VC Sheel Mohnot talks about Twitter fame, fintech, and the reality about AI startups
For those who comply with fintech on X, it’s very probably that you’ve got come throughout the account of Sheel Mohnot, co-founder and basic companion 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 Higher Tomorrow Ventures (BTV) after co-founding a number of corporations, together with FeeFighters, which offered to Groupon in 2012.
BTV, which has $300 million underneath 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 corporations resembling Flexport, Ironclad, Ethos Insurance coverage, and Residence Record.
I hopped on the mic to interview Mohnot to document 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 absolutely working within the fintech world.
This interview has been edited for readability and brevity.
Moreover being considerably of an influencer on social media, your most important 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 predict much more issues are fintech than different folks do. So for instance, 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 companies. So we consider these as fintech corporations. After which additionally B2B marketplaces, we consider as fintech corporations too.
OK, we’re going to come back again to fintech. However first, I’d like to speak about your social media technique. You have got over 151,000 followers on X. How did you grow to be a social media star?
I don’t know if I’m a star, however I do take pleasure in 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 grew to become tremendous energetic there and collected a loopy variety of followers. I believe like 3.3 million. However in fact that’s not likely related anymore. The one solution to write to folks on Clubhouse was through Twitter. In order that naturally led to doing stuff on Twitter and extra followers there. I simply began to jot down, and located that I actually favored it. I like sharing concepts and getting suggestions from folks.
What have been your most viral posts through the years?
My spouse truly posted about herself being in a meme on the Folsom Avenue Honest 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 plenty of pitches for web3 founders making an attempt to resolve some form of downside 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.
Moreover investing, you’ve additionally made headlines for some very fascinating issues resembling your wedding ceremony in 2023 being a TacoBell Metaverse wedding ceremony 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 fairly 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 wished to search out one fortunate couple to marry within the metaverse. And a bunch of individuals noticed that I used to be engaged and in addition knew that I like Taco Bell, and mentioned, “Hey, Sheel, that is excellent for you.” They ended up selecting us.
As for the video, I used to be on this relationship present in the course of 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 entire posts relate to investing or fintech, however I’m positive it’s by some means impacted it. Has it helped you entice founders it’s possible 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 fascinating and thought-provoking and would possibly get folks to show me one thing after the actual 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 traders had been reaching out too, however once I reached out, they responded instantly, and mentioned, “I believe we’ve the identical exercise routine.”And so they have been responding to a tweet I had posted that had that went viral, which was when Chamath [Palihapitiya] had posted a tweet of him along 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 have been like, “Hey, we actually like your model. 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 precious.”
Now, relating to Higher Tomorrow Ventures — what number of funds have you ever raised to this point? 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 plenty of outcomes within the close to future.
I’m enthusiastic about plenty of the stuff that we all the time believed in, which is “the every little thing is fintech story,” which persists in the present day. As I discussed earlier than, vertical SaaS and B2B marketplaces have gotten fintech corporations, and there’s plenty of alternative to allow these of us. I’m additionally actually enthusiastic about accounting. We’ve got three corporations behind this thesis that there’s a giant scarcity of accountants on this nation.
It’s fascinating 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 improper with Bench, but it surely seems like what occurred there doesn’t appear to be impacting your general views on the house as an entire?
It’s fascinating. I consider Bench as actually an accounting agency, fairly 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 onerous to scale, to construct like a enterprise scale enterprise and proceed to develop at enterprise scale. And so finally, I imagine I’ve heard from prospects like they ended up reducing corners. Issues didn’t actually go as folks had wished, and they also had a bunch of challenges.
Just lately, the massive information that dominated was DeepSeek. It was in all places. All people’s speaking about it, OpenAI appeared to be freaking out. What do you suppose — is DeepSeek actually this huge menace, or is it only a bunch of hype?
There are a variety 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 all the time believed that the price of inference, the current modeling prices, have been going to come back down. However I believe DeepSeek launching helped the fee come down fairly considerably. And so, now you’ve got a little bit of a value struggle on the foundational mannequin degree, which is nice for our corporations which can be constructing on AI. It’s phenomenal.
What in regards to the hype round AI generally?
There are such a lot of corporations that pitch us the identical manner that they pitch you, and so they inform us that they’re AI corporations, and also you look and there’s nothing AI about them, or little or no; I believe only a few corporations are literally AI corporations. After which I believe there are much more corporations which can be seeing great worth from AI however are usually not, “AI corporations.” We make investments throughout the spectrum. I do suppose there’s this notion that it’s good to be an AI firm to get consideration. And I don’t suppose that’s true. I believe it’s simply essential to be sincere about who you’re and what you’re doing.
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