I write my own tweets. politically centrist, abundance minded. Work: @btv_vc, leading pre/seed rounds in fintech & vertical AI

San Francisco, CA
Joined May 2007
Love this woman
It takes an inordinate amount of wit and charm to best Conan O’Brien in a riff-off. The most an average comedian or host can hope for is not to embarrass themselves trying, which is largely how Kareem Rahma fared in a recent episode of his popular social-media series, Subway Takes. But toward the end of the interview, Rahma and O’Brien were shown up by a stranger named Debbie Shields who just so happened to be commuting on their train. The 68-year old native New Yorker didn’t know what ‘SubwayTakes’ was, or that she was about to get pulled into a viral improvisational comedy bit. But thanks to a childhood spent performing in church and experience hosting comedy and karaoke nights, she says her instincts kicked in immediately. This 'SubwayTakes' appearance isn’t even the first time she has been put on the spot by someone with a huge comedy platform. Shields shares which comedian once pulled her onstage at Barclays Center, how she’s handling her virality, and whether she’d be interested in hosting a show of her own: nymag.visitlink.me/Tr0FRD
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Wild story: Whop’s founders met in a Facebook sneaker-reselling group at 13. They built a marketplace for bots that sniped limited-edition sneakers, raised seed funding at a $3M valuation in 2021 (@justinmateen), then expanded into a creator platform. Now worth $5.1B!
Whop has raised $200M in Series D funding at a $5.1B valuation, backed by @sequoia and @shopify. It really feels like we are barely touching the tip of the iceberg in a market larger than anyone can imagine. We first launched Whop as a better way for us to sell sneaker bots, one of the most niche types of desktop software out there. Total TAM? Probably $20,000 per day. Who cares, tiny market. But, what people discounted is the idea that there were actually 70,000 other markets exactly like that one. Beyond the investment itself, I am especially excited to welcome legendary silicon valley investor @dougleone to our board of directors. Doug and the sequoia team are nothing but a brilliant, resourceful, and principled group of people. My co-founder Cameron and I started building on Shopify when we were 13 years old. Shopify is one of the most impactful all-in-one cloud ecosystems ever created; @tobi has pioneered modern entrepreneurship the way we know it and we are thrilled to have him in our corner. We have a tenet at Whop to be the dumbest in the room and I am very grateful that this has recently become a lot easier. We are focused on markets, scale economies, and progressive media. If that is up your alley, please message me directly. The $200M raised will support our expansion as we build economic infrastructure for the next century, continuing on our mission of delivering everyone an income.
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Ok, who sent me this in the mail and was it intended to be a Halloween costume?
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Sheel Mohnot retweeted
Replying to @Jason
We should make the essentials of life cheaper rather than continually trying to subsidize people's ability to afford expensive things. you have good goals but some bad methods to achieve them imo 1) We've discussed this before - raising the minimum wage sounds good, but it makes it more expensive to hire less experienced workers, shutting them out of the labor market. We should want wages to rise because employers are competing for workers, not because the government mandates it. 2) Agree on ending wars! The Iran war did accomplish its main objective - to get people to stop talking about the Epstein files 3) Why subsidize trade school loans at 1% for 30 years? Haven't we seen what easy government financing has done to college tuition? We should reduce licensing requirements, encourage apprenticeships, and make it easier for people to enter the trades. 4) We need way more housing. But let's start by making it easy and legal to build! Eliminate restrictive zoning, streamline permitting, and remove unnecessary building requirements 5) no chance Trump does anything like that but I like the push lol broadly we should be thinking about how to make things more affordable rather than how to help people afford expensive things... imagine how much better off Americans would be if housing, education, healthcare, and energy were dramatically cheaper. We don't need to continually increase subsidies and mandates to make life affordable, we just need to remove barriers that make everything cost so much!
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crazy to think ab how quickly agent land has unfolded all these launches in last ~10 wks > Grok @bot 8/11 > @instinct 8/26 > @Muse 9/8 > Dots by @OpenAI 9/29 > Duet by @AnthropicAI 10/21
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ask + u shall receive @pitdesi @harvey still has ~2x the ARR + ~1.8x the val but @WeAreLegora pricier on a multiple basis (~44x vs ~39x)
You gonna make a table with revenues and valuations comparing Harvey and legora?
