Matt Cohen: Ripple Ventures

In this episode, Joel Palathinkal and Matt Cohen (Ripple Ventures) explore Matt's journey from New York to venture capital, the emergence of Silicon Alley, and high-frequency trading. They discuss the evolution of electronic trading and its link to crypto markets. Matt shares his venture capital transition, emphasizing mission alignment in acquisitions. The conversation covers PR, marketing, and success stories of bootstrapped companies. Matt talks about founding Ripple Ventures, managing funds, and strategies for fundraising and performance reporting. The episode also touches on building LP relationships, personal branding, and offers advice for aspiring venture capitalists, including insights on the Ripple fellowship program.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Look.

(00:00):
I mean, 2009 hit everyone in the face, andpeople were just sort of thinking about what
was next.
And, you know, I was living in New York.
You know, Silicon Alley was just starting topoke its head out, and people were talking
about technology and startups.
And I was reading Business Insider likeeveryone else was on the trading desk when it
was quiet around lunchtime.
And I just sort of had this, like, epiphany of,there's gotta be something that happens before

(00:22):
a company goes public.
They just don't wake up one day and become apublic company.
There's a whole history of a company's creationand development and struggles and triumphs for
a decade or more before they became public.
And I wanted to learn about that.
So I moved back to Toronto, Canada in twentytwelve, thirteen.
And I had been introduced to two friends whowere interested as well in starting a tech

(00:43):
company.
Mhmm.
And so I said, you know what?
To The Investor, a podcast where I, JoelPalofinkle, your host, dives deep into the
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global
markets are driving capital allocation.

(01:06):
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
So we'll just go live here and we're ready togo.
So we've got Matt Cohen from Ripple Ventures.
He's just been a pretty good friend of mineover the last couple of years.
We've been just checking in periodically, butfinally got to get on the show, granted all

(01:28):
that's happened.
Just really happy to learn about everythingthat you're doing.
Just get an update on the personal front and inlife and just with the fund, I think you guys
are on fund two or three.
Guys are on so let's talk about that too.
But why don't we kick this off and start outwith just your background?

(01:50):
Where did you grow up?
What did your parents do?
And just talk us through your story of how younavigated into venture capital.
And then we'll just take it from there.
Yeah, absolutely happy to.
And thanks again for having me.
I had definitely no experience prior tostarting Ripple Ventures in venture private
equity.
I grew up in Toronto, Canada.
I went to school on the East Coast in Halifax,Nova Scotia, and I ended up getting my first

(02:13):
job while still in university working for RBCCapital Markets on Wall Street.
I was actually the first co op intern they everhired that was licensed to trade on the trading
desk in 02/2005.
And I started working for their merger, arbent,venture, and hedge fund team in 2007 full time.
And I moved down to New York right at thebeginning of the crisis.

(02:34):
So if you're familiar with the Flash Boys storywith Michael Lewis, the main character Brad
Katsuyama was head of the desk at the time.
Working in that environment was an incredibleeye opening experience for me, helping build
out their merger, I'm a venture of a team inNew York during the crisis.
I was really focused on the public capitalmarket side in my traditional finance role

(02:54):
there for about seven years.
I ended
up So to coming clarify, so you were on theFlash Boys team.
You actually No.
So there
was the electronic Brad was head of the desk,but he was running electronic.
I was on the cash equity side covering globalhedge funds on the event driven side.
But we both overlapped and he ran both of ourdesks at the time.
So, yeah, the photos are all from the sixtyminutes episodes and everything.
We're all about our our trading desk at thetime.

(03:17):
That's amazing.
Yeah.
I I didn't I didn't know that.
So, yeah.
So so tell us a little more about that.
Tell us about that environment, the ecosystemback then.
And obviously, there's been some cracking downon algorithmic trading and electronic trading.
So walk us through that.
John Foxworthy on the call might have a couple2¢ about that too, because he's been in hedge

(03:39):
fund trading and algorithmic data science andFinTech.
So he may chime in every once in a while, butyeah, let's hear about it.
Let's hear about that ecosystem when you weresurrounded with those people and kind of the
technology and tell us what happened when therewas a crackdown and the changes in regulation
and how the ecosystem has evolved.

(04:00):
Yeah.
So when I started off in the industry like02/2005, 02/2006, 02/2007, those were like the
heydays for hedge funds.
Those were when you were still getting paid 0point dollars a share commission and there was
widespread and the arbitrage world onconvertible ARB and option trading and all
that.
Was good times.
And it all kind of came crashing down even kindof before the crisis when electronic trading

(04:21):
started coming to fruition.
And we're starting to see how there was a lotof, I'd say front running is what we called it,
but it really was just more faster pipesgetting into the action and clip clipping a lot
of the supply or the demand in certain tradingblocks.
And so what we were considered the blocktrading debts, that's where large institutions,
you know, we're talking hedge funds likeStephen Cohen, SAC Capital, Diamondback,

(04:44):
Citadel, DE Shaw, all these big largeinstitutional funds were really running the
show on all the fast moving stocks.
You know, this was even before all thecraziness we're having today with the tech
names and the IPOs and things like that.
You know, we had the the three par acquisitionthat got triple topped, you know, every single
week.
There was a new bid for the company.

(05:04):
Those are the things we were going through whenI was working on the desk.
And when Brad came around and started buildingout the Thor product, which eventually spun off
into the IX, we started to understand what wasreally going on.
He unveiled everything that was happeningbehind the scenes in the pipes, which for some
of the audience who doesn't know, highfrequency trading was basically people that
were building faster, shorter connections tothe data exchanges where all the supply and

(05:28):
demand was matching on the alternative tradingsystems, ATSs, so that they could out speed us
as traders plugging in through all thedifferent routers coming from our trading desk.
And it was quite eye opening, I have to say.
So we were the first ones to actually use thetechnology called Thor with the big hammer
trying to, you know, be a people of of thecommon folk.

(05:50):
And and what happened was, you know, basically,Brad said, look, this is a technology I wanna
take to build for everyone.
And RBC said, well, you can't kind of.
And eventually he said, okay, I'm gonna leaveand go build it myself.
And so we went out and started IX and that wasa huge exodus from like the electronic trading
team.
I was not a part of that team.
I worked on the cash equity trading desk, but Iwas exposed to all the different things that

(06:12):
hedge funds, long short funds and traditionalfundamental long only funds were doing in the
public markets.
And that's what formalized a lot of my riskappetite, my ability to understand how capital
is allocated, how stocks became more discussedand talked about.
So I learned a lot about the public side for along time and I had no clue how companies
became public.
And that's what led me into thinking aboutventure capital and private equity.

