15: Founder to fintech evangelist to Internet personality and always a Taco Bell enthusiast – Sheel Mohnot, Better Tomorrow Ventures

First Funders

We’ve had a lot of cool people on the pod, but Sheel Mohnot is our first guest to achieve this trifecta: 100X an investment, have a founder in his portfolio go to prison, and have his wedding sponsored by Taco Bell. He invests at the pre-seed and seed stages into startups in the financial technology (fintech) space, and he’s quick to tell you that just about everything is fintech. Through his fund, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Sheel writes $500k to $3M pre-seed and seed checks into fintech companies. He came by to talk about that time he got defrauded by a company, how he sparked a bidding war that led to him returning most of his fund, and why speed of execution is one of his favorite traits in founders.

Highlights:

• Sheel is beginning to think that pre-seed is the new seed, and seed is the new Series A. He unpacks these thoughts and outlines what he needs to see in order to believe in a founder at the early stages.
• Secondaries and early exits and two ways investors can realize an outcome in a shorter time frame than an IPO. Sheel explains how he did this with two companies, Flexport and Indio, and how he feels about his decisions retrospectively.
• Major companies like Toast and Shopify are synonymous with fintech, but there is a vast network of less-thought-of companies making transactions happen in nearly every imaginable space. Hair salons, golf clubs, and garbage trucks are just a few of the places where Sheel is seeing fintech potential and why he believes that everything is fintech and fintech is everything.
• Sheel could’ve saved himself some trouble (and money!) if he would’ve heeded the warnings of fellow investors about a deal. However, he learned his lesson and now he doesn’t invest unless he thoroughly vets the founder through someone else in his network.

• (00:00) - FIFU 16 - Sheel Mohnot
• (01:25) - Sheel's early days as a founder and consultant
• (09:58) - Why invest and why invest in fintech
• (12:09) - Ideal Founder Profile: Who and what Sheel is looking for
• (14:43) - Lessons From the Worst Investment: How to spot a fraud
• (21:10) - Lessons from the Best Investment: Knowing when to take chips off the table
• (34:03) - Sheel's thoughts on the expansiveness of the fintech market
• (38:00) - Speed of execution is one of Sheel's favorite traits to find in founders
• (43:31) - Speed round