YouSaid · the spoken record

Sheel Mohnot

lines on the record: 81
first: 2023-07-14
most recent: 2023-07-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It's an early first close. Now, part of the reason we did the first close is we had a company that we had to invest in. We had committed to this company in like September. We said we're going to lead your seed round, but we actually didn't have a fund at that point. And so we had to close as soon as possible so we could fund that company. The company's unit, a banking as service.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it gave some credibility. I think also just having a first close gave a lot of credibility. And we'd done our first investment. We were investing. We had a first close.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, our first close, mainly friends, like people who knew us in the fintech ecosystem who were willing to back us just because they'd seen us in the ecosystem. And then we had one institution who Sendana.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, we had no anchor. So there was Fun Zero, my $15 million fund, then fund one 75. And we had no anchor in the $75 million fund.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, a lot of people think it's like a very easy cushy job. But I think especially when you're starting out, it can be very tough. And I think there's a big divergence among managers. Like it can be an easy cushy job at some of these big funds. But for the manager that's just starting out, it can be tough. You can be investing more into it and not getting paid for quite a while before you end up.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll say we recently won a hotly competitive deal, and a big part of it was actually like we've landed several high quality candidates into our portfolio. And they were like, this is the hardest thing. And these guys have helped us with the hardest thing that we have to do, find talent. But generally, I've heard the same thing where people say it's all bullshit.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, we think we're investing as much as we want. We like the lean team. We have seven people, and we think we're doing everything we want. The reality is most other managers, it's not actually investing in their firms. It's like we wanted to, we could take a $2 million salary each and have that's $4 million, and we still have $2 million to invest, right? In building the firm. And that's actually a lot of money. So instead, we don't want to be fat and lazy is basically what it comes down to.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So now we have 300 million AUM. We could take 2%, which is 6 million to run our business. We actually take a much smaller amount and return a Dell piece. We just wanted to be returns focused. And the more money we have to invest, the better.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally Totally. Yeah, but like those guys also at some point want returns. So in that vein, we actually don't pay ourselves as much as we could. We actually don't even take full management fees.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good, but does it return to fine Yeah, I don't know how many $10 billion outcomes there are going to be. Like if we're honest in 2021, it looked like there were a ton of them. And now those companies aren't looking so hot. So I don't know how often there's going to be a $10 billion outcome”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, it seems like we have these super big funds, right? We talked about Andreessen, General Catalyst, all these other guys. Those guys seem to be in the AUM accumulation game. And it's a tough business to have if you think about these huge funds just getting returns on these huge funds is really tough. You're really only shooting for $10 billion plus outcomes. And then I don't know how many of those there are going to be.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so, yeah. So, less competition for capital, but also less competition for companies. In 2020, 2021, every company we funded, there were five”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. So I'd say from 2016 to 2021, there was this crazy upward slope of trajectory of fintech companies. If I'm being honest, 2020 and 2021 were just like overhyped. That upward trajectory, like that chart of e-commerce, like it went up and then it went like crazy hockey stick. And then it went down, but it's still continuing on that same trajectory. I don't think Fintech's dead. I think we're just back to where we were a few years ago.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People started paying seed grounds at $20 million valuations in a market that's going to be a really tough path to get to a billion dollar plus exit. And that was a shame.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we've had companies that went public on the Nasdaq from Africa. You could always have made that claim about Latam and then we had companies, we have Newbank, super successful company. You could have made these claims about different markets that ended up maturing and building a robust market. Now, what happened that I think was totally shitty in 2021 was you weren't getting an appropriate discount. If it's going to be a really tough path, but you have an exceptional founder, there's going to be a path to liquidity at some point, but you have to get in at the right price to account for that.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think, first of all, I think it can happen. It's tough. But for a truly greater company, there's always going to be an option In Africa, we've had liquidity. We've had companies that went public”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think people have invested a lot in Pakistan, Bangladesh, parts of Africa. They will continue to. There are still good companies in these markets. The great companies will continue to raise money. But I think what had happened was there are a handful of great companies, a lot of people who had never invested in these markets before started investing. And then instead of just putting money into the handful of great companies, the hundred companies after them that weren't that great also raise money.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's struggling for sure. And the more emerging you go, the tougher it gets. So in a low interest rate environment, money's free and you're like searching for more risk and you go to emerging markets. And a lot of people invested in a lot of places that they'd never been, didn't know much about. Now people are coming way closer to home. But I still think there's opportunities in emerging markets. And we still continue to invest in emerging markets. But probably less than really far.