MoneyNeverSleeps

Lee Gray is the co-founder and CEO of SonX, a community platform that allows superfans to subscribe to their favorite musicians via a monthly membership fee unlocking fan-only ticketing, exclusive audio content, and digital and physical collectibles. SonX is also one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator class of 2023.

In this episode, Lee and Pete Townsend dig into why it made so much sense for Lee to launch SonX alongside his co-founder Lewis Donovan, some of the ins and outs of the music industry that point to the need for SonX, Lee’s longer-term vision for SonX, and the core challenge of uniting musicians and their superfans.

LINKS:

Learn more about SonX

Connect with Lee Gray on Instagram or email

Follow SonX on Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘Payday’ by Doja Cat

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Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Katerina Bohle Carbonell is the co-lead of TogetherCrew, one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator. Some web3 communities fall apart under pressure, others come together stronger. TogetherCrew exists to help build and grow communities by ensuring members and stakeholders create together.  

Katerina’s life’s work goes broad and deep on how members of teams and communities attract, engage and retain new contributors, and how people collaborate and co-create within communities - collectively known as ‘network science’.  With the advent of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) in the last few years and the massive opportunity to apply network science to web3 communities, Katerina joined up with Daniel Ospina and Ashish Gangrade to co-lead TogetherCrew in 2022.

Katerina and Pete Townsend dig into how her life’s work led her to TogetherCrew, what TogetherCrew is doing right now, the longer-term vision for TogetherCrew when virtual organizations become the norm, the challenges that Katerina expects they’ll face on the way there.

LINKS:

Learn more about TogetherCrew

Connect with Katerina Bohle Carbonell on Twitter

Follow TogetherCrew on Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘One Tribe’ by Black Eyed Peas

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Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Jesse Phillips is the co-founder and CEO of TrustWare, one of the 12 founding teams forming the Techstars Web3 accelerator.  Jesse and Pete Townsend dig into how Jesse got into crypto, the TrustWare vision he formed with co-founder Jonathan Frazier, adjusting to some of the crypto curveballs the world is throwing at TrustWare, and how life experiences are informing the building and scaling of TrustWare.

TrustWare is a secure, recoverable, non-custodial crypto vault that connects users in a social network for sharing value. Jesse is a seasoned entrepreneur and deep thinker in the blockchain space, who is on a mission to revolutionize the way we handle digital assets and payments. With a deep understanding of decentralized technologies and their potential to empower individuals and communities, Jesse is dedicated to creating secure and democratic solutions for the future of finance and security.

LINKS

Learn more about TrustWare

Connect with Jesse Phillips on LinkedIn or by email

Follow Trustware on LinkedIn and Twitter

Episode title inspired by ‘I Left My Wallet in El Segundo’ by A Tribe Called Quest

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Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

This episode features a rundown of the 12 web3 founding teams that form the Techstars Web3 class of 2023, along with an intro to each of their CEOs. 

Builders gotta build, and build better.

That was the Techstars Web3 rallying cry when Pete Townsend and Hugh McGirr opened up applications for the Techstars Web3 2023 cohort in November 2022, as finding those building for the long-term - rather than chasing token markets - was the priority.  

Each one of these 12 founding teams embody web3 in their own way, whether they’re building web3 companies, communities, or economies. Techstars found these founding teams all over the world from Taiwan to the West Coast of the US, and they’re building web3 infrastructure, ‘DeFi Mullets’, DAO tooling, and creator ecosystems.

LINKS

Learn more about the Techstars Web3 Class of 2023 and connect with each team here

Follow Techstars Web3 on LinkedIn and Twitter

Episode title inspired by World Class by Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa

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Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Patrick Pinschmidt is a General Partner and Co-Founder at MiddleGame Ventures, a financial technology venture capital fund focused on early-stage investments in Europe.

In this episode, Patrick riffs with Pete Townsend on the life experiences that delivered him to venture capital and what Patrick looks for in fintech founders in the context of MiddleGame Ventures’ Irish seed fund. Patrick and Pete also dive into Patrick’s lessons learned as an investor, investing in lines not dots, and the human focus of early-stage investing.

LINKS:

Learn more about MiddleGame Ventures on their website

Follow Patrick Pinschmidt on LinkedIn and Twitter

Episode title inspired by In the Middle by G-Eazy

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Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend take a look at the aftermath of the American Bankpocalypse with contrasting views on bitcoin as a safe haven, and how a potential outcome of Grayscale’s lawsuit of the SEC may be opening the floodgates of crypto into institutional finance.  Eoin and Pete also dig into the $600mn raise by open-banking-meets-AI startup Abound, and how a new EU regulatory framework around AI may slow down not only Abound’s AI-powered consumer lending platform but also the overall commercial growth of AI applications in Europe.

