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VENTURE CAPITAL & PRIVATE INVESTING
Recorded: Sept. 18, 2025 Duration: 0:52:09Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, industry experts explored the rising trend of betting markets, with Polymarket and Kalshi leading the charge, while Robinhood's innovative move to tokenize private equity opens new avenues for retail investors. The conversation also touched on the importance of social proof in fundraising and the unique model of The Arena, which ranks founders to enhance their chances of securing investment.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, good afternoon, good morning, wherever you are.
And I am filling in for the usual voices.
Just happy to be here with Kyle and Jared.
I believe this is the first time that I'm coming in contact with you guys.
And I know you guys have a wonderful space that you have going on here normally.
I just jumped in because I wasn't hearing the music and I have no clue if the audio is coming through,
trying to cue this up on a second device so I can test this out.
X has been bugging out all day as usual.
We're just, you know, out here surviving and happy to...
Great, I see the emojis and everything
happy to be here so i see that is working for sure how are you doing my friend hey hey thanks
for hopping on who's that behind the mic there can you hear me
can i get a thumbs up makeup looks like you guys can't hear me well cool I get a thumbs up?
Looks like you guys can't hear me.
Well, cool.
I guess that'll be a mystery for later then.
But thanks, everybody, for joining us and coming to our venture capital private equity space.
I know they're wrapping up some other spaces.
So once those wrap up here in a few minutes, we should get some more audience members flowing in from that.
My co-host, Kyle Kyle is currently in Japan. He's based in the Miami area, but currently he's
spending a month over in Asia. And right now he's in Japan working on getting some deals done. So
he is in the arena right now making deals happen. And I believe it's like 4.30 a.m. in the morning there. So
he's not able to join us this week, but he will be back next week to hop on our show. So excited
to dive into a few conversations today. It might be a little bit of a shorter show than we normally
have. But if you're new here, my name is Jared. I go by Self-Taught Success on the internet.
And the meaning of that name is all the information you are looking for is out there. It's just up to you to seek it out, find it, and
then apply it on the path to your goals. And that's a big part of why we have this show is
to help people learn and educate people on the venture capital and private equity space. So
every week we bring on different guests. A lot of times we have brand new guests,
so we get a bunch of different ideas and thoughts and perspectives on a bunch of different topics,
a bunch of different ranges, a bunch of different sectors within the venture capital private equity
world. And so it's pretty cool. We have this show every Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern.
And then my personal connection kind of to the VC space is more on the marketing side. Kyle's more in the thick of it as far as investing, family office, doing syndication deals. He's been an investor. He's been a startup founder. He's raised money. He's kind of done all those things. companies anywhere from pre-seed all the way up to publicly traded companies. And I help them
run ads on X. And more specifically, I help them grow their brands on X by using Twitter ads.
And we've done over three and a half million followers, over one and a half billion impressions
for clients and help them grow their brands pretty exponentially. And when you can do that,
they can market to more people and make more money. So that's kind of where I'm connected with the startup world. And I know we have
Matt on here. Let's see if Matt's... Matt, if you're up here, I just sent you an invite. You
can hop on the mic and share a little intro about who you are and kind of your connection to the VC
space.
Yeah, I've sent the invite as well.
I'm seeing him as a listener currently. So, Matt,
if you're not...
Oh, there you go. I was just going to say, try to leave
and come back in. But it looks like you're up here.
Alright. Oh, there you go. I was just going to say, try to leave and come back in. But it looks like you're up here. All right.
What was that? My friend? Oh, there you go. Yep. Loud and clear. There you go.
All right. Cool. How's it going, everyone? My name is Matt Sherman.
I scout for venture capitalists in the Bay Area. I've been doing this for about five years.
I'm getting involved with companies
in a very, very early stage, generally before it's a company at all, or they just have some
lines of code. And I kind of use my pattern recognition, figure out who I think various
investors may like. And then once I build a relationship with the founders, I help coach
them up. I make the introductions. Sometimes I invest. Sometimes
syndications happen and really just package them up for the next round. I'm based in Phoenix,
Arizona. I've been in tech in total for about 10 years, been in VC for about five,
and excited to have another day of jamming with you all about venture capital.
Awesome. We're glad to have you back here, Matt. And if you like what Matt has to say,
he'll be back next week as well, sharing some more insights with you. I know we have a few more
guests lined up for next week as well. We have a few more lined up today.
We'll see if they're able to make it with some of their different meetings that they had.
But definitely excited to get into the conversation here today, Matt.
Matt, you mentioned you're mainly just investing in the Bay Area.
Is that correct?
I would say I am mainly a shepherd to bring founders to the Bay Area.
What I mean by that is if someone's trying to raise venture capital, in general, this
is a total generalization, but I think the largest pool of capital and smart capital
for funding startups is in the Bay Area.
So if I meet a founder in the Bay or not in the Bay, it's my job to ideally get them connected
to the Bay so they're going to be able to continue to raise capital in that community.
So one question that comes to mind, a lot of the different founders I talk to, everybody's based in kind of the Bay Area, you know, kind of that over there in California and everybody else is based in New York.
why is basically San Francisco and New York, why are those the startup hubs? Why is that where
every founder that it seems like you talk to is based in those two different parts of the world?
And they're also on the coast. So is there any kind of correlation with that as far as
travel or just people coming over immigration-wise on the coast where, you know, it's an easier place to
get to? Is it the weather? You know, what is it that that makes those the startup hubs where
every founder you talk to is from one of those two cities? Yeah, I mean, for the Bay Area, I mean,
the Bay Area has been building up for 70 years, you know, starting with Fairchild Semiconductor, HP, Apple, right?
There's generations and generations of built-in context into that geography.
And the reality is that funding startups is unlike any other asset class.
You know, they're not like normal.
They're not normal businesses.
You can't underwrite them like they are.
And it takes a understanding of this industry to do this well
and it's just there's been a lot of people in the bay area that have been doing this for quite a
while um and because of that founders go to the place where there's people that have been doing
it for a while for two reasons or maybe three reasons one the money's there two of the talents
there right it's very expensive that's a problem but there's a lot of talent in the Bay Area that has been a part of scale-ups.
Same with New York.
So they know what it's like to go from zero to one or one to ten.
And they don't have to learn that startup culture.
And then third, there's just a built-in context into this place.
I can't speak necessarily for New York.
I have obviously connections there, but I'm more nestled in the Bay Area.
But in the Bay Area, everyone just kind of understands how things work. Everyone understands
when something is weird, not weird. Is this good? No, it's not because it kind of pushes out
things on the fringe, which I don't think is great, but it's effective and efficient for the
job that the Bay Area does. And what's that job? It's to produce multi-billion dollar companies every year, every few years.
Now, do I think it can be more effective and efficient?
1,000%.
But it is the best that we got right now.
And I think that the game now is just improving it.
And then in New York, I personally don't think it's compared to SF in relation to strength of scene, but it is definitely the strongest number two in the whole country.
And it's the same thing. You have a lot of big companies that have been built there.
There's a lot of people with money that are invested, that are investors and investing in these startups.
and there's a lot of this built-in context on how these things work.
And there's a lot of this built in context on how these things work.
So those are some of my thoughts on why these two coastal cities are king
when it comes to context and startups.
That's a nice, thorough answer.
So to follow up on that, do you think people in other cities,
how important do you think it is that they move there?
Do you think that's something that should be like a necessity?
At what point in the startup does that make a difference? Or do you think you is that they move there do you think that's something that should be like a necessity at what point in the startup does that make a difference or do you think you can
do it anywhere just you have some unique advantages being in those startup hub cities where
you maybe have access to you know more things more people more connections more capital
yeah i mean it's a it's tough because being in the Bay Area and New York, there's
downsides too. You're suffering from groupthink. The talent's very expensive. The real estate's
very expensive, which makes more dilution for your company. So it's not all glory and
roses or whatever. So yeah, look, if you're not in the Bay Area, I think what you have to do is you need to, you know, I live in Phoenix, Phoenix, Arizona.
And I'm not going to lie.
This scene sucks.
Like, it's not just bad.
It's worse than bad.
Because there's a scene that thinks that they have what the founders need to succeed.
And it's just a fallacy.
So what happens is a lot of founders get sucked into the local scene
thinking they're making progress.
In reality, they're just wasting their time.
When there are some founders in Phoenix
that lock in, they work 12 trillion hours a day
and they understand the context points in Silicon Valley.
So they operate from Phoenix,
but they know how to separate signal from noise.
This is much easier said than done. But if you're in one of these non-hubs, you need to learn how to separate signal from noise. This is much easier said than done.
But if you're in one of these non-hubs,
you need to learn how to separate signal from noise.
And am I saying there's no good investors
outside of the coast?
Absolutely not.
There's phenomenal VC firms in the middle of the country.
You know, this firm isn't active anymore,
but Foundry Group,
one of the best firms in the world, right?
With Radfeld and whatnot.