(06:35):
And I'll tell you about that afterwards.
Yeah.
I know that's really exciting and, you know,break down the hard line.
So where was the best connectivity?
Was it more, because I heard there's differentareas in Manhattan and even some areas in New
Jersey.
But the ideal fastest connection was somewherein FiDi or was it

(06:57):
No, it was actually Midtown Jersey.
It actually, yeah, it was in Jersey.
So there were some routers that were being putin Downtown New York.
And then the ones on the other side of theriver closer to the Jersey servers were the
fastest.
But, basically, Brad was stumbling onto thisproblem because he was one of his contacts, the

(07:18):
the Irish fellow that works with him now.
I forget his name right now.
Maybe it was Ian.
He was an old telecommunications guy, and hewas calling around asking people how much it
costs to lay fiber optic cables in in thesesort of rural areas around the Northeast
Corridor.
You were talking about Pennsylvania, NewJersey, New York, Upstate New York, and the the

(07:39):
numbers were pretty astronomical to lay fiberoptic cables.
Right?
You had to sometimes get easements onto theland and all this stuff, and it was made famous
in in a movie as well.
And when we started adding up how much it costto lie to lay fiber optic cables into the
servers, we're talking hundreds and hundreds ofmillions of dollars kinda x plus y equals
billions.

(07:59):
And so what they figured out was, wait asecond.
They must be making 10 x more on these frontrunning trades than they were in terms of
laying the fiber optic cables themselves.
So this must be a really big problem slashinvestment for these like quant trading firms
and things like that.
And so that's how sort of the problem bubbledup into like the media.
Yeah.

(08:19):
And then how has that evolved?
And I guess, how has that been regulated?
Because obviously there was a lot of crackdownsand just there was different evolutions of
what's happened.
So can you walk us through just what happenedsince then and how that market has changed?
I mean, look, Brad went out and did his ownthing at IEX.

(08:40):
I don't speak for the company.
I don't work for the So I'm not a spokesperson.
But I would say that the speed bump that hecreated where everybody comes into one central
exchange that gets held up and nobody has anadvantage.
Basically, he calls it the speed bump is whathe did to sort of self regulate the industry.
There still are ATSs out there, but the way hedid it was a bottoms up approach rather than a

(09:02):
top down regulatory approach.
And but what I mean by that is he went to thelargest institutional investors.
We're talking Capital Group, Fidelity, youknow, the T Rowe Price, all of those large
institutions and said, look, you are gettingscrewed here.
It's easy.
The data is explaining how you're gettingscrewed.
Route your orders through us.
You know, we'll make money off that, but you'realso not gonna get screwed by people going

(09:25):
around you into other ATSs.
And so that's how he sort of figured out a wayto self regulate the industry by getting the
people who were the institutional, the largesellers and buyers of stocks to give their
orders or force their orders to go to an IEXwith a speed bump rather than to all the other
ATSs that brokerage firms were just gettingbetter rebates on and sending their orders to

(09:47):
their anyways.
And what's the utility of the speed bump?
And part of me if this is new to me, does thatjust help to just route the traffic better?
So things don't just get overly saturated whenthe trades are happening?
Basically, I mean, think about it in the realworld.
Right?
If everyone can drive, if there's a speed limitof 40 kilometers on a side street and everyone

(10:08):
can go anywhere from 20 to a 100, what's thespeed?
What's the reason for having a 40 kilometerspeed limit?
Right?
They're not gonna enforce it.
So the speed bump forces everyone to slow downas soon as an order comes in and then you come
over the hump at the same speed.
Everyone has to.
And so that's what the speed bump is doing.
And what he essentially is saying is whenorders come in, we don't allow other orders to

(10:30):
go around us or go around the speed bump inorder to pick up if it's a buy order supply
from somebody else.
Because what would happen, just so youunderstand from our perspective as traders, if
I had a 100,000 shares to buy and I see 10,000shares on the offer as an aggregate on my depth
display of orders, I would go out and buy10,000 thinking I see it there, but I only get

(10:54):
filled on 9,200 shares.
So 800 shares just disappear like that.
Where did they go?
They didn't get pulled off the market.
Somebody else went to the other exchanges thatthose were being listed on and grabbed them
before my computers were fast enough to grabthem.
Got it.
That's interesting.
And then how did that get impacted or how didthat change when crypto markets became more

(11:16):
prominent?
Were they using the same rails to tradecryptocurrencies or was that just a separate
No, that's separate. Rail
Rail or So talk to me about that because theycould have also done the same type of
electronic trading some of those strategieswith crypto, especially if it's a different
rail.
Right?
I mean, is a whole other beast.

(11:37):
It's a whole other conversation.
Self regulation is definitely not happening.
I don't even know how some of these exchanges Ithink it's just trading off their own books, to
be honest with you.
I think they aggregate a lot of the supply anddemand and then they are their own market
makers.
We're talking about like Coinbase and theGeminis and things like that.
Yeah.
I mean,
that's why decentralized exchanges in myopinion are probably the best things ever

(11:58):
invented to to kind of break apart from thecentralized exchanges.
But that's a whole other story andconversation.
No.
Totally fair.
No.
That's helpful.
And so so you're doing that.
It looks like that was the heyday when you werein there.
Tell us about just kind of your first stepsinto venture capital and your thought process.
Like what were you thinking about when you'rethinking about the private markets and was that

(12:21):
transition to kind of quickly step in?
Look, I mean 2009 hit everyone in the face andpeople were just sort of thinking about what
was next.
And I was living in New York, Silicon Alley wasjust starting to poke its head out and people
were talking about technology and startups.
And I was reading Business Insider likeeveryone else was on the trading desk when it
was quiet around lunchtime.
And I just sort of had this like epiphany oflike, there's gotta be something that happens

(12:46):
before a company goes public.
They just don't wake up one day and become apublic company.
There's a whole history of a company's creationand development and struggles and triumphs for
a decade or more before they became public.
And I wanted to learn about that.
So I moved back to Toronto, Canada in twentytwelve, thirteen.
And I had been introduced to two friends whowere interested as well in starting a tech

(13:07):
company.
And so I said, you know what?
I'll start the company with you.
The idea was pretty stupid at the time, but weended up coming up with a pretty logical idea
after a couple of pivots and iterations.
And that company ended up becoming calledTurnstile Solutions, which was a WiFi marketing
analytics tool to help brick and mortarretailers understand how to use their existing
WiFi networks better and for a moreadvantageous use case than just giving away

(13:31):
free WiFi with a free guest WiFi password tocreate a marketing loyalty and analytics
platform.
So for example, if you were to go intoStarbucks in New York City, sign in to the free
WiFi, Starbucks really doesn't get any valueout of that.
Right?
It's just click click your terms and agreementand that's it.
We decided to take that free WiFi and turn itinto a marketing loyalty and analytics tool by
signing in through your social authenticationapps, Twitter, Facebook, SMS, Google, whatever.

