Notes from Sheel’s presentation:
- Sheel co-founded Better Tomorrow Ventures with Jake Gibson, co-founder of Nerdwallet, which IPO’d in 2021.
- BTV is an extension of your founding team, becoming team members of your founding team.
- They have $300M AUM, their seed fund is $150M, and they write $500k - $4M checks.
- They’re doubling down on pre-seed.
- They’ve created an accelerator in San Fransisco called The Mint. They only take 7 companies and provide access to A list mentors.
- BTV invests globally, and 40% of portfolio companies are in the US.
- With a focus on fintech, BTV believes we’re moving past vanilla fintech. Many fintech companies that go after consumers have high CAC and are balance sheet heavy businesses. BTV thinks “vanilla” fintech products are not differentiated enough.
- Fintech is not dead. They’re more excited bout fintech than ever. They think a lot about embedded fintech, which touches exchange of value (commerce). “If you use a piece of software to run your business, it should also run your finance.”
- BTV is also interested in Global trade. Carriers have a long tail. There are many banks, brokers, and fixers in the $32T industry of trade finance. Distribution will define the disruptor here.
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