You got Drive Capital whatnot you got drive
capital you got kickstart so i'm not saying you keep like i'm not saying it's it's um it's impossible
to do that outside of the coast you just got to get your have your guard up and you got your
bullshit meter has to be high as the freaking sky because you're going to deal with a lot of it and
you'll be able to sift through that really quickly. Awesome. That's a good answer, and I think there's a lot of value in that. I want to shift a little
bit and dive into, on this show, we like to talk about, you know, we just ask questions as they
come up naturally, but also we'd like to dive into recent events that have popped up in the VC
private equity world over the last week. And one of those things, pinning the tweet here in the VC private equity world over the last week and one of those things
pinning the tweet here in the space there we go and also if you haven't yet
go ahead and click the purple purple comment button in the bottom right of
your space if you're on mobile give this give this a space a retweet a like a
comment let's get more people in here we We're going to be in here for, I don't know, maybe another 30 minutes or so.
And so let's try and get some more people in this room.
I know there's some other spaces going on right now.
But let's try and fill this room up a little bit more and get some more people in here.
So I want to ask you, Matt, just kind of your thoughts on the betting markets.
I know Polymarket,
if you guys see that tweet I just posted here at the top of the space, they just got a new valuation at $9 billion. Pretty impressive, a company that seems like it's came out of nowhere
recently. Also, Kalshi, huge company. It seems like they're definitely the one and two player in the space and gaining traction fast so matt i want to ask you about you know your thoughts on that where
do you think those markets are going where does that traction go and also what i also think
is an interesting topic with this as well is now Robinhood is a player in this space with their
betting markets. And it really seems like Robinhood is kind of coming for anybody and anybody as far
as spending money in any sort of way. We talk about X and Elon talks about X being the everything
app where you should be able to do everything you possibly want to do
on the X platform. Robinhood really seems to be in that direction regarding finance, money,
spending, whatever it may be. We've seen, obviously, they have the investing side,
they have the crypto side. There's another topic that I want to get into here after this
with what they're doing with venture. But they're also in the betting market
space now too with their prediction markets. And it's a little bit different with Robinhood,
but it's definitely something that seems to be more and more popular and is a huge revenue
driver for Robinhood right now currently. So Matt, I just want to kind of pass it to you and let you share your thoughts on this. Well, let me ask, I'm pretty sure Robinhood
has partnered or is like white labeling either Polymarket or CalSheet, but I also may be wrong.
Do you know what they're doing right now? No, that's the first time that i've heard that um i did not know that
but i i could be wrong i could be i i know they were at some point and there's a there's a chance
they are now i i don't i don't maybe if someone in the audience wants to look that up and i put
in the chat that'd be that'd be cool but yeah i mean this is like, this is Gen Z-ification. Like, I mean, I feel like, look at, I mean, look, I'm 31.
You know, I look at my parish generation and they're not into this at all.
You know, this wasn't what they grew up with.
You know, prediction markets.
Even I had a hard time, you know, getting my head around it.
But look, like you look at sports sports betting getting legalized all over the country
you look at you know just startups in general becoming more like tech becoming more popular
in some ways like some would say tech is the new wall street i don't know if that's i don't know
if that's the right framing but like there's just like this stuff is becoming more in vogue
and you combine that with gen z living online, you know, and just like spending,
you know, being more digitally native. I mean, I don't really have a prediction for this,
but I don't think it's going to go away. I think it's like going to continue to persist.
And I kind of think about what, like, like, what you can really bet on anything in some ways with Kalshi.
Not anything, but, like, you will be able to.
And I just, I'm kind of curious what the implications are.
So this isn't like a one, like a Q&A.
I'm curious, like, what do you think?
Like, what's, I feel like I don't have a crystal ball here.
I don't have a crystallized view.
But I'd love to hear what you think on, like, what the future is here.
It's really interesting.
Well, I personally don't think it's going away.
I think legal frameworks seems to be easing up.
As time goes on, it becomes more and more acceptable, I guess, legally.
So there's that side of it.
I also think it's a huge market.
It was a huge market before these online betting places were legal.
It was a huge illegal market as well.
Even in the States, it wasn't legal with people having bookies and stuff like that.
So I definitely think where there's money, people are going to fill demand.
Or people are going to fill where there's demand, people are going to fill with supplies.
So I don't think it's going away by any means. I think it'll continue to get bigger.