(13:55):
And then once you were opted into our globalnetwork, we could also start to retarget ads
and things like that.
And that was in 02/2012.
So that was my first forte into early stagetechnology.
I wrote the first check, fifty thousanddollars.
And we ended up building that company up to a50 person company, several million recurring
revenue.
Basically, you know, almost a bootstrapcompany.

(14:16):
We only raised Yeah.
A little bit of money from angels because theecosystem in Toronto was nothing at the time.
It was just angels and family offices.
And eventually we sold the business to Yelp in2017.
And that was a great outcome for us, about30,000,000 Canadian.
And I learned a lot through that experience.
It was what I would say my MBA into the earlystage venture ecosystem.

(14:36):
And it formalized a lot of the ideas I hadtowards building Ripple Ventures later on.
And those are the best type of businesses.
I mean, one of my favorite blog posts, I sharethis with some of the people in my community is
that one post by Jason Kallikanis, the Pegasusstartup.
So he talks about how like calm.com when heinvested, they were at like 10 ks a month.

(14:56):
And then he put in some money and then theyraised no money after that.
And they just took that money, reinvested intothe company focused on growth and they skipped
several rounds of dilution.
So I think having that more bootstrapped meansdue to just not having the means, the ecosystem
doesn't have frothy capital.

(15:17):
It just kind of forces you to be scrappy andbootstrap.
But in doing that, you skip several rounds ofdilution, which I think is super important.
Because you don't want to give up, every timeyou take funding, you're giving away a portion
of the company.
And I think that's brilliant, right?
Because when you go to the airports, when yougo to Starbucks, there's always that landing
page.
And I don't feel like it's really utilized,right?

(15:38):
Like, I mean, it's just kind of like some basicinformation, but if you could And I think it
was smart that you didn't even serve up ads,just force them to kind of authenticate.
So you get that data for retargeting, which Ithink is much more that you can capitalize on.
So I think that's brilliant.
And talk us through, this is an interestingfounder perspective.

(15:59):
So finding somebody to buy you out, this issomething that we don't ever really talk about.
So as a founder, how do you source people toacquire you?
Is it really just organically through theecosystem or is there a portal that you go to,
to say, look, these people are looking to buysomething or is it through VCs?

(16:20):
Guess how, if you're not allowed to say how itworked for you just in general, right?
What are some of the best practices with thefounders that you've spoken to as far as really
thinking about getting bought out?
Yeah.
And just to go back to sort of thisbootstrapping mentality that we had to go
through, that was out of, you know, necessity.
That's not how we wanted the business to go.
We pitched over 320 investors.
They all just said no.

(16:41):
And they were probably right.
You know, what we tell a lot of our foundersand a lot of the companies we work with, and I
have an my own podcast called Tank Talks thatyou can listen to.
We talk about this.
There's great businesses that are bad ventureinvestments and there are great venture
investments that are terrible businesses.
Right?
And so that's like the Uber model.
Everyone would have looked at Uber and saidthat is a terrible business, but a great

(17:02):
venture investment because the opportunity isso massive.
It just requires a ton of capital to capture itand you can lose at any moment.
So I don't actually blame the venture funds forpassing on our investment at Turnstell at the
time.
Mhmm.
It turned out to be a great angel return, butfrom a venture perspective, it wasn't.
And so that's totally understandable.
But in terms of like what we think about whenwe tell our founders, hey, are you you gonna

(17:24):
continue to raise money in dilution or are youat the end of the rope where you gotta go sell
yourself?
One thing to remember is you always wanna besold or you always wanna be bought, not sold.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Everyone knows that in this world.
And so what happened with Turnstile and whathappens with a lot of our companies is they end
up down this path of are you looking to be apartner, an investor, or an acquirer with all

(17:48):
the people in your ecosystem that you'reworking with?
So in in Tercel's case, we were in the marketworking with Cisco at the time.
One of the largest WiFi router manufacturersout there, obviously.
And so we were working with them.
Our VP of partnerships got invited to presentat the Cisco Worldwide Conference in San
Francisco up on stage.
Great presentation.

(18:08):
Afterwards, the Yelp team, was also in theindustry looking at sort of the Wi Fi marketing
space came up to the Cisco team and said, hey.
We'd like to meet that company, Turnstile, as apotential partnership.
So it started off naturally as a partnership.
And by the second meeting, once you had the VPof corporate development and a couple other
people at the table, you knew this was goingfrom partnership to, you know, m and a

(18:29):
conversation quite quickly.
So what we always tell our founders is never goin with the expectation you're going to sell
the company.
Always go in with, hey.
We wanna be a partner.
We want you to, you know, buy into our missionbecause mission alignment is very, very
important.
And then see where the conversation goes fromthere.
And I talked about this with the CEO of Termsalon the podcast.

(18:50):
How the the reason why the company was boughtwas because of how closely aligned the missions
were for both our companies.
Yeah.
Look, I think that messaging and just thatapproach to relationship building translates in
so many different ways.
I mean, you got fundraising, you got meetingLPs, just that consultative selling just goes
much more further.

(19:11):
Because it's really more of a collaborativeapproach and you're also trying to really solve
a problem and be their partner in the beginningto build that trust.
And then I think also just getting out thereand being part of the community.
So I think just the fact that you were thereand you guys have that presence there, I think
that also just helped people to even know aboutyou.

(19:31):
Tell me what you think about this.
I think there's decent companies that havereally great distribution and marketing that
end up doing better than possibly a productthat actually has a better product and a better
technology and more higher sophistication, butthey just don't really have the distribution or
the presence.
So I feel like the fact that all those seriesof events that worked out for you also was

(19:55):
because you were at the right place at theright time.
But there could have been some really crazycompany that takes the social media data and
does some prediction or something.
But nobody knows about them.
Oh, absolutely.
There was companies that were well more fundedthan us.
There was Purple Wi Fi and Zenreach.
Peter Thiel invested almost 100,000,000 in oneof them and they have not done very well.

(20:17):
Facebook was also going after us in theirBluetooth targeting as well with the Bluetooth
adapter.
So there's a lot of that.
I mean, was a great Twitter thread.
I can't remember who wrote it, but it was abouthow because of the PR and marketing the guy did
around his early stage venture, even thoughthey were not, like, the fastest growing or
they had the highest, you know, number ofsubscribers, he sold the company for a

(20:39):
100,000,000.
It was all because of the story building, thePR, and the marketing put behind it.
So we always tell our founders, like, one, ifyou're scared of PR and marketing, don't be.
Everyone is until you kinda cross the chasm anddo a little bit more of it.
And two, you know, staying at the top ofpeople's news feeds in life is really
important.
No matter if you have something like that youthink is valuable enough to be at the top of

(21:01):
the news feed, just staying up thereconsistently is really important.
And so we try to tell our founders we have a inhouse PR and marketing specialist that works
with our teams on that because we think it'svery important.
Yeah.
I know.
I totally agree.
And I going back to some of the outcomes,because I still think Turnstile, was the
company, right?
Correct.
Turnstile, think the outcome was a greatoutcome for the founders.