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Really good review of the iPhone Duo. I’m getting one, but the camera gives me pause.
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Kind of cool: I asked chatgpt for a breathing exercise and it automatically made a guided breathing animation to follow
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Our future governor celebrates “100% affordable housing.” But building costs here are ~$1M per 854sf apartment, not exactly affordable! But- 93% is paid for by taxpayers, making it extremely affordable for the 1/70 who literally win the lottery but expensive for everyone else
We’re working to solve California’s housing crisis. It was a pleasure to join Assemblymember @BuffyWicks, labor, local elected officials, and community members who are turning this site in El Cerrito into housing: public land next to a BART station, a 100% affordable building, homes built in a factory, and union labor on the job. It’s the first phase of a plan to turn BART parking lots into 743 homes. This is what building housing the right way looks like. Every Californian deserves a home they can afford, close to where they work.
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apparently @Muse now at 10.2M US downloads in 40 days per @SensorTower via @TechCrunch (10.9M incl. CAN) --> only the 12th app ever to do that - last one was Threads in ‘23 > DAUs hit 2.5M on Oct 16, up 15% WoW (was 1M+ as of 3 wks ago) > 30% D7 / 23% D14 retention (vs. 19% / 16% avg for ChatGPT, Claude + Grok) > ChatGPT had 3.7M US downloads in its first 40 days, Grok 500K, Claude 200K > #1 on the App Store every day but one since launch a lot of this is bought --> Meta put 39% of its total ad spend behind Muse in Oct (up from 23% in Sept) techcrunch.com/2026/10/20/me…
Missed this yday - @Muse is 3 wks old & already has 3M+ people prompting it every week (4M+ weekly users total, 1M+ daily) per @theinformation - Launched Sept 8, still only live in US + Canada - 5M US downloads in 22 days (per @SensorTower) - #1 free app on the US App Store since Sept 18 Distribution, distribution, distribution! Obvi still super early. Real test is retention + what usage looks like once the initial curiosity wears off and the low hanging fruit use cases (negotiating bills, canceling subs, etc.) get used up theinformation.com/briefings…
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Interesting that OpenAI still uses Qualtrics for surveys Its a bad implementation too, popped up in chat after I asked a question (interrupting flow) then took me to a random-looking website.
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Trevor Milton’s pardon by Trump is a stain on our nation. Anyone ordering this plane deserves the vaporware they will get.
Trevor Milton pricing the Syberjet SJ36 at $14M doing NY to LA nonstop with a projected operating cost of $30,000. A light jet, but at midsize performance.
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Economists estimate that Prop 40 (California billionaire tax) would COST Californians $39B! It raises $30B one time. But billionaires who move away stop paying state income tax, and that adds up to ~$70B in lost revenue.
California's Billionaire Tax Act would collect roughly $30 billion. Accounting for lost income taxes from departures, the mean Net Present Value is negative $39 billion, from Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh nber.org/papers/w35899
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Prediction markets believe that it is not likely to go into effect
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Y Combinator was a category on Jeopardy! last week.
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Din Tai Fung is the only restaurant in Vegas that’s as good as its locations elsewhere.
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Also we now have a good amt of data from biz banking platform funding rounds this yr re: how they are valued! A few obs: > don't forget @tryramp is actually an AI lab (hence the val premium) > @mercury seems like best value on the board at 8x given 4 yrs of profitability, most customers, + furthest ahead in the charter race (expect bank to be live next yr) > based on rev per customer, seems like @slashapp + @FlexSuperApp having success going after high-spend customers > @meow just raised a $31.6M series B led by @Stifel but couldn’t find any data points on the scale of the biz other than the fact that it’s been profitable since ‘24 exit math check: @CapitalOne paid ~7.5x for @brexHQ ($5.15B on ~$700M rev growing 40% YoY)
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