I'm not necessarily sure that it's a good thing, to be completely honest. I think,
like anything, it can be good for a lot of people, but there's also a lot of people that
it's probably not good for. But maybe as I say that, I kind of feel like maybe I'm
sharing the boomer thought because I'm sure when Robinhood came out, all the suits sitting at their
Fidelity and Schwab desk were thinking, man, that's terrible for retail. They're going to
blow all their money because now they can invest on their own and they need us. We are the only ones who can do this right. And they probably hated Robinhood. But
as we've seen, obviously there's examples on both sides on everything. But as we've seen,
Robinhood is, I would say, it's been very good for the retail markets. And even the people who haven't used Robinhood, now they get a benefit from 0% commissions, free trades, because Robinhood really changed the game
and was going to put those other companies out of business if they didn't shift. And so they had to.
And so I would say overall, even if you haven't used Robinhood, Robinhood has been a net positive for investors in the trading space. And so I kind
of look at is this the same example just in the betting markets where before you had to go to,
you know, you had to go to, you know, a casino or a betting, you know, a place that you could
fill your bets and, you know, get a ticket kind of thing and actually do it in person,
which I think would deter a lot of people from doing it.
I know I live in a state where it's illegal or it was.
I don't technically know if it is or isn't anymore.
But, you know, growing up, it's always been illegal.
And so you had to go to the neighboring state, which from where I live is not too far away, but you still had to drive over there, place your bet to drive back to do it
legally. So a lot of people had bookies, which, you know, is illegal. But, you know, like growing
up, my buddies in college, they spent a lot of money on, you know, those sports bets and stuff.
You know, now that it's legal, the people like me who didn't want to go through a bookie because I didn't want to do anything illegal there, now it's like, well, now I have
access to do it legally through Polymarket, through CallSheet, through Robinhood prediction
markets. And so now it's more incentivizing to do that. And so I'm not saying that I'm a big sports
better now or anything, but I'm sure there's a lot of people who were in my position not wanting to do it, which now they have access to.
And so now they are. So is that a pro or is that a con?
Obviously, on every side of a bet, people are there's a winner and a loser.
So some people are winning, some people are losing.
But I think the people who are really winning is, you know, the house always wins. And I think that's Polymarket,
that's Kalshi and that's Robinhood. They're the ones who are really winning in this,
you know, more so than I feel like the user is. So that's a little bit of a ramble,
but I think that's where I'm at and where my take is on this.
Yeah, that's pretty well said. I agree. Yeah, I agree. And like kind of
where my head goes with this stuff is, I think it's obvious. I mean, you know, yeah, I think
it's pretty obvious that this stuff is a thing and it will continue to be a thing. And I agree,
it's not going away. But what's interesting is, as you were talking, you were using the analogy
of like the Schwab folks.
And when Robin Hood came out, they were probably thinking, oh, no one can do this like me.
And obviously they were partly wrong, at least, based on the demand for Robin Hood.
Where my head goes, just doing like my job and like just my thing is i kind of look at like where's the next what's
the next wave of this like that's the non-obvious wave like what's the digitization digitization of
like what and i mean this is kind of like a meme right now but i'm very bullish like i look at all
the stuff going on around open door and essentially digitizing real estate. And I almost see Opendoor doing the real estate
like Robinhood did to stocks, but just like 10 years early.
And it's just, and then it makes me like,
what are other industries where this is gonna happen?
If this is the trend, it's just like an interesting question.
And I feel like a lot of my job is asking questions
and finding someone that has the answers.
I think that's a great point.
And I do think we are seeing more of that digitization.
I think we'll continue to see more of that with tokenization of different things on the blockchain.
We've seen a lot of that with RWAs.
You can say what you want about those.
There's a lot of different use cases.
I know I've seen examples of people tokenizing Jordans or Rolex or something like that.
To me, if you're doing that, I don't know.
To me, I'd just rather own the asset itself instead of partial stake of it.
Then that kind of gets into the NFT things of what do you actually own?
I don't know. But I definitely think we'll see more of that. And I think one place we're seeing
that, which dives into the next topic, is Robinhood's latest announcement. Let me pin this.
They had their gold event here this last week. Our friends from the Wolf Show were at the event live in person.
I know Evan, the guy that had just pinned his tweet into space,
as long as Wolf, the actual guy behind Wolf,
they all went to the event, had a great time, friends with Vlad.
So cool to see what everything Robinhood has been putting out and perfect timing
with our show and what we talk about. But Robinhood is now working to tokenize private equity.
So now this will give users access to the largest publicly traded or private companies in the world that are not publicly
traded. We're talking companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, OpenAI, these companies that people would
not be able to get access to otherwise. We talked last week about secondary shares and the different
ways people can acquire those and actually how OpenAI is suing some of their shareholders because
they're trying to sell their shares on the secondary market and OpenAI doesn't want the
dilution. So that's definitely an interesting topic in its own that we covered last week.