(21:24):
So I think a lot of these companies that havebootstrapped, just the outcome was really
amazing.
So I think it was like Plenty of The founderand if you look into Plenty of Fish, but the
Plenty of Fish.
Fish, the founder, I think it was just him andhe might've had some developers with him, but
he just built the company and then he sold itfor like 500,000,000 in one shot.

(21:44):
My other favorite one is another datingcompany, It's Grindr.
I actually met his name's Joel too, but I thinkI met him at a conference like several years
ago.
And I mean his app, I think it was like adollar to download the app.
So you get revenue per purchase.
And I think when he spoke, he said that helaunched the app for like $5.

(22:05):
He got some developers overseas to build theapp and he really just kind of bootstrapped.
Then I think just several years later, I thinkhe sold it to a Chinese investor like close to
$100,000,000 So, I just love those storieswhere the founder just really comes out and
they didn't really have to give too much oftheir company out because that's a true

(22:26):
business.
I feel like that resonates kinda with thecompany that you launched and had
a I great would say like, we all love thosestories, but those stories are a diamond are
very few to happen.
Like Oh, yeah.
And I think what I would tell people out thereis going the bootstrap route is great if you're
going to be willing to give up seven, ten yearsof your life of willing to like never feed your

(22:49):
family enough that you want to.
Checking the bank account every single week tomake sure you can meet cash flow.
Like it's a real grind, no pun intended, to getto that bootstrap exit, which is great when it
happens.
But there's also something to be said with, youknow, coming in and bringing in investors
who've set the puck higher, you're paid upcapital higher.
Meaning, they gotta work harder to get the thebusiness to the next level.

(23:10):
So there's this trade off.
Right?
And so we talk about it with our founders aswell who go from bootstrap to ripple backed and
then to that next level, you know, how theyhave to change their mindset and how they have
to work a little bit differently.
But, yeah, it's it's there's a lot morecompanies that don't make it through the valley
of death that are bootstrapped than the onesthat do.
And there's also just situations with what'sgoing on with your life too.
Right?

(23:30):
Like, I mean, I I don't have any regrets in mylife.
It would have been cool if I launched somethingentrepreneurial when I was like 13.
Because I'd have like ten years of runway tokind of fail several times and learn versus,
mean, of my favorite entrepreneurs areentrepreneurs that started when they were 70
years old.
So I went to Kentucky a few weeks ago andreally just studied the story of Colonel

(23:57):
Sanders.
He was like 70 years old and he had to startKFC.
I think he was in the military and he had tostart KFC because his four zero one ks or his
retirement account wasn't enough to live.
So he built KFC and then I think he exited in afew years later I think to Yum!

(24:17):
Brands or something like that.
So some large conglomerate bought him out.
So, it's just interesting looking at the oldschool legends starting those traditional
businesses.
But again, you need venture capital to scaleand get to venture scale and get those outsized
returns.
And that's probably something that you realizenow being on the investor side, really modeling

(24:42):
out, like how big can you go to return capitalto your LPs.
So let's talk about that.
So let's talk a little more about now Rippleand how you started that and the story behind
that and where you guys are now.
Yeah, absolutely.
So as I mentioned, we'd sold TurnStyle to Yelp.

(25:03):
It was a great outcome.
Prior to that though, when I officially leftCapital markets in 2015, I went to work for a
fintech company backed by Joe Lonsdale fromPalantir and PayPal and Formation eight.
And I worked in Boston for a couple of yearsselling enterprise software to the global banks
like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley.
That's where I learned about kind of enterprisesales and operating, and it was a great

(25:25):
experience.
But what I did is I spent a lot of my free timehanging around the MIT and Harvard incubators
and angel groups and a lot of the familyoffices in Boston and Cambridge starting to
understand how these ecosystems were beingdeveloped and funded.
And I ended up taking the capital I'd made fromthe sale of Turnstile.
Plus, I had been very fortunate to have a closefriend who is very early in the founding of

(25:45):
Ethereum, which was from Toronto.
So I got exposed to the crypto space in 2014,had some really good success there.
And I built out a pretty strong angelportfolio, which I called Ripple Ventures
because I realized that matt cohengmail dot comwas not gonna get through the firewalls at a
lot of these MIT startups.
And so I ended up launching Ripple Ventures.
And so a bunch of family offices from Boston,New York and Toronto recognized what I was

(26:08):
doing.
And they asked if they could sponsor me tolaunch the first fund in early twenty eighteen.
I put together the first Ripple Ventures fundin 2018 with about $10,000,000 focus was pretty
simple because we were nobodies.
We wanted to prove ourselves with hard work,hand to hand combat with a lot of the other
venture funds out there to win deals and alsowork with our companies every single day.

(26:29):
And so in order to do that, we took decentsized bets for early stage investments, either
pre revenue or just post revenue with half amillion to a million dollars buying 10 to 20%.
And we bought we invest in 10 companies.
I'll focus on b to b SaaS.
And in order to execute on our operator firstmodel, we ended up launching our own incubator
space in Downtown Toronto.

(26:50):
So the virtual background you see behind me,the tank, was actually the name of our physical
incubator space we created.
It was about 5,000 square feet, 50 desks.
I built every desk and chair by hand.
Nice.
Brought all of our companies in that were basedin Toronto to work alongside us day to day so
we could help them get through that valley ofdeath that most startups fail in.
So we put in a fractional CFO into everybusiness to take over bookkeeping and payroll

(27:12):
and budgeting and all that stuff.
We put in proper board cadence and reportingmetrics.
We put in HR and PR support and sales supportand all those types of things so that our
companies could really accelerate their growthto make it to that series a or beyond stage
quicker.
And so far, it's been very well received.
Our first fund is already at two x top 5%vintage for twenty eighteen funds.

(27:35):
We've had co investors come in and lead afterus like True Ventures, Felisys, Crosslink, Base
Ten, Amazon, Google, Kraft Ventures.
Some of the top firms out there in the valleyhave come in and follow our seed rounds or pre
seed round, has been amazing.
And so that's what we did in our first fund.
Yeah.
No, it's amazing.
And you make a good point because I work with alot of now emerging managers working on like

(28:00):
fun too.
And I would say it's really important to getsome type of attribution in the beginning.
So I think whatever it is, building an angelportfolio, doing some small investments, doing
some type of track record.
I think that's what you successfully did tokinda get to that fund one.
But then even with fund two, because you guysare on fund two now, right?
We actually are done investing in fund two.

(28:22):
Oh, sorry, we're done fundraising in fund two.
We're still investing and we're raising fundthree now.
Oh wow, yeah, it's exciting.
So, it's just really great.
And what are some of the biggest learnings thatyou've learned from fund one and then switching
from fund one to fund two?
What kind of changes did you have to make tothe storytelling?
Obviously you do have a track record, you dohave some high level stats to call out.

