If you follow Fintech on X, it is very likely that you have met The story of Sheel Mohnotco-founder and general partner of Better Tomorrow Ventures.
With more than 150,000 subscribers, Mohnot has built an impressive presence on the social media site. Interestingly, many of his messages have nothing to do with venture capital.
Mohnot started Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV) After having co-found some businesses, including the rains, which Sold in Groupon in 2012.
BTV, which has 300 million dollars under management, focuses on investment mainly at the pre-series and seed stadium in fintech startups. It also uses an accelerator, mint.
Since its creation in November 2019, BTV has supported Angellic,, Charlie,, SideAnd Unit. Mohnot personally has also invested as an angel for more than a decade, writing checks in companies such as Flexport, Ironclad, Ethos Insurance and List.
I jumped on the microphone to interview Mohnot to record an episode of Podcast Equity, and we discussed the most excited, and its reflections on where artificial intelligence really works in the world of Fintech.
This interview has been modified for more clarity and brevity.
In addition to being in a way an influencer on social networks, your main work is to invest in Fintech Out of Best Tomorrow Ventures startups. Let’s talk briefly about what BTV considers a fintech company.
We think that much more is finch than the others. So, for example, we think that the vertical SaaS is the fintech. And if you are thinking of toasts and buyers of the world, more than 80% of their income is financial services. We therefore consider these as fintech companies. And then also the B2B markets, we also consider to be fintech companies.
Ok, we’re going to return to Fintech. But first, I would like to talk about your social media strategy. Do you have more than 151,000 subscribers on X. How did you become a social media star?
I don’t know if I’m a star, but I appreciate it. I first signed up for Twitter a long time ago, but I was really not very active before the pandemic. At the start of the pandemic, I was active in the clubhouse – as I was bored at home. I became super active there and accumulated a crazy number of followers. I think like 3.3 million. But of course, it is no longer really relevant. The only way to write to clubhouses was via Twitter. It therefore naturally led to doing things on Twitter and more followers there. I just started writing and I found that I really liked it. I like to share ideas and get people’s comments.
What have been your most viral messages over the years?
My wife actually posted on herself in a meme at the Folsom street fair with an expression on her face where she said to herself: “Why? How did I finish here? This obtained 250,000 likes. But that of my account was in the middle of me when I saw a lot of pitchs for the founders of web3 trying to solve a kind of problem that did not really exist. I saw a video of a guy who had cut the rear wheel of his bicycle in two and always made her ridiculous. And I said to myself, “Why would you do that?” And so I subtitled it with something like “the founders of web3 solving problems that do not exist” and that was unleashed. People were unleashed.
In addition to investing, you also made the headlines for very interesting things like your wedding in 2023 A metavese marriage of Tacobell And you make an appearance in a Justin Bieber video In 2021. How did the devil these things happened?
I got involved in 2022 and we had a fairly funny engagement story that I published on Twitter. Many people saw that I was engaged, then Taco Bell had a contest where they wanted to find a lucky couple to get married in the metavese. And a bunch of people saw that I was engaged and that I also knew that I like Taco Bell, and said: “Hey, sheel, it’s perfect for you.” They ended up choosing us.
As for the video, I was on this dating show during the pandemic called Zoom Bachelorette. I did not win but I obtained the public vote and in the public was scooter Braun, who was the director of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande. We chatted on Clubhouse, and he ended up putting me in the video.
I know that all your messages are not related to investment or fintech, but I’m sure that has had an impact. Did this have helped you to attract founders that you might not have attracted or helped you win offers?
Yeah, I think yes. First of all, I would say that I do not do it for these reasons. I just have a good time and I publish what I think is interesting and stimulating and I could bring people to teach me something afterwards, but I think it was useful.
The first time I realized that it was when I sent an email to a founder who really encouraged me. I know that a lot of other investors had also stretched my hand, but when I stretched out, they replied immediately and said, “I think we have the same training regime.” And they answered a tweet that I had displayed that had become viral, which was then that Chamath (Palihapitiya) posted A tweet of him with his shirtand I made fun of myself and him by Publish a response to him. And so these guys were like: “Hey, we really like your style. Let’s go. Let’s start. And I said to myself: “Oh, Wow, it’s quite powerful, as if they knew who I am, and it continued to be super precious.”
Now, with regard to companies of Tomor Tomorrow – How many funds have you collected so far? And I continue to hear that the fintech is back. Do you want to agree with this? What are you optimistic?
We are investing in our second fund now, and we will soon invest in our third fund. And yes, I think the Fintech market is hot again and we will see more outings in the near future. I think that overall, the Fintech world is quite ready to have a lot of results in the near future.
I am enthusiastic about many things we have always believed, which is “all that is fintech”, which persists today. As I mentioned earlier, the SaaS vertical and the B2B markets become fintech societies, and there are a lot of opportunities to activate these people. I am also very excited by accounting. We have three companies behind this thesis that there is a large shortage of accountants in this country.
It is interesting that you say that considering that at the end of last year, an accounting startup called Bench Stop unexpectedly before being acquired a few days later by this company called employer.com. Many people can debate what is wrong with the bench, but it seems that what happened there does not seem to have an impact on your global views of space as a whole?
It’s interesting. I think that the bench is really an accounting firm, rather than being an accounting firm supported by a company, as if they had a lot of humans doing an accounting work. And a problem with this is that it is really difficult to evolve, to build as a venture capital company and to continue to grow on a business scale. And so finally, I think I heard customers as they ended up cutting the corners. Things did not really go as people wanted it, so they had a bunch of challenges.
Recently, the big news that dominated was Deepseek. It was everywhere. Everyone talks about it, Openai seemed to panic. What do you think-Deepseek is this great threat really, or is it just a bunch of media threshing?
There are a number of things to unpack in Deepseek. One is China. Another is that he is open source, and another is that is supposed to be done at a very cheap.
I think we have always believed that the cost of inference, recent modeling costs would drop. But I think that the in -depth launch helped the cost to lower quite substantially. And so, now you have a little price war at the fundamental model, which is ideal for our companies that are built on AI. It is phenomenal.
What about the media threshing around AI in general?
There are so many companies that present us in the same way as they present to you, and they tell us that they are AI companies, and you look and there is nothing IA about them , or very little; I think very few companies are in fact IA companies. And then I think there are many more companies that see an enormous value of AI but are not “IA companies”. We invest through the spectrum. I think there is this perception that you must be an AI business to attract attention. And I don’t think it’s true. I think it’s just important to be honest on who you are and what you do.
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