But just kind of wanted to throw this one back at you, Matt, with Robinhood's new announcement
with giving retail investors access to those
private companies.
Yeah.
I mean, I think this is very fascinating.
I mean, you know, we talked about this a little bit last week around Reg CF.
Obviously, this is not that, but it's like, how do you get retail involved in private
markets, right?
This feels
like a pretty fun way to do that. So, and I know that Carta and many other platforms have attempted
to do not this specifically, but essentially create a secondary market. I think this is this,
this kind of strategy is fairly unique, at least from my perspective.
I think it's cool.
But I will say, like, I do think it opens up a rabbit hole, a good rabbit hole of exploration of, like, what's the 2.0 conversation on getting retail investors access to startups?
Like, why do the startups have to be pre-IPO?
to be pre-IPO? What if they got access earlier? Of course, obviously the comeback to that is
What if they got access earlier?
Reg CF, which I covered last week, which is, I don't love it. But I think if Robita can do this
for later stage companies, I think it opens up vehicles for earlier stage companies for folks
to get involved. And it's something I actually think a lot about with my activities. And I think
it's pretty freaking exciting. I think especially if they can get involved without investing. And this is like slightly off topic,
I guess, but I'm pretty bullish on not investing to get equity, but earning equity through how you
help a company. And I think there's like codified ways that you can track and do that. And I just
think this kind of paves the way for that being even possible to do. So
props to Robinhood. I mean, props to the shareholders in Robinhood. I don't hold the
shares. I mainly, I do other stuff, but I think it's just a monster of a company and I would not
want to be in their way. Yeah, I agree. I personally don't own any shares in Robinhood, but
I am super bullish on the company and what they're doing.
And I think one thing that is super, super, super underrated about Robinhood that I feel like a lot of people miss because they're so focused on the tech.
They're so focused on the ideas or rolling out this new whatever, whatever it may be.
ideas or rolling out this new whatever, whatever it may be. They're focused on what they think is
important from the founder perspective, but not focused on what is important from the user
perspective. And to me, the most underrated aspect that makes Robinhood such a winner
that I feel like a lot of startup companies miss. And to be honest, I work with a lot of different finance companies,
a lot of different finance apps, and nothing against those guys. But I think a lot of times
where people miss is the user interface makes a massive difference. If somebody comes to the
platform and they're confused, if somebody comes to the platform and it's confusing, it doesn't make sense,
they don't know where to go, the buttons aren't working, it doesn't look right, whatever it is,
user interface, I feel like is where Robinhood really took off because they made it so easy.
You didn't have to know very much about it. You could click a couple buttons and you had it
figured out. You didn't have to ask your buddy who knew something about stocks.
You could just figure it out on your own because it was that simple.
I feel like that's a huge advantage that they have.
So that's my little tidbit on Robinhood, their edge, why I'm bullish on it, even though I don't own any shares in it.
But that's kind of just some perspective that I have there and just working
with a bunch of different finance startups. But Matt, you mentioned, you know, kind of the
secondary shares and what that does. Follow up question I'd ask to you is, if Robinhood starts
the listing, some of these companies, now the companies they're listing are massive companies,
some of the biggest countries in the world, you know, they would probably qualify for the S&P 500 if they were
public. But these companies are already really big. But if Robinhood continues to list more of
these companies or if more of these private companies start to get tokenized on the blockchain,
companies start to get tokenized on the blockchain. There's some other platforms,
you know, where they do that. We've had Kyle Chassie on the show before. He's got a company,
I believe it's called Wealth Theory, where they tokenize private equity on the blockchain and
give people access to, you know, buy and trade shares with that. If that continues to happen
at an accelerated pace, does that deter companies further from
going public?
Because at that point, their shares are already liquid.
They can already trade this.
You can already trade the equity, essentially.
Does that deter companies from going public?
Because in some ways they already have that advantage of having the liquidity because
you can trade their equity, even though it's still private.
Yeah, this kind of causes me to go on a bit of a rant.
So, like, I feel like there's an analogy, like the stockbrokers on Wall Street in some ways i feel like silicon valley perceives them
like um the robin hood perceives i guess the same people like the people managing stocks
and i think that silicon valley if they could would figure out a way to innovate on that process.
And they have, right?
You look at people like Bill Gurley,
who is a GP at Benchmark, not there anymore,
but he's a legend, and Brad Gerstner.
And they're really big proponents of direct listings,
which is going public, but it's going direct.