(28:47):
I always like to ask, what are some of the keystats that are important We to the got the DPI,
TVPI, but let's talk through that, like kind ofthe lessons learned and then just kind of how
you had to navigate your storytelling to get tothe next fund.
Yeah, so first off, we did not have anyinstitutional capital on our first fund and
that was on purpose.
We didn't want to, first we were a third of thecapital as the GP commitment on fund one.

(29:11):
So we put our money where our mouth was, and wewanted to prove that we actually had the
ability to compete in this very competitiveearly stage space and also get companies to
trust us to work with us throughout theirlife's journey.
And so we were overcommunicated with our LPsearly on, like monthly updates, really, really
detailed quarterly updates.
And I'm an LP and a bunch of other emergingmanager funds, and I have to say, I'm shocked

(29:32):
at some of the reporting that they get awaywith.
Like, not even, like, valuations on some of thecompanies, not even, like, ownership.
It's crazy.
Okay.
So we're very, very detailed in our updates,and we do that on purpose.
Maybe to our detriment one day, but I thinkit's really well worth the cause of what we're
trying to explain to people when we do.
The other thing is we focus on, you know,building that inner layer of trust with our

(29:53):
founders.
We think our founders are our clients in theshort term, and our LPs are our clients in the
long term.
Right?
Because your money is locked up for seven toten years.
Right?
So it's not like you can kinda come and go asyou please.
But our founders are the ones we need to focuson a lot of our time and success on.
If they're successful, then our LPs aresuccessful.
And so we spent a lot of time working with ourfounders.

(30:13):
We're 80% leaders in our fund one deals.
A 100% of our deals are being led by us in fundtwo.
You know, we averaged almost 10% ownership infund one with only a $10,000,000 fund, which is
pretty amazing.
That's pretty amazing.
And we've built an incredible community andplatform around our fund as well.
So we've got our Ripple X Fellowship Program,which is our diversity inclusion initiative for

(30:34):
university and college students across The USand Canada to teach them about venture capital,
about startups, about investing, due diligenceand all that.
And we're proud to have over two fifty studentscome through the program.
And it's a great deal sourcing opportunity forus, but also recruiting.
But some of the lessons that I've learned isnumber one, you have to be a part of the

(30:55):
company's journey early on and really behelpful to a point where, like, they're calling
you on Saturday night at midnight becausethey're panicked about something and they trust
you.
So I say, I'd rather you call me more with thebad news than the good news.
Yeah.
Most of the good news, I don't really actuallybelieve is really good news.
It's just a little bit of fluff.
But it's the bad news stuff that you come to mewith that we work through together that I know

(31:17):
you're gonna be the right CEO for the longterm.
So that's a lot of the stuff we look for.
I think from a storytelling aspect, thetransition from fund one to fund two was
interesting.
We were not looking to raise fund two untilprobably the 2020, but COVID sort of
accelerated everything for us.
And so in March 2020, when COVID was reallypicking up steam, some of our family office LPs

(31:40):
came to us and they said, hey, look, we lovewhat you're doing in fund one.
You're great at what you're doing.
You're creating great opportunities for us tolook at.
We think you should go out and raise a fund twoearlier than planned and we'll kick off the
fundraising process with these commitments.
So we ended up gathering about 5,000,000relatively quickly.
And then we closed off with the other 5,000,000over the next few months.
But we decided to shift gears a little bit andsay, of going after really early stage

(32:03):
companies, because those are very difficult,but then they take a lot of work.
Let's see if we can try to win deals in thissort of C plus to early series A stage, which
is very competitive.
But based on our founder stories and ourreferences, we'll see if we can win deals.
If we are successful, then we will be able togo back institutional community for fund three
and say, hey, look, we've done everything frompre c to series a and we're doing very well at

(32:25):
it and we're winning deals and leading them.
You should trust us with an institutional sizedfund for fund three.
And so what we did is we went out and foundcompanies actually doing $5,000,000 of ARR, way
more than what we typically see at the earlystage.
And we're buying five to seven and a halfpercent of them at, like, four to five times
revenue.
So everyone was just like, woah.
And there's a lot of dislocation in the market.
So we are coming in as, that bridge aroundinvestor.

(32:48):
The founders were very happy for us to jointheir boards and work with us.
And then all of a sudden, you know, the marketkinda shifted gears again.
And then we were getting series a rounds andseries, you know, b rounds getting done three
and six months later.
So fund two is already at 1.35 times MOIC.
Doing very well in a year.
So that was our strategy in fund two.

(33:08):
We've done five companies so far, but we'revery concentrated.
We believe in that approach.
We don't really believe in the spray and prayapproach.
And and yeah, we'll have a couple more bets andfun too, and then we're gonna go after the fun
three model.
The other thing I'll mention is we're not ahuge fan of reserves.
I don't think reserves are something that afund should, at our stage, focus on that much.

(33:32):
And the reason being is because number one, prorata is something that is earned, not written
into a legal contract, in my opinion.
Yep.
Two, if you have the ability to write follow onchecks, those should go to your LPs who wanna
write direct investments or SPVs because that'swhat LPs, in my opinion, should be focused on.
Make a commitment to the fund and then you getthe ability to build on positions in the

(33:54):
winners as the performance of those companiesstarts to accelerate.
And our family offices seem to love that.
Yeah.
I know that's really helpful.
And tell me a little bit about the performancereporting.
So don't have to name any names, but what weresome of the And I think that's a great practice
too.
I'm an LP in a couple of funds as well.
And I think there's just a great perspective tosee as an LP because at some point you never

(34:18):
know, right?
Like after fund five, you may just want to bean LP at some point, right?
To just have better diversification, who knows?
But it is a good practice to kind of be an LPand there's so many emerging managers now that
can bring you in at a smaller minimum.
But what are some of the things that youlearned when being an LP and what was missing?

(34:39):
And what should we think about when we'refundraising for Fund one, stats and things
should we call out?
And then how does that evolve in yourperspective on the institutional side when you
become more mature and you're looking at fundtwo and then fund three?
Yeah, mean, all starts from the very beginning.
When I was even an angel investing, I wouldwrite investment memos for myself when I made

(35:02):
investments so I can look back on what I wasdoing.
And I'm shocked to see some of the lack ofinvestment memos written on investments made in
companies.
I mean, it's literally just here's theTechCrunch article, we participate in the
round.
That's it.
So when we write our investment memos, they'revery lengthy.
We modeled them off a bit of the Bessemer modelwhere it's like a story of how we met the

(35:22):
founder, why we're focused on it, what we thinkthe future holds, and then all the financial
metrics and all that stuff as well.
So we're really focused on that.
We have a data room template that we've createdalong with our due diligence checklist that we
share with founders and go through themtogether as we're moving through the due
diligence process, which is really good andtransparent, which we love.
So I think that's important.