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, so it's not necessarily that sometimes it's like the market hasn't developed the way we thought it was developing. There's an opportunity to pivot and sometimes they take that opportunity and sometimes it works. But if they don't do that, then there's little chance that I think the market is going to develop the way we thought originally was. So for example, we invested in a company in Southeast Asia that we were betting on the fintech market in Southeast Asia getting much bigger in a way that hasn't really developed. So then we have to think about, okay, unless they pivot into serving a different type of customer, we can't continue to support them.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say there are companies that I've had where I just know there's very little chance I'm going to put more capital into it.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think that's true, but you do know your losers. So, I know companies that I don't want to invest more into because the founder does not represent emergency or like.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could do that for a fun like hours. It doesn't really make sense. I think for a lead investor, it doesn't really make sense because what ends up happening is some companies need more capital, not the ones that are killing it. The ones that are killing it are able to raise easily. But there are other companies that are doing well but need a little bit more capital and you have to put more money into them. Doing well but not well enough to raise the next round. And we've had companies like that that ended up being super successful. One of the companies recently, we led to seed, we put a little bit more money in six months ago than they just raised at a hundred million valuation from Andreessen. We're really fortunate that we put that a little bit more money in. If you don't do the follow-ons, if your strategy is just to do one check, but you have to do some follow-ons, then you end up not following on to your breast companies. You end up following on when you have to, which can be your worst companies.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We went from 75 to 150. I think for us, it was more about how many checks do we want to write, what's the size of those checks, and what's our follow-on strategy. Now, we raised over a year ago, part of the reason we increased was in fund one, pretty much every one of our companies raised a follow-on round quickly after we invested. And we were almost forced to do that follow-on round. If you lead the seed round and somebody good is following on, you kind of have to follow on. And so our first check to follow on strategy was totally out of whack because we didn't have enough data, but you have a great fun leading the next round at a huge markup.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I don't think so. I know that that's happened in the past. I just don't see it happening this cycle. And probably if it were to happen, it would have already happened.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends if you're fully returns focused. It could be in your interest. A lot of the large funds have gotten so large that they're really more management fee focused than the arm returns focused. But for the”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there are LPs that have withdrawn quite a bit, but then you see everybody's in Saudi Arabia right now. I have no strong viewpoint about whether you should take money from there or not. We haven't, but I think it is very hypocritical that all these folks who are anti-Saudi money are now over there just praising everything.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think we're operating in a crazy prisoner's dilemma situation where there's a bunch of capital that wants to go into venture still. And if you increase fund sizes, the industry as a whole needs to return a lot more than it probably will. And so if everybody reduced fund sizes, then we would probably be operating at a different level. We would be investing at lower valuations. And it would probably be better for everyone. Instead, we've got this continual upward march of fund sizes. When you have a bigger fund size, you become relatively agnostic about the price you pay.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'll push back on that. So, with Bill Gurley in particular, let's say, Pat, I haven't spent much time with recently, but with Bill, I was talking to another one of his partners about their meetings. They actually had been talking about something I tweeted. And he said they had a rigorous internal debate about what was correct. And they don't know. They couldn't come to a conclusion about what was right. It's like, there are ways that you can invest, but actually knowing what to invest in or what a mode is, people are still figuring it out. And even if you look at the greats, they have a bunch of misses and they have a bunch of companies that you say like, why did you do that? It didn't make sense in hindsight.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say no one knows what they're doing. I feel like the more I've gotten into it, the more I've learned. There's no right way to do it. There are so many different strategies that can be successful. People can be very prescriptive and say this is the only way to do it. This is the only way to do it. You see that in so many different arguments. You have that in like, we were talking about the remote work argument. So you can say the only way to do it is five days a week in person. And if you don't do that, you can't be successful. But there are clearly companies that are successful that are remote. And now it is actually my preference that companies are in person, but I can't mandate it. I don't mandate it because we've seen too many success stories that aren't all in person.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. I had always wanted to be in business for those Indian people. I'm a Rajasthani. And I didn't know what to do, but I always was tinkering with ideas as a kid, always had a bunch of small businesses. Then I went into the corporate world. I was a management consultant. Then a buddy of mine was leaving to start a company and I joined him. And then we sold that company in 2012. Then I ended up starting a company that we sold in 2015. And then at that point, I thought I've really loved what I've seen on the other side of the table. I've loved what I've seen from VCs interacting just when I was fundraising. And aren't they the smart ones? This is sort of what I was thinking. And of course, now I know better. Now it's the other side of the table. It's the founders that are the smart ones, but it's possibly just like anyone across the table for me is smarter than me.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are operating in a crazy prisoners dilemma situation. There's a bunch of capital that wants to go into venture still. And if you increase fund sizes, the industry as a whole needs to return a lot more than it probably will.”
2023-07-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Fund Sizes Should Be Smaller, Should Founders Also Have Their Own Funds, Is Emerging Markets Investing Gone, Is Fintech Investing Dead & Who Will Be The Winners and Losers in VC in the Next 10 Years with Sheel Mohnot, Co-Founder @ BTV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source