You're not working with someone on it,
with a broker on it.
And I think all of this is trending in a direction of like I think there will have to be liquidity events.
But I think what the concept of a liquidity event is going to look different.
Very, very different. different and I do think in the in 20 years I mean I could be wrong but in 20
years that going public will mean something very different than what it
means today and I just think the digit digitization that has taken some other
industries will probably take this process like getting their investors
the employees the founders getting
them their money capitalizing the company like i think the retail movement is gonna take over that
not totally not completely but more than it is now so does this dissuade companies from going public
i don't know but i just think that what the act of going public is gonna change
In the coming decades and I don't think anyone really quite knows
What it's gonna look like, but I if I had to guess it's there's gonna be a little more power for the retail folks
I think retail has a lot of power
You know and I'm you know right now. I'm just following this open door stuff. It's just kind of wild.
That's kind of my take. Yeah, I think it does dissuade companies from going public in the
old-fashioned way as the whole market figures out a new way to get the same result.
I definitely agree with you in the sense that more power to the people. I just feel like as a society,
especially as a financial society, that's definitely the way we're moving. I do think Robinhood is a huge factor behind that of giving
the power back to the people. Let them make their own decisions. Let them learn from themselves.
Let them act for themselves. I do think that is definitely something we continue to see more and
more of, and I think that'll continue to happen. Another topic I want
to make sure we cover here today, I'm going to pin two different tweets here at the top of the space.
And if you're new here, we're about halfway through the show. We might wrap up a little
early today, but we have this show every Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern. We talk about venture capital,
private equity. We bring in a bunch of different guests, new guests, people who haven't been on before, people who have been on before,
and we just talk the latest in venture capital and private equity. So if you ever have any
questions or any speakers you'd like us to bring on, feel free to send me a DM and we could
definitely be happy to make that happen. So with that said, another topic I want to hit on is the influencer route in, you know, personal branding with raising Rajan, if you've seen him, he's building Airbnb sites in Virginia.
Right now, he's looking to raise a million dollars.
He's taking Instagram by storm.
I don't know how many followers, a couple hundred thousand.
Every time I'm there, I'm seeing one of his reels.
Every time I'm there, I'm seeing one of his reels.
And basically, he's just documenting the journey of being a college kid, going into debt, building these projects.
And now he's looking to raise money outside of that.
And then the second tweet, we just saw Haley Bieber as the lead investor in Bill Gates' daughter's startup.
in Bill Gates' daughter's startup.
And if you're unfamiliar,
Hailey Bieber just recently sold her makeup line
for over a billion dollars.
So I think she actually has more money
than her husband, Justin.
And he's in no shortage of it either
after he just sold his music catalog
for, I don't know, 350 million or something like that.
So we're definitely seeing a trend of people with large audiences using that to market
to their audience, to sell to their audience, to raise capital, and then go to an exit as
they sell their company to an even larger company in that sector.
So Matt, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Yeah, I mean, it's, I don't really know.
Like the, like it's the, the, the, okay.
What are my thoughts? My thoughts are you should be able to fund whoever you want to fund. If it's your money the path okay what are my thoughts my thoughts are you should be able
to fund whoever you want to fund if it's your money do whatever you want and it's hard to know
who's going to be successful in the beginning um and that's kind of it like i i i i think some
people look at this and they're like oh hey like you know i i worked hard at my thing i should be
able to raise and they raised because of their family and stuff and i think that's just life i think that's just literally how life works
and you know when you're bill gates you know daughter and you're hayley bieber like you can
do whatever the hell you want but i don't really have outside of that that dynamic i've seen some
like a little bit of backlash just a little bit but outside of that i mean i think it's cool
i think influencers raising i think it's cool i think influencers raising i
think it's good i will say though i guess one final thought on that it's like i think if an
influencer is raising the odds they're going to get bad advice is really good it's really high
like they're an influencer they have a lot of reach to people that probably sound legitimate
but silicon valley like my world it's really just like 5 000 people that know what the hell is going
on and then it's like 500 000 people that think they know what's going on and the influencer is more likely going to get
access to one of the 500 unless they're really big but they're going to more likely get access
to the 500,000 versus the 5,000 obviously Hayley Bieber knows everyone in the 5,000 right more
talking about the first example you shared um but overall I don't have a strong, I don't have strong thoughts other than what I just said.
One, one thing that, that I, that makes me think of is, you know, how many different, you know, influencers did we see launch their own, you know, meme coin over this last, I don't know, year or so, you know, and how all of those have, have gone not good. And even, you know, with the president of, I think it was Italy, no, Argentina, the president
of Argentina, even he launched a coin, you know, that was launched by the same guy who
did those other projects for the other influencers that, you know, was basically a scam.