(35:42):
And then when we share the the news with ourLPs about the investment, we're very open and
transparent about everything.
So we understand, like, we share how much moneywe've invested, what our plans are for follow
ons and all these types of things.
So I think that's important for emergingmanagers to think about.
And then I also think like, I've written aboutthis on Twitter and a couple of blog posts, but

(36:03):
it's really important to understand what youknow, IRR means and why it's created.
It's not really relevant to venture in myopinion.
It's more related to real estate.
So don't try to, like, you know, gamify the theIRR number.
It's really about your TVPI and MOIC and RVPIif you want Mhmm.
Because that's where a lot of them, you know,kind of as Chris Dubois says, Moolo and Nakula.

(36:26):
Right?
Like, that's where the money's made.
And so getting you to DPI one is reallyimportant.
So I've seen, like, some fund managers send us,you know, an update and, like, yeah, we're up,
like, 10 x.
I'm like, how do you get 10 x?
10 x to what?
10 x to what?
Yeah.
Well, on the publicly reported valuation, I waslike, but that doesn't take into account any
dilution.
That doesn't take into account any ESOP.
Like, what is the fully diluted number?

(36:47):
So we have access to that because we're majorinvestors and everything.
Yeah.
And so we know our numbers are bang on.
Like, we know what the multiples are.
And so when an LP of mine came to me and said,hey.
It looks like I'm up about five x on this.
I'm like, well, you should go back and ask themwhat the price per share of this transaction
was that versus what you came in at on yoursafe note at 25 pre.

(37:09):
And he came back.
He's like, I'm up one and half times.
Yeah.
After he asked the question.
So for the audience, do you mind calling outthose stats and then just maybe unpacking what
they mean?
So you got the MOIC, the TVPI, you got the DPI.
So I think it'd be really valuable for some ofthe people in the audience here are aspiring
VCs and then some of them are actually emergingmanagers that have formed their fund.

(37:30):
And they're just like getting ready for fundone.
So I think this would be really valuable forthem if you don't mind doing a little bit of an
educational thing for them.
Yeah, absolutely.
And by the way, I actually decided early on tobuild an institutional style fund even when I
was not ready for
it Yeah.
By going out and getting a professional fundadministrator.
So, like, you know, there's the AngelList outthere you can use, but I I'm partners with

(37:52):
Enduro Advisors.
I think they're one of the best, and they arereally helpful, especially in educating me on a
lot of this stuff.
I think that's really important.
If you are interested in doing this for thenext twenty five years, set up the right
institutional framework for your fund and itwill come off and pay a lot of dividends later
on.
Some of the funds also one thing I'll add to,some of the funds that I've spoken to, know,
fund one, they've already done like an audit tokind of just get into that practice.

(38:16):
Totally.
I do or I can probably also do that as well.
But I've seen that as just a great thing.
Absolutely.
Because
you're gonna have to do that later on theinstitutional level.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, MOIC, multiple and invested capital, it'spretty standard.
You take the money that you've invested and yousee what the multiples are at based on the fair
market value or the book value versus the fairmarket value of what the companies are worth

(38:37):
today.
That's a pretty standard one.
Total value to paid in capital is TVPI andresidual value to paid in capital.
That's after you've paid out distributions orDPI distributions of paid in capital.
So DPI is the one that everyone kind of focuseson when you're in that kind of year four, five,
six of the life cycle of the fund.
You're not really expected to have DPI earlyon.

(38:59):
We actually do have DPI and fund one because wesold some of our losers to get some money back.
So we technically have no zeros or donuts onthe board, which is great.
We try to make sure the companies that are notgoing to make their stride, we sell them off to
strategics to get some of our money back.
And because we're sitting on the top of theprep stack and the waterfall, we're getting our
money out first, which is always great.

(39:21):
But in terms of the metrics, I'd say, you know,MOIC is where we kind of focus early on.
TPPI as well.
It depends if you include management fees orfuture management fees.
And then RVPIs later on once you've gotten someDPI pushed out the door as well.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah, I think so.
And guys feel free to ping in the chat if youhave any questions further about that and we'll

(39:45):
just keep going.
But yeah, I think that was good for theaudience.
So I really appreciate that.
So I think it was great.
I think it's good to have like a roadmap tothink about where you're gonna be past Fund
three.
So really thinking about that now.
So along with the performance numbers, with theaudit, back to the storytelling, what are some

(40:06):
of the big learnings that you've taken awaykinda from from fun one to fun two and then now
getting ready for fun three?
I mean, look, I think whenever I'm talking withLPs, I try to give them a full story of like
how we started, why we why we're doing this,what we're trying to build and talk about the
long term commitment we have have to this.
I always say like, if you ask for money, youget advice.

(40:28):
If you ask for advice, you get money.
So I never go into a pitch with an LP askingthem for capital.
It's not really about that.
It's about telling them the story, gettingtheir opinions on it, telling them what we're
building with Ripple Ventures and the broaderRipple Group, which I can talk about later,
which is our real estate arm and our privateequity and secondary market acquisition

(40:49):
vehicles.
So, we talk about that.
I think the other thing with, you know,fundraising in general is it is such a long
journey and it's really important to stay up todate with, you know, your LPs, even if they're
not interested on your first fund, your secondfund.
So I send out quarterly updates to all thepeople that are interested.
I, you know, I start, you know, trying to sendthem updates on companies that we have invested

(41:11):
in.
I think our podcast is is something that hasreally helped us create a broader voice and a
more of a human element to our fund as well.
Mhmm.
And we get a lot of our founders talking abouttheir experiences working with us, and that's
helped a lot.
I think founder references are reallyimportant, and I think they're the most
truthful towards what it is like to work with afund like ours because there's nothing in it

(41:35):
for them.
Right?
There's no upside for the founders to sayanything good besides maybe you get more money
for you to invest in their businesses later on.
But by that point, they're already on to thenext stage of investors.
So I think, you know, politically, it doesn'thave any problems.
Yeah, and I think it's interesting to have moreportals where founders can be more open.
So I think there's a lot more platforms like VCGuide that are holding, now they're holding LPs

(41:59):
accountable to be value add LPs.
I think it was Blue Future Partners.
They actually posted, I've been building afriendship with them.
They posted this survey to just try to figureout how the LPs can be more value add.
So we're starting to see that now more withguess like GP friendly LPs.

(42:20):
I see that as kind of a thing now but there's alot of platforms where people if you are doing
something wrong at least you can be heldaccountable for that, which is interesting.
Yeah.
And the other thing I've realized in The US,the family offices, they've been around for
over one hundred years, some of them in Boston,New York, and they just have a really great
institutional structure to the way they seeopportunities and execute on opportunities.

