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Published: Jan. 11, 2023, 6:44 p.m.

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Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We are officially 100 episodes in!

For our 100th episode, we are joined by the founders of Better Tomorrow Ventures, also known as BTV, Jake Gibson and Sheel Mohnot. BTV is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2019. BTV focuses on early investing in FinTech companies, and has $300M+ in AUM. Jake and Sheel initially met at 500 startups, where Sheel worked. They are both seasoned fintech founders and angel investors: Sheel built and sold two fintech companies before starting the 500 Fintech accelerator, and Jake co-founded NerdWallet (now publicly traded).

About Jake Gibson:Jake Gibson is a founding partner of Better Tomorrow Ventures. He has been involved in FinTech for over a decade \\u2014 he started his journey as one of the co-founders of NerdWallet before becoming an angel investor. Today, he is a Founding Partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV). Prior to NerdWallet, Jake studied math and quantitative finance at MIT and traded interest rate derivatives at JPMorgan.

About Sheel Mohnot:Sheel Mohnot is a founding partner of Better Tomorrow Ventures. Before BTV, Sheel was a Partner at 500 Startups, running the 500 FinTech Fund and the FinTech track within the San Francisco Accelerator program. His recent startup experience includes 2 successful FinTech exits \\u2013 a payments company and a high-stakes auction company. He also created and hosted a podcast called The Pitch.

He formerly worked as a financial services consultant at BCG and did Microfinance work at the non-profit Kiva. Sheel holds an MBA from the University of Michigan and a BS from Carnegie Mellon.\\xa0

In this episode we discuss:

(02:24)\\xa0 BTV\\u2019s origin story (06:27)\\xa0 Handling their first raise at the beginning of the pandemic(11:28)\\xa0 How their fund construction remained the same despite market conditions(17:27)\\xa0 Surprises during their first fundraise(19:29)\\xa0 How Sheel and Jake view fund construction and ownership targets(24:18)\\xa0 The shift in the market from rewarding Beta to rewarding Alpha(27:55)\\xa0 How founders are reacting to market conditions(29:28)\\xa0 What they are seeing in the Series A markets today(32:19)\\xa0 How VC\\u2019s dry powder will actually get deployed(34:53)\\xa0 Making sense of the market segments in 2023(37:53)\\xa0 Why FinTech is still in the early-stages even though it has been heavily invested in(42:15)\\xa0 Non-obvious things that it takes to run a successful firm(45:17)\\xa0 Things they would have done differently at the start of their firm

I\\u2019d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Jake and Sheel. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you\\u2019d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you\\u2019d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com'