So everybody sounds like they know what they're doing.
It's not always the case. And sometimes they do know what they're doing. But what they tell you
that they're going to do versus what they know they're going to do might be a little different.
So I think that's the case a lot of times with those meme coins. But I hear what you're saying
about the Silicon Valley thing. And another thing I want to touch on that you mentioned, people pushing back on the Bill Gates thing or his daughter, whatever. Was it better for wouldn't you want to set them up for success too? So, you know, you might not have been afforded that opportunity, but there's no reason that
you can't give your kids, you know, that opportunity and set them up for success,
you know, and I'm sure Bill Gates didn't give her, you know, a hundred billion dollars.
So, you know, and, and some, some think, um, just being raised by smart people or being involved around smart people,
you know, you get smart too. So I do think she probably does deserve, you know,
some credit in there as well. And she is a co-founder. And so, you know,
there's, there's probably some correlation with that as well. Um, for sure.
Yep. I agree.
So Matt, I want to ask you one more thing.
I want to touch on that on the influencer side
before I get to that.
But I see a lot of it,
because I work with founders.
I'm more on that social media side,
so I see the advantages.
But one of the things that we see pretty often
is the startup founders that I'm helping grow their brands. When they have more followers,
it's easier to raise money because that social proof matters. Because we've seen so many examples
of people with large audiences being able to sell a product. We were just talking about Haley Bieber.
She's an example to the extreme.
Obviously, she's pretty popular, pretty famous,
but she sold her company for a billion dollars based on her marketing her company through her Instagram.
And so having those followers carries a lot of value,
carries a lot of weight.
And so what we've seen with my clients
when we help them grow their followers,
they have the audience they can market to
when they go to push their product.
And so investors love to see that on the pitch deck,
that people already care about what they're doing,
that they have some traction,
that they have some social proof,
and that people are interested in what they have to say
in their company and their product.
And so we do see that as a huge advantage that has helped some of our clients raise money.
And even just once you have that audience, just the different connections you make.
You touched on it a little bit, Matt, of just being connected to the right people.
The bigger your audience gets, the more people you get to talk to,
the more people that, you know,
have motion that you get to talk to
because you have some motion.
And, you know, we just really see it
as just an overall huge net benefit
for our founders in that startup world
when they have a larger audience.
So that's definitely an alpha.
I want to pass it to you, Matt, here. And I just want to hear more he tags his company, The Arena, there.
And the bio says, the Coliseum for Founders, feel free to bet on yourself today.
No application, no interviews, no excuses.
This is not a paid promotion or anything by Matt or his company or anything like that.
But I am just generally curious to learn more about that and what that means.
Yeah, sure.
So many people want to raise money, and there's so much bad advice out there on what that looks like in the beginning when you're raising your pre-seed, receive.
And even if you get the good advice, oftentimes, if you're not in the Bay Area, you don't have the right context to even know what to do if someone
wants to invest. You know, some people think, oh, if I get the traction, I'll be able to raise money.
And there's nothing further from the truth. Of course, traction is good, but there's a cultural
understanding of how this stuff works in order to get it, get the money. Of course, you might get a
check, but to actually do it well and have an actual capital strategy, you need the context.
do it well and have an actual capital strategy. You need the context. So Arena is essentially a
leaderboard that I manage of founders that join. And then essentially every week we re-rank the
leaderboard based on fundability. And the ranking is determined by your signal, by your progress in
Arena, and by your effort in Arena.
And we have a nice little algo that helps us out with this.
And essentially, it's a way for founders to know where they stand.
And then when someone gets to the top of the list or the top 1%,
I start advising them or I'll scout them for one of the venture capital firms that I work with.
Now, does everyone get funding absolutely not it does cost 20 a month to join but essentially
it's a filter like if someone's already networked in the industry they're not going to do this and
i'm not going to why would i ask them to right but for 99.9 of the world wants their money but
just like doesn't quite know how to get there or what that looks like.
This is probably the most accessible thing that exists.
And there's not even an application.
Anyone can join if they want to bet on themselves.
But they got to stomach the fact that they're really low on the leaderboard.
And then they have to figure out what to do to grow on the leaderboard.
So that's a bit about what it is.
So you mentioned signal and progress to move up the leaderboard. So that's a bit about what it is. So you mentioned like, you know,
Signal and Progress, you know,
to move up the leaderboard.