(42:44):
And I think, you know, in Canada, we're we'restill catching up.
Mhmm.
And so I've been trying to build a platform forRLPs to also learn from our experiences.
Right?
My my business, my job is to sourceopportunities, diligence them, and then offer
them to our LPs, whether it's through a blindpool of capital, like Ripple Ventures funds or
through SPV vehicles like we do with RippleCapital.

(43:05):
So we've set up, you know, SPVs to buysecondary shares in companies like Vero Bank,
Udacity, Airbnb, SoFi, pre IPO from employees.
You get the board approval, things like that.
It's been great.
We also do some management led buyouts ofprivate equity businesses, and we raise capital
for those businesses as well.
And our family offices love that becausethey're in the business of deploying capital

(43:28):
and getting access to opportunities and usingus as their sort of like, you know, front
facing opportunity gatherer is what it's allabout as a family office, in my opinion.
I'm doing that with my own investments.
I don't wouldn't say I have a family office,but I'm definitely doing that with my own
portfolio.
And then we also have a real estate developmentfund because, hey, face it.
Most family offices are a private equityventure in real estate.

(43:49):
So we have a commercial and industrial realestate fund called Ripple Developments that our
LPs enjoy working with as well.
That's really cool.
And I think you make a good point earlier,which has resonated with a lot of the guests on
my show, really bringing in the family officesand the LPs part of bringing them into part of
the investment committees as well.
So, if you're looking at a founder, sometimesjust bouncing it off of an LP almost as if

(44:13):
they're not your client, but like part of yourinternal team, that really changes the dynamic
and it really builds trust because it almostchanges the dynamic to them as an advocate for
you.
We're all human beings, Nobody is always right.
So just getting somebody else's opinion andlooping them into those discussions.

(44:35):
And to your point, right, like having that dataroom be completely transparent.
It goes back to kind of the founder friendlyLP, right?
Like, they probably want to hear bad news onthe weekend, the same way that you wanna hear
bad news from your your founders.
Right?
That's what I would think.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And I think that builds the trust.
We also bring on strategic LPs in our fundsthat can help us, you know, more than just with

(44:58):
our capital.
So we have funds like Elite Fixals edition,which is the old Tiger Global guy as an LP in
our fund.
David Sachs from Kraft, Roham from Dapper Labs,know, Vast VC.
We have a lot of strategic LPs that come in andoffer more than just capital, but their time
and their networks as well, which is what'shappening a lot now in venture capital.

(45:19):
Yeah.
But I'd say it's definitely something we'retaking advantage of as well.
That's that's really amazing.
Yeah.
It's good to hear that.
And so tell me a little more about the, thelarger roadmap.
So it looks like and I think that's a reallystrategic initiative because the LPs have
optionality, right?
So I'm assuming even with the fund, there's coinvestment options So too, if they invest, they

(45:40):
can directly invest into the deals.
But then I think it's super strategic to havethe real estate offerings too, because they may
have their own real estate opportunities.
And I'm assuming a lot of your deals areprobably better than the ones that they have
access to, Cause you got that venture approachto kind of systematically sourcing and

(46:03):
screening and evaluating those deals.
So I think that's great that you cover all thatbecause they can really have optionality and
get access to everything.
So our LPs come in either through the venturearm or through the real estate arm and they get
access to everything that we have under theRipple Group umbrella from an opportunity
perspective.
I will say who if someone comes in to invest ina direct only opportunity through Ripple

(46:26):
Capital, we do offer priority to those thatinvest in funds first because those are more
committed LPs than ones who are just pickingoff direct investments.
But look.
At the end of the day, it's about creating moreopportunities for people to have access to and
using our Ripple brand and and our duediligence processes, whether it's on real
estate or capital or on venture to know thatwe've put our sort of stamp of approval on it

(46:49):
and putting our own capital up alongside it aswell, which we always do.
Yeah.
Another question I have is maybe advice foremerging managers on building a pipeline of
LPs.
So big insight that I've seen is really just alot of the early stage emerging managers.
They're leveraging like the VP of product atTwitter or the head of engineering at IBM.

(47:11):
And those are like initially the LPs.
But any tips on just building that pipeline?
Should people use a CRM?
Should people go to, I don't think this is theanswer, but should people go to conferences?
I think the conferences always work.
I think if you've kind of built a relationshipa few times, and then you can get some FaceTime

(47:34):
with them and grab a drink of them, it's great.
But we'd love to hear your tips on justfundraising as a whole and how that's changed
from Fund one to Fund three.
Absolutely.
I mean, even before I started the Fund, I wasvery adamant about creating my own personal
CRM.
So I was creating a CRM and streak, whichbecause it was attached to my Gmail for all the
people I met met when I
was Yeah.

(47:55):
I remember streak.
Streak was a great product.
So streak was like my first CRM and now peopleare using Airtable, but I truly believe that
like your life's network is going to be part ofyour network with your venture fund if you
decide to launch one.
So making sure you keep that up to date, youkeep sending out information to those people.
Like I said before, on the top of someone'snewsfeed, whether it's something interesting

(48:18):
that you saw or something that you talk aboutwith your blog or Substack page, always
important.
You never know when people are going to betalking about you at the dinner table or at the
bar with a friend to say, hey, I just heardabout this guy, Matt.
I listened to his podcast.
Really interesting.
I know you just exited your family business.
You might want to talk to him about someopportunities happening in the venture private

(48:39):
equity world.
Happens all the time.
It's really important to make sure you're stillout there for people to stay on top of their
memories because, unfortunately, we all sufferfrom short term memory loss.
And so it's important you stay on top of peoplefor that.
That would that would be my advice and keep itall organized and structured.
Yeah.
That's really good feedback.
And which news feeds are the ones that you likeusing?
I mean, I'm assuming Twitter and LinkedIn.

(49:00):
Twitter and LinkedIn has been great.
I mean, I've really enjoyed writing on myMedium blog over the last little Just offering
advice and thoughts.
I mean, look, the thing with Twitter is it'snoisy and you got to take a side in order to
stand out.
So that's tough for some people who are a bitmore introverted.
But I just say, look, also speaking withfounders, reaching out, making yourself
available, using your free time to be acontinuous learner and trying to help people

(49:24):
who you may not even know you exist issomething really valuable.
Like I always say, when people are in the earlystages of starting a company, they'll take
advice from everyone.
They're just sponges.
So try to be a part of that and try to helpthem.
And you'll never know where that ripple effect,no pun intended, will take you.
And that's why I called it the Ripple Venturesto start with the ripple effect.
That's amazing.
And real quick, just a high level snapshot.