STORIES COVERED:

Cryptoverse: Bitcoin passes the bank stress test (Reuters,21-Mar-23)

A Dozen Reasons Why the SEC Should Have Approved Grayscale's Spot Bitcoin ETF (CoinDesk, 7-Mar-23)

GBTC jumps this week while Grayscale CEO ‘encouraged’ after oral arguments in court battle with SEC over spot bitcoin ETF (Marketwatch, 15-Mar-23)

Open banking startup Abound nabs $601M to supercharge its AI-based consumer lending platform (TechCrunch, 6-Mar-23)

‘They’ll all go to the US’: What the EU’s AI law means for European startups (Sifted, 16-Mar-23)

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify 

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend take a quick look at the triumvirate of bank failures in the US with Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank before Eoin asks Pete about his lessons learned from seeing over 1,000 deals in the last 18 months, so they riff on easy-to-remember mental models, investing in lines not dots, building relationships with founders, how those relationships evolve post-investment, and the founder having the most credible voice in the room.

STORIES COVERED:

When it Rains it Pours (Liang Wu, Life in Color blog, 13-Mar-23)

Signals: "SVB, Signature, & Silvergate"-gate (Nik Milanovich, This Week in Fintech, 14-Mar-23)

Should I Keep My Money in Bitcoin or a Bank? (Daniel Kuhn, CoinDesk, 14-Mar-23)

HIGHLIGHTS:

1 - Have a framework - something that you know cold and can work into a conversation with founders, and repetition is really the only way to build the framework into a true mental model.  Pete uses the Techstars framework of ‘team, market, traction, idea’.

2 - Lines not dots - reaching an investment decision takes multiple interactions, multiple dots that connect to form a timeline.  That timeline either reaches a peak and plateaus at a deal or drops off quickly and then crashes and burns. You need to increase the depth and breadth of those lines by bringing in people you trust to talk to founders you’re interested in and gather more insights.

3 - After the investment - shifting the narrative post-investment is critical, especially when the founder is raising their first round. You need to teach founders not just how to fish, but also how to find the right pond.  That bank balance you funded as an investor will erode quickly if the founder doesn’t make it to their next round.

4 - The Founder’s voice - the founder has the most credible voice in the room, and they need to find their voice.  After your own investment, you can do all of the coaching you want, but you can’t pitch for the founder. All you can do is make thoughtful introductions and hope they put their best foot forward to raise their round.

LINKS:

Sam Hinkie on Invest Like the Best episode 204 and episode 88

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend look at the outsized gender gap in web3, then riff on the realities of venture capital ‘dry powder’ and crypto VCs, before stepping through what’s wrong with Revolut’s neo-profitability, an unfortunate slip switch for railsr and WhatsApp B2B payments in Brazil as a WeChat-like foundation.

STORIES COVERED:

The Web3 gender gap, by the numbers (Sifted, 6-Mar-23)

Crypto startups, beware the 'dry powder fallacy' (The Block, 6-Mar-23)

Revolut auditor flags concern about $576 mln of revenue in long-delayed 2021 accounts (Reuters, 1-Mar-23)

Railsr investors on brink of deal to salvage parts of payments group (Sky News, 7-Mar-23)

WhatsApp gets Brazilian green light for business payments (Finextra, 6-Mar-23)

WhatsApp Picks Brazil To Launch In-App Business Directory And Shopping (Forbes, 17-Nov-22)

UK BaaS platform Griffin becomes a bank (Finextra, 7-Mar-23)

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

This week, Eoin Fitzgerald and Pete Townsend look at the outsized gender gap in web3, then riff on the realities of venture capital ‘dry powder’ and crypto VCs, before stepping through what’s wrong with Revolut’s neo-profitability, an unfortunate slip switch for railsr and WhatsApp B2B payments in Brazil as a WeChat-like foundation.

STORIES COVERED:

The Web3 gender gap, by the numbers (Sifted, 6-Mar-23)

Crypto startups, beware the 'dry powder fallacy' (The Block, 6-Mar-23)

Revolut auditor flags concern about $576 mln of revenue in long-delayed 2021 accounts (Reuters, 1-Mar-23)

Railsr investors on brink of deal to salvage parts of payments group (Sky News, 7-Mar-23)

WhatsApp gets Brazilian green light for business payments (Finextra, 6-Mar-23)

WhatsApp Picks Brazil To Launch In-App Business Directory And Shopping (Forbes, 17-Nov-22)

UK BaaS platform Griffin becomes a bank (Finextra, 7-Mar-23)

LINKS:

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend

Liang Wu is the Co-founding Managing Partner at Eleven26 Capital, an early-stage VC fund investing in diverse founders on the evolving Internet across Web2 and Web3.

Liang is also a Web3 Research Fellow at Harvard Business School where he helps shape the Web3 curriculum by writing case studies on leading Web3 companies, as well as supporting community building and business development for Harvard’s Crypto Lab.

He writes regularly on his Life in Color blog where he explores the “Why” behind Web3. His professional background is a mix of startups, venture capital and management consulting, and Liang is also a mentor for the Techstars Web3 accelerator.

In this episode, Liang riffs with Pete Townsend on his one-year reflections on writing his weekly Life in Color blog, including thoughts on chasing his curiosity, growth and flywheels in content creation, shamelessness as a superpower, and how all of these experiences inform his journey as an investor.

LINKS

Subscribe to Liang Wu’s Life in Color blog

Follow Liang Wu on Twitter and LinkedIn

Episode title inspired by Word is Bond by Brand Nubian

Leave a review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Check out our MoneyNeverSleeps website and email us at [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter:  MoneyNeverSleeps  |  Eoin Fitzgerald  |  Pete Townsend