If you follow Fintech on X, it’s very likely you’ve come across the account of Sheel Mohnot, co-founder and general partner of Better Tomorrow Ventures.
With over 150,000 followers, Mohnot has built an impressive presence on social media sites. Interestingly, many of his posts have nothing to do with venture capital.
Mohnot launched Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV) after co-founding several companies, including Feefighters, which was sold to Groupon in 2012.
Under $300 million management, BTV focuses on pre-seeding and seed stage investments for fintech startups. It also operates the accelerator, Mint.
Since its launch in November 2019, BTV has supported Angellist, Charlie, Coast, Unit and more. Mohnot has personally invested as an angel for over a decade and writes checks for companies like Flexport, IronClad, Ethos Insurance and Apartment List.
I jumped onto the microphone to interview Mohnot and recorded an episode of the Equity Podcast. He explained how he built such a big follow in X in his viral posts, how he appeared on Justin Bieber video, and what territory he appeared in. Most excited, and his thoughts on where artificial intelligence actually works in the world of fintech.
This interview has been compiled for clarity and brevity.
In addition to being an influencer on social media, your main job is to invest in a Fintech startup from Better Tomorrow Ventures. Let’s give you a quick explanation of what BTV considers as a fintech company.
I think more of Fintech than others. As an example, we consider vertical Saas to be fintech. And if you think about toast and boulevards in the world, over 80% of their revenues are financial services. So we consider them to be fintech companies. We also consider the B2B Marketplace to be a fintech company.
Okay, we’re going back to Fintech. But first, I would like to talk about your social media strategy. X has over 151,000 followers. How did you become a social media star?
I don’t know if I’m a star or not, but I’m enjoying it. I first signed up for Twitter a long time ago, but wasn’t very active until the pandemic. In the early days of the pandemic, I was active in the clubhouse. Because I was very bored at home. I got very active there and accumulated a crazy number of followers. I think I’m 3.3 million people. But of course it’s not really relevant anymore. The only way to write letters to people in the clubhouse was via Twitter. So of course we ended up communicating on Twitter. I just started writing and I realized I really liked it. I like to share ideas and get feedback from people.
What has your most viral post been over the years?
My wife actually posted about herself in a meme at Folsom Street Fair. How did you get here? ” 250,000 likes! But what’s from my account was in the midst of seeing a lot of pitches from Web3 founders trying to solve some kind of problem that didn’t actually exist. I watched a video of a guy sliced the rear wheels of his bike into two and still made it easier to ride. And I captioned it with something like “Why do you do this?” and I got wild with something like “The founder of Web3 who solves problems that don’t exist.” People have gone wild for it.
In addition to the investment, we’ve also created headlines that are very interesting, such as your wedding in 2023 being a Taco Bell Metaverse wedding and appearing in the 2021 Justin Bieber video. What about these things?
We got engaged in 2022 and had a pretty fun engagement story I posted on Twitter. Many people saw that I was engaged and then we had a contest where Taco Bell wanted to find a lucky couple to marry in Metaverse. And a lot of people saw that I was engaged and also knew I like Taco Bell and said, “Hey, this is perfect for you.” They ended up choosing us.
As for the video, I was on this dating show during the pandemic called the Zoom Bachelorette. I didn’t win, but got the audience votes and Scooter Brown was the manager of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande. We chatted at the clubhouse and he ended up putting me on video.
Not all of your posts are related to investments or fintech, but I’m sure they somehow influenced it. Did it help attract founders who may not have been fascinated with you, or did you help you win the deal?
Yes, I think so. First of all, I don’t think I’m doing it for those reasons. I might just be having a good time, posting something that I find interesting and thought-provoking and having people tell me something after the fact, but I would say it helped me. I think so.
When I emailed it to the founder, the first time I realized I was really excited. I know that many other investors were reaching out, but when I reached out, they responded quickly and said, “We have the same training plan.” I think so.” And they were responding to tweets I posted. It’s gone viral [Palihapitiya] I was taking off his shirt and posting his tweets, so I was teasing myself and him by posting a reply to it. And these guys said, “Hey, we really like your style. Let’s get it. Let’s get started.” And then, “Oh, wow, that’s what I know. As you can see, it’s very powerful and it’s become so valuable.”
So, how many funds have you raised so far for a better tomorrow’s venture? And I keep hearing that FinTech is back. Do you agree to that? What are you bullish about?
We are currently investing from the second fund and will soon be investing from the third fund. Yes, the fintech market is hot again and I think we will see more exits in the near future. Overall, I think the fintech world is pretty poised to be able to deliver many results in the near future.
I’m excited about a lot of things that we’ve always believed in. This is “everything is a fintech story” and continues today. As mentioned before, the vertical SaaS and B2B market is becoming a fintech company, and there are plenty of opportunities to enable those people. I’m also really excited about the accounting. Behind this paper are three companies that say there is a major shortage of accountants in this country.
It’s interesting considering that at the end of last year, an accounting startup called Bench unexpectedly shut down a few days later before the company was acquired by a company called Employer.com. Many people can argue what went wrong with the bench, but what happened there doesn’t seem to affect your overall view of the whole space.
It’s interesting. Just as there were a lot of people working in accounting, I think the bench is not an accounting firm that supports ventures, but a truly accounting firm. And the problem with that is that it’s really hard to really expand to build and continue growing at venture scale. And, in the end, you’ve probably heard it was like a customer cut the corner. They had a lot of challenges as things didn’t actually go as people wanted.
Recently, the dominant big news has been Deepseek. It was everywhere. Everyone was talking about it, the open seemed crazy. What do you think – is Deepsake really this big threat or is it just a hype?
There are many things to unpack within DeepSeek. One is from China. The other is open source, and the other seems to be done very cheaply.
I think we have always believed that the cost of inference, and the cost of modeling these days would decrease. But I think the launch of Deepseek helped cost significantly lower. And now there’s a bit of a price war at the basic model level. This is great for us, which is based on AI. That’s incredible.
What about hype around AI in general?
There are so many companies that sell us the same way they sell you, they are AI companies and you’re looking at them, nothing about AI or almost nothing about them They say there is no. I don’t think there are many companies that are actually AI companies. And while we see great value from AI, I think there are many more companies that are not “AI companies.” Invest in the entire spectrum. I think there is this perception that you need to be an AI company to get attention. And I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s important to be honest about who you are and what you are doing.
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