What, like, how are those defined?
Yeah, sure.
So Signal is a little formula
I've created based on
where someone went to school,
where they've worked,
if they're technical or not technical,
how many mutuals we have on X or
Twitter, which is a very, which I think VCs care about. Progress is every week they give me an
update on their company, very short, but essentially based on the velocity of their progress and their
updates, we give them a score for every update. And then effort is, we do events, we do AMAs,
like we've done an AMA with Delian from Founders Fund, Sam Bannister from Long Journey Ventures, Eric Reese, who wrote The Lean Startup.
So we have all these events people can come to and learn and build up their context.
So we reward people when they show up. Some people think they sign up and they don't do anything and they grow in the leaderboard.
But that's not them growing context. That's not them learning.
So we strongly reward people that actually come to learn. Um, and those are the three, the three scores that go into the
final score that determine the ranking. And on that topic, but also off that topic,
uh, as far as just showing up, how much do you think success as a, as a founder is simply just
showing up every day and like doing the things you need, you know, you need to do.
Oh, man, it is.
It's like I'm not going to say it's everything, but it's everything.
Like if you're showing up and you have good feedback loops, even if you're failing, you know why you're failing.
you're failing and you don't do the same stuff again, you can't lose. And sometimes just going
You don't do the same stuff again.
You can't lose.
to that event or going to the spaces or sending that one email or doing that one thing, just
showing up is the difference between winning the day and losing the day. And the difference between
losing a day and winning a day could be the difference between winning a week and losing
in a week. So showing up is everything. And it matters. I don't care if you're very far
away, if you don't really know what you're doing, if you're struggling. If you're showing up and I
see that, that counts. That matters for something. It's not everything. It's not everything,
but it sure as hell is something. Awesome. I definitely think there's a lot of weight in that too. Obviously, I think it can kind of go both ways.
I don't think hard work alone is enough to find success.
I think there needs to be, like you said, some feedback loop.
You have to be learning.
You have to be, I don't know if I want to say failing,
but you have to be making mistakes, I guess,
short-term mistakes for long-term success.
So I do think it is important to show up every day.
I think that's a must.
But I also think responding to feedback loops and making sure you're working efficiently
and making sure you're working correctly is really important.
Shout-out to my man Rick Ross.
He says he's not concerned about moving fast.
He's concerned about moving correctly.
So I do think there is a lot of value in that.
100%.
Off path, make sure you're back on path.
So that's kind of, I guess, my take.
And Matt, I want to give you, you know, I'll be
good to wrap up here in a second, but I want to ask if there's anything else you're excited about
or anything else you want to share with the audience before we wrap up for today.
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of stupid, because I've already mentioned a couple times,
but I'm just like, if I've already mentioned it a couple of times.
Opendoor is based in Tempe, Arizona.
They're going to eventually not be based here.
I'm sure they're going to move. But I'm very close with the whole leadership team getting pretty much ousted.
And then now Keith Reboi and Ericic wu and kaz from shopify coming in
as ceo and it's just like it's not even about the stock it's just like fascinating this could be a
company that like revolutionizes how real estate transactions happen and if you're like just
interested in like a big a small big company like a billion dollar company that feels like it's just
got started today follow the open door people follow keith company that feels like it's just got started today. Follow the open door people, follow Keith Reboi, follow Kaz. It's like very interesting,
interesting to watch like a company get re reformed and like revitalized 10 years after
it got built. Outside of that, I just enjoy doing this. It's fun. And you know, it's always
good conversation. Awesome. Well, I appreciate it, Matt.
I appreciate you being such a great guest this week and sharing so much insight with our audience.
So thank you, everybody, for showing up.
And make sure you give Matt, myself, and Wolf a follow.
We're here every week, Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern, talking venture capital, private equity, a bunch of different topics, a bunch of different sectors.
We bring on different guests. We bring on new guests as well. And so if you have any questions
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well so really appreciate everybody for joining us and if you're unfamiliar with the wolf financial
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If it involves money, if it involves finance, they host a show on it. So make sure to give them a
follow and we'll see you guys next week.
Matt will be back next week as well
and we'll be excited to chat with him
and our other guests.
So I'll pass it over to the Wolf account
and let you close it out.
Thanks.
Yeah, I did a great job there.
Really appreciate it.
And the usual voices,
of course we have Gav,
we have Emp,
we have Jordan doing the Wolf trading we have jordan doing the wolf
trading cade doing a lot of the wolf bitcoin william myself tropic there's a whole bunch of
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next week please 100 share this out get your friends that might have missed this and we'll
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