a few of those I've had in the past. One was a hotel. This is basically unrelated to fintech, but like a, there are these—

If there was, if you're not doing B2B, if you're doing an alternative. Yeah.

There are these like capsule

hotels

that are popular in Japan, small small rooms. And so I thought it'd be cool to have one that was like pretty small rooms, but great functional social area. One where you don't have to interact with that many humans to check in. Like it's all, you get a QR code when you book and that opens your room. And because labor is a big part of the cost of hotels.

Right.

So, and space is a big part of the cost of hotels. So if you could make the rooms relatively small, but give people space That would be interesting. Shared space. So this capsule hotel was an idea I got excited about for a while. Another one I got excited about was, I told you earlier about this company called Albert, albert.com. Part of what they do is text message-based financial advice. So you can text any question and they have humans plus AI who will answer the question. And I was thinking, there's so many other areas that could use this. Like, If you're a new mom, you could use, you could get advice from this app. And you could text message anything and you'd pay some subscription, but like you probably have all these questions and they could have real doctors behind the scenes answering it. So something like that was another idea. And there's a bunch of other things you can build on top of that. And then there's any number of fintech ideas too. But those are some.

If you were not, I'm curious if you were not busy with the Mint and the BTB right now in fintech, what would be the startup you would be building? Like, what would be the revolution you'd be behind? AI in fintech or?

Look, I think there will be AI in fintech. I think it's unlikely that a new, some company is going to be successful just because they use AI and they're going to capture new share from somebody else. Like, I don't know, I met a company at some another accelerator's demo day that was like, a replacement for Excel using AI. And I was like, dude, Microsoft invested heavily in OpenAI. Don't you think they already have the distribution? Don't you think they're going to be the winner in this space? So I don't think those kinds of things are going to be successful, but I think there will be a lot of enterprise adoption of AI. And I think, you know, sort of being the picks and shovels to those guys could be really valuable.

Yeah, brilliant. So thank you so much. Those are all the questions I had, you know, Shiel. This was a fun blast. Thank you for being here, for just being yourself and, you know, and just kind of giving us your honest, candid thoughts on a lot of topics.

Awesome, man. Great to meet you, KP.

Awesome. Have a good one. See ya.

You too.