Sheel Mohnot, a venture capitalist with a $320 million fund and known for his work with Thistle, shares his insights on lucrative business ideas. He discusses creating affinity-based retirement homes that cater to shared lifestyles and a Yelp-style platform for professional services. Sheel also reveals unique concepts like a school for AI tools and an outsourced pizza service. Alongside these ideas, he reflects on his entrepreneurial journey and the importance of adaptability and creativity in business.

Ever wonder who owns all the internet domains like .com, .co, all the way to goofy domain names like .george and .plumbing? Well it turns out, many of these are owned by billionaires & big companies. Our hero today - Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi) created an online auction site (like Ebay, but instead of selling beanie babies, he auctions off internet real estate). He has hosted $100M+ worth of auctions, keeping a 4% cut for himself along the way. Hear how he found this wacky niche, got the auction platform off the ground - and how he went from living on $1/day in India to becoming a self-made millionaire. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sheel Mohnot is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Better Tomorrow Ventures, a $225M fund that leads rounds in pre-seed and seed-stage fintech companies globally. Sheel and Jake (his co-founder) invested for many years together before founding BTV and wrote checks into Mercury, Flexport, Ramp, and Hippo Insurance to name a few. As for Sheel, before BTV he ran 500 Fintech for close to 7 years, and before that was a founder, founding two companies, both of which were acquired. In Today's Episode with Sheel Mohnot We Discuss: 1. VC Needs to Change: Why does Sheel believe that VCs should have smaller funds? What are the biggest misalignments between founders and VCs today? What are the biggest points of friction between VCs and their LPs today? 2. VC in 10 Years Time: Who are going to be the winners in venture in 10 years time? Who are going to be the losers? Will micro-funds be bigger or smaller as a segment of the ecosystem? Will solo-GPs be bigger or smaller? Were they a zero-interest rate phenomenon? 3. The Errors of a Bull Market: What does Sheel believe are the single biggest mistakes made by VCs between 2020-2022? Did Sheel take liquidity off the table in the last few years? What have been some of his biggest lessons on when to sell? How does Sheel evaluate the flood of capital into emerging markets in the bull market? What happens now? Fintech is also experiencing the same challenging time, how does Sheel assess what is happening in the fintech financing market today? 4. Building a Fund: Lessons, Mistakes and Advice Scaling to $225M: What are the single biggest mistakes Sheel and Jake have made in the fun scaling? How has it impacted their mindset? What does Sheel know now about fund management that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What advice does Sheel give to emerging managers today, raising their first and second funds?

Jake Gibson, co-founder of NerdWallet, and Sheel Mohnot, founder of FeeFighter, discuss fintech trends. They touch on starting companies during the 2008 crisis, SEO strategies, launching Better Tomorrow Ventures, pandemic-induced fintech surge, embedded fintech future, and changing bank profit pools. They also share their nominees for best operators and investors.

Jake Gibson is the co-founder of NerdWallet & Founding Partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures, a $75mil venture fund, investing in the future of Fintech alongside Sheel Mohnot. He's been involved in fintech for over a decade. Prior to NerdWallet, he studied math and quantitative finance at MIT and traded interest rate derivatives at JPMorgan. Let us know what you think on Twitter: @bzaidi & @iamjakestream Full video with timestamps on YouTube: https://youtu.be/s-Tcuootl7s In this conversation we discuss: NerdWallet's business model + growing to a $500mil+ valuation the transition from founder to investor + the 80/20 of investing mental models to figure out your next step why "everything is fintech" + examples of this thesis DeFi, NFTs, stock market highs & ideas from a global fintech market Timestamps: 00:00:00 Preview 00:02:20 Intro To Jake + Nerdwallet 00:06:57 Nerdwallet Deep Dive + $500mil Valuation 00:15:02 Opportunity: Nerdwallet Model In Other Verticals 00:18:40 Audience First Business in 2021 00:22:24 Trend: Audience Business Selling To Software Companies 00:26:09 Founder To Investor 00:31:12 Mental Model For Thinking About Next Step 00:35:29 "I want to be rich" - more context 00:39:48 Finding Motivation In Struggles 00:42:43 Role of Luck, Golden Handcuffs + Lifestyle Creep 00:48:51 80/20 of investing 00:51:31 "Everything Is Fintech" - Raising A $75mil Fund 00:56:04 Starting A Neo Bank 00:57:48 Fintech Opportunity In Ridesharing, Tesla & Airbnb 01:02:37 Facebook + Whatsapp Payments 01:03:06 Asia Market + WeChat Model 01:05:24 Problem vs Product…Verb vs Noun 01:10:54 Jake's Take on DeFi 01:16:40 NFTs + NBA Top Shots 01:20:59 Tesla's Balance Sheet 01:23:00 Elon + Chamath: Meme Masters 01:23:19 Global Market Ideas 01:29:09 Why Do We Have Stock Market Highs? 01:31:54 Investing Advice To A 25yr Old