Welcome to Trailblazers! I’m Simi Shah, and every other week, I bring you trailblazing by and for South Asians. You don’t have to be South Asian — if you’re interested in learning from leaders across media, tech, and more, find us here, on Insta, and LinkedIn.
As an Atlanta-based AAPI, I wrote this piece for URL Media to convey the gravity of this moment. I hope you’ll give it a read. But more importantly, I hope you’ll engage, educate, donate: here or here or here to #StopAsianHate.
Hot off the Pod 🔥🎙️ Sheel Mohnot: Co-Founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures, Entrepreneur
Listen to our latest episode, my conversation with Sheel Mohnot, serial entrepreneur, fintech investor, and acquired podcaster.
Sheel was formerly a General Partner with the the FinTech Fund at 500 Startups. More recently, he co-founded Better Tomorrow Ventures, leading pre-seed and seed rounds in fintech through their $75 million debut fund.
But before delving into investing, Sheel was a founder — multiple times over. He first founded Innovative Auctions, a provider in auction software and consulting services. Later, he exited FeeFighters, a Stripe-like product that sold to Groupon in 2012, and also a food delivery company called Thistle. He even “exited” his popular podcast, “The Pitch,” a spin on Shark Tank. It sold to Gimlet Media which was then acquired by Spotify. In this episode, Simi and Sheel chat about why fintech is the future, how he his co-founder on a train in India, and how he landed himself in Ariana Grande’s “Stuck With U” music video.
Read on for excerpts from the podcast!
What do you look for in a pitch when comes to your investments?
Investing at the seed stage, the number one thing I care about is your team. We invest in teams. Like I said earlier, people go through pivots, companies go through pivots, but the team always stays. So I consider: Are they somebody who can do the job? Will they break through walls to make it happen? Do they have a good team dynamic? Ideally they have some domain knowledge, someone on the business side, and someone on the technology side because we're ultimately investing in technology companies.
And then, he number one thing on team is: Are they able to clearly articulate their vision? This is primarily the CEO’s job. Their job is really telling a story, and recruiting people to that story. And when I say recruiting people: you’re recruiting employees, you’re recruiting investors, you’re recruiting customers. And so, I think, are they able to tell an articulate vision about what they're doing?
A few months ago I had a cameo in a Justin Bieber/Ariana Grande music video, #stuckwithu. It just won an MTV Video Music Award and I somehow am now featured in the news as a celebrity?! alongside a bunch of ACTUAL celebrities. Weirdddd!There's a general trend in the public sphere now for venture capitalists to share deals they've ‘missed,’ investment opportunities they got wrong. Are there any big ones you’ve missed?
Of course. There's so many that I got wrong. One is Robinhood. I met them very early on and I thought, ‘Hey, there have been all these other free trading apps before like Free Trade, what makes Robinhood any different?’ And what I missed was they got so many things right. They executed really well; they got mobile and timing right, and so they brought an entirely new class of investors online with way better UX design than the other products. They've obviously done phenomenally well. Another one that I missed is Chime. It was a really good product, awesome team — I'm friends with them. What I missed on chime is, again, mobile and timing and execution. They've done a great job of building products that make consumers want to switch their direct deposit over.
Another one is Patreon. Early on, I thought: this is so easy to build. It's just a basic PayPal payments functionality like I could build myself, which was such a mistake in hindsight.
Fortunately, these were years ago. I think I would think differently today but probably not. I'm still missing companies. The nice thing is: you don't have to get all of them. Just be right once in a while and you’ll have a phenomenal track record as a VC. It's been been really good for us so far.
Catch the full episode here!
Catching Fire 🚀 what we’re following 👀
🌎 On Screen / In Culture
Priyanka and Nick announced the Oscar nominees. Riz Ahmed became the first Muslim to bag a Best Actor nom. Capitol Records titan, Bhaskar Menon, passed away. Our fave, Ari Afsar is set to star in a new show.
🇺🇸 In Politics
Alabama might lift a 3-decade ban on….yoga. Lina Khan gets tapped to lead the FTC. You might recall Elizabeth Warren’s TIME100 piece on her.
🌎 Scenes from South Asia
Rohingya refugee camps are decimated by fires in Bangladesh. Sri Lanka plans to ‘ban burqas’ and shutter Islamic schools. Himalayan mountaineering season is making a comeback in Nepal.
Shop South Asian 🛍️ Spotlight
Check out Dewy Apricot Designs, a digital art store making custom designs. It’s run by Rishi & Ash. Are you a South Asian entrepreneur? Visit @shopsouthasian to join our community.
Stream South Asian 🎵
Our Spotify playlist featuring emerging South Asian artists.