(49:46):
What are you guys looking for as far as yourinvestment thesis?
What are kind of the ideal sectors and stages?
I I I know you're doing pre seed to series aand and there's a lot of other vehicles too.
But is there a certain focus area you guysdoing like b to b SaaS, consumer, generalist
fund?
Yeah.
So
for for our fund, we're definitely industryagnostic.

(50:07):
We do wanna, you know, make a preferencetowards stateside, you know, US, Canada Yeah.
Founders, but they can have remote teamsglobally.
Sure.
Our two main core investment trends or thesis,I would say, is we're really big believers in
data driven platforms that are creating, youknow, analytics and recommendation tools for
non developers, non engineers.

(50:28):
So low code, no code sort of focus Yeah.
As well as a workflow automation softwaretaking legacy systems and converting them into,
you know, web two point o kind of stuff.
And then finally, we are big fans of web threepoint zero, the content creator economy, what's
happening in the blockchain space as well, justgiven my prior experience.
And so we're focused on that.
I'd say where we stay away from is like thedeep tech, hard tech, life sciences.

(50:50):
We're not an ESG focused fund.
Our diversity focuses on the student populationthat we're working with as our main giveback.
But we do also have a pretty eclectic group offounders as well.
So I'd say that's a summary of what we're offto.
Double clicking on the creator economy.
Can you double click on that a little more?

(51:11):
A couple of things that come to mind for me isobviously, right?
Like the emergence of Substack.
And there's been a couple of interestingcompanies now that I've seen that can take a
podcast or like audio file and push it to apodcast.
So that's been something that I've been seeing.
So just empowering more creators to make moneyoff of the things that they create and then

(51:33):
NFTs.
But I just wanna make sure I'm double clickingin the right way that you're looking at it.
Any other insights on the creator economy andjust trends that you're seeing?
Yeah.
I think the word creator is a little bit toofocused on terms of like media creation.
I don't look at it as that much.
I could say anyone's a creator.
Like, we're all creators of something.
What I mean by the creator economy is how doyou allow someone to diversify their income

(51:58):
stream and make it as easy as possible for themto do multiple different tasks while earning an
income from it.
So, you know, our parents generation wereworking twenty five plus years for the same
company for their entire life.
They had one form of income.
Maybe they had some diversified income withreal estate in their stocks and bond portfolio.
Nowadays, we have people that are literallyworking on six different laptops at once.

(52:19):
And I'm being, you know, figuratively speaking,but they have six different jobs.
They're a freelance content writer.
They're a designer.
They're a dog walker.
They're, you know, babysitter, whatever.
And that's what I mean by a creator economy.
People who are democratizing their own incomestreams to be able to be more of a freelancer
to themselves and to the people they're workingfor.

(52:39):
And
how do you build the infrastructure around thatso that they can become a business of their
own?
And I love that type of investment.
So you think about how QuickBooks Online allowsyou to have like almost professional
bookkeeping service or you have a PRfreelancing service to get your word out there.
You have a website booking service or abuilding company like Shopify.

(53:00):
All of those infrastructure tools that supportthat person's desire and mission to be a
freelance content creatorearner is what I thinkabout in terms of betting on the creator
economy.
Yeah.
No.
Thanks for clarifying that.
I think that's really helpful.
And, yeah, you're right.
I mean, so many people are just doing so manyother side gigs and they're able to kind of

(53:22):
streamline and capitalize on that.
Appreciate you adding some context.
We got about a minute left.
So what I always do at the end and if there's alast minute question that squeezes in, we'll
try to squeeze it in.
If not, I'll just ask my final question, whichis just a piece of advice from a mentor.
If you think about your mentor, what'ssomething that they've given you as a piece of

(53:44):
wisdom that you wanna share with the audiencehere?
Yeah, I think what I always say is focus on theprocess, not the end result.
It's always important to learn new skills,exercise new muscles, even if the outcome is
not really what you hoped it would be.
And so that's part of the learnings that Ialways found, even when friends told me, hey,
go start a venture fund.
I was scared shitless.

(54:05):
I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
And I was just like, I didn't know where Iwould get started.
But the fact that I got started and I startedhaving this constant curiosity and work ethic
to keep learning was really important.
That's one lesson I've always learned is focuson the process, not the end result.
And the other thing is money will never replaceyou as the driver.
It will just get you there faster.
And don't look at money as a means to an end.

(54:27):
It's just something to accelerate somethingthat you've already figured out yourself.
So when we had Turnstile, we didn't have money.
We had to figure out other ways to recruitpeople, scale the business, incentivize people
to work harder.
And so we didn't use money as the way toreplace the way we did things.
We just made things we did better and moneycame later on, obviously.
Yeah.
And I bet, look, the funny thing, the profoundthing is even when you don't have money, I was

(54:51):
in high school and I wasn't rich, but I washappy still.
So I feel like looking back at your childhood,some of the fun, most exciting things were when
you didn't even have money.
So, kind of thinking about that now, I'm sureyou had a blast building turnstile, even though
there is crazy, scary times, which is all ofthat.

(55:13):
Looking back, it was probably a lot of fun.
Right.
So absolutely, there's lettuce farmers outthere that left their jobs as accountants that
are probably happier than a lot of us rightnow.
Yeah, no, I agree.
I totally agree.
And I think one parallel before we leave and Iknow you got to run soon, but with trying to
get into venture, So some of the people hereare aspiring to break into venture and some of
the pieces of advice that I've given them isreally go through the process of sourcing

(55:37):
deals, write a memo.
I think that as an artifact along with a resumecould carry much more weight than like your
competing candidates that just have that resumeand that pedigree that graduated from Harvard,
right?
So coming in being like, look, Matt, I knowyou're busy.
I know you work at Ripple.
I know you guys are looking at the creatoreconomy.
Here's a really hot deal that I found.

(55:58):
I don't know if you looked at this, I'm askingyou for advice, right?
And here's the memo that I wrote.
What do you think about that?
Feel like that would probably convert morethan, hey man, are you hiring?
Here's my resume.
110%, absolutely.
When someone goes around the front door andshows their way of adding value before even
asking what they want through the front door, Ilove

(56:20):
One of my favorite other stories is Rahul Rana.
So he wrote a book on like moonshots and that'sessentially how he got the job at Lux Capital
when he was in college.
So just doing something out of the box Just asVCs, I guess we just get drawn to something
that's different.
So I think that's just a great, great approach.

(56:40):
One last thing, one last plug, guess, how canpeople here sign up for your fellowship
program?
They go to is it on the website, guess?
Go
to Okay. Ripple
Ripple It's on our website, but I'll just putthe link here.
Just a little caveat.
They have to be a university or collegestudent.
Perfect.
So just trying to keep it fair.
And so fellowship.
Rippleventures.com.
Check it out.

(57:00):
Everything's on our website.
Thanks again for having me, Joel.
I really appreciate it.
Great to meet all of you.
Yeah, Matt.
This is amazing.
Thanks for all the storytelling and advice.