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Deferred's Judd Schoenholtz on Scaling, Velocity as a Moat, and more Startup Truths for Today’s Founders
Why Deferred Exists: Judd explains how he discovered the world of 1031 exchanges and why he and his co-founders saw an opportunity to modernize it.
Flipping the Revenue Model: Deferred chose a no-fee approach, shaking up the standard where legacy intermediaries charged fees and quietly profited on customer funds.
Building with Three Co-Founders: Hear how the trio now divides responsibilities. Each operates with autonomy in their lane, but with collaboration as a force multiplier rather than a bottleneck.
Startup Truths: Why questions centered heavily on acquisitions and exits, despite them being only a small part of startup life. Judd talks about how ironic this is, since acquisitions happen late and often involve stress, not just success stories.
Lessons from Exits: He unpacks why founders should not sell too quickly and why some sales are necessary or strategic, but the mindset should always be to continue the grinding.
Templates Over Shortcuts: Learn why there are no tricks or hacks to building a company and why Judd is in favor of structured processes that save time and drive decision-making.
Corporate VCs and Strategic Capital: Explore the pros and cons of corporate venture capital. Hear why, although today’s terms are cleaner, founders must time it carefully, tie investments to commercial relationships, and ensure rights do not restrict future options.
Evolving Capital Markets: How the funding environment has transitioned into smaller early rounds, larger late-stage bets, and changing revenue expectations, with AI and fintech sometimes raising earlier on technical merit.
Velocity as Moat: Reasons for Deferred’s approach to defensibility, which is built on speed and depth of customer understanding, and how the company creates a product experience and efficiency that are hard for others to replicate.
Scaling Growth: How Deferred provides commercial brokers with a scalable channel by running experiments to test growth strategies. He also breaks down why “peanut-buttering” efforts across too many marketing channels is a bad approach.
Choosing Design Partners: The best design partners are not always the ones that look optimal on paper. They explain why partners who are collaborative, responsive, and willing to provide valuable feedback should be prioritized.
Advice for Founders: Takeaways on building through rapid shifts and why founders should not chase shortcuts. Remember that companies usually fail by giving up, not because of competition.
QUOTES
“[The co-founders] all kind of have our own lanes, and what that does is allows us to go as fast as possible – and be incredibly productive.”
“There really are no hacks [for building a business]. You can’t really shortcut doing hard work and getting better at things over time.”
“Don’t try to re-invent the wheel. Follow best practices and try to create templates for these different things around recruiting and fundraising. You want to live your day with an open schedule and try to focus on the things that matter.”
“Make sure that the [marketing channel that] you go one-hundred percent in on is as scalable as you need it to be.”
“The ability to know your customer and build for them quickly is a differentiator against the pace of everything else changing.”
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Deferred
Judd Schoenholtz on LinkedIn
Arteen Arabshahi on LinkedIn
Fika Ventures
Subscribe to Fika’s Newsletter to receive Pour Over Episodes
You’ve been listening to “Pour Over” presented by Fika Ventures. Fika is an LA-based early stage venture fund investing in b2b companies across North America. If you enjoyed this podcast and have suggestions for future guests, or general thoughts and feedback, feel free to email us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening.
View all episodes
By Fika VenturesWhy Deferred Exists: Judd explains how he discovered the world of 1031 exchanges and why he and his co-founders saw an opportunity to modernize it.
Flipping the Revenue Model: Deferred chose a no-fee approach, shaking up the standard where legacy intermediaries charged fees and quietly profited on customer funds.
Building with Three Co-Founders: Hear how the trio now divides responsibilities. Each operates with autonomy in their lane, but with collaboration as a force multiplier rather than a bottleneck.
Startup Truths: Why questions centered heavily on acquisitions and exits, despite them being only a small part of startup life. Judd talks about how ironic this is, since acquisitions happen late and often involve stress, not just success stories.
Lessons from Exits: He unpacks why founders should not sell too quickly and why some sales are necessary or strategic, but the mindset should always be to continue the grinding.
Templates Over Shortcuts: Learn why there are no tricks or hacks to building a company and why Judd is in favor of structured processes that save time and drive decision-making.
Corporate VCs and Strategic Capital: Explore the pros and cons of corporate venture capital. Hear why, although today’s terms are cleaner, founders must time it carefully, tie investments to commercial relationships, and ensure rights do not restrict future options.
Evolving Capital Markets: How the funding environment has transitioned into smaller early rounds, larger late-stage bets, and changing revenue expectations, with AI and fintech sometimes raising earlier on technical merit.
Velocity as Moat: Reasons for Deferred’s approach to defensibility, which is built on speed and depth of customer understanding, and how the company creates a product experience and efficiency that are hard for others to replicate.
Scaling Growth: How Deferred provides commercial brokers with a scalable channel by running experiments to test growth strategies. He also breaks down why “peanut-buttering” efforts across too many marketing channels is a bad approach.
Choosing Design Partners: The best design partners are not always the ones that look optimal on paper. They explain why partners who are collaborative, responsive, and willing to provide valuable feedback should be prioritized.
Advice for Founders: Takeaways on building through rapid shifts and why founders should not chase shortcuts. Remember that companies usually fail by giving up, not because of competition.
QUOTES
“[The co-founders] all kind of have our own lanes, and what that does is allows us to go as fast as possible – and be incredibly productive.”
“There really are no hacks [for building a business]. You can’t really shortcut doing hard work and getting better at things over time.”
“Don’t try to re-invent the wheel. Follow best practices and try to create templates for these different things around recruiting and fundraising. You want to live your day with an open schedule and try to focus on the things that matter.”
“Make sure that the [marketing channel that] you go one-hundred percent in on is as scalable as you need it to be.”
“The ability to know your customer and build for them quickly is a differentiator against the pace of everything else changing.”
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Deferred
Judd Schoenholtz on LinkedIn
Arteen Arabshahi on LinkedIn
Fika Ventures
Subscribe to Fika’s Newsletter to receive Pour Over Episodes
You’ve been listening to “Pour Over” presented by Fika Ventures. Fika is an LA-based early stage venture fund investing in b2b companies across North America. If you enjoyed this podcast and have suggestions for future guests, or general thoughts and feedback, feel free to email us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening.