Funds on Fire
Welcome to Funds on Fire, hosted by Devin Robinson—a seasoned fund manager with years of experience launching, managing, and scaling multiple successful investment funds. Devin has also helped numerous entrepreneurs ignite their own fund ventures. This podcast is your go-to guide for mastering the world of investment funds and capital raising.
In each episode, Devin dives deep into the essential aspects of fund management, SEC compliance, and strategic capital raising, sharing the insights that have powered his own success. Alongside solo episodes filled with practical advice, you’ll hear from top fund managers whose funds are truly on fire. These industry leaders reveal the strategies, tactics, and stories behind their remarkable success.
Whether you’re an emerging fund manager or a seasoned professional aiming for greater heights, Funds on Fire delivers the knowledge and inspiration you need to take your funds to the next level. Subscribe today and turn your financial ambitions into a blazing success!
Funds on Fire
$30M VC Fund Explains His Y Combinator-Only Strategy w/ Gabriel Jarrosson | Ep. 23
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
💻 Start your 30-day free trial of Fund Flow OS
🚀 FREE Fund Foundations 101 Course
What happens when an “outsider” refuses the rules and builds his own lane inside Silicon Valley’s most competitive ecosystem? We sit down with Gabriel Jorison, founder of Lobster Capital, to trace the leap from Paris to San Francisco, the years of founder grind, and the playbook that turned a small fund into one of the most trusted names around Y Combinator.
Gabe pulls back the curtain on why he focused exclusively on YC, how he earned access without alumni status, and why a traction-first thesis beats pedigree and hype. We explore his decision to launch the largest independent media brand covering YC, the way consistent storytelling compounds into founder trust, and how that trust converts into allocations at the top of each batch. He also shares the art of saying no—declining buzzy deals when retention, acquisition quality, or revenue momentum don’t hold up—even when FOMO is loud.
We get candid about AI. Gabe explains why he initially avoided “wrapper” plays, what changed his mind, and why not using AI today is a red flag. Expect a sharp view on moats: models are engines you can swap, but the real defensibility sits in brand, distribution, UX, and proprietary data. For operators and emerging managers, he details fund mechanics, standard 2-and-20 structure, timelines, and real paths to liquidity through secondaries. For founders, he lays out the practical help Lobster brings beyond capital, from pattern-matching across 100+ YC startups to hands-on media and distribution support.
You’ll come away with a clear set of principles: go where the density of talent is highest, measure teams by traction, build a media flywheel, and stay humble enough to change your mind fast. If that sparks your next move, subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a quick review so we can keep bringing you the most actionable conversations in venture.
Get the Free Capital Raising Course
Get Fund Flow Os
Join the Free Capital Raising Community
Apply to the Founder's Circle
Defying Gatekeepers And Entering YC World
SPEAKER_01There's something really special about this episode because today's guest didn't just build a VC fund, he built a movement. And the more you listen to Gabriel Jorison, founder of Lobster Capital, the more you realize you're hearing from someone who refused to accept the rules of Silicon Valley and ended up becoming one of the most respected investors in the Y Combinator ecosystem. This conversation hit me hard because Gabriel's path mirrors what so many operators feel before they launch their fund, they have conviction, they have a point of view. You know, you're you're supposed to be in the room, but the gatekeepers act like you're an outsider. And Gabriel said, Okay, cool, let me show up anyway. This dude lived in Paris, never set foot in California, never had YC on his resume. And one day he woke up and realized if I'm investing in startups, why am I not investing where the best startups in the world are? So he bought a plane ticket to San Francisco, walked straight into the valley, and started meeting founders. No connections, no pedigree, no warm intros, just conviction and action. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted this episode at Funds on Fire. Because whether you're in real estate, tech, private credit, or launching your first fund, you need to hear stories like this. Gabriel built relationships founder by founder. He helped where he could, he built a reputation. Then one of his French portfolio companies got into YC and vouched for him. That crack in the door became a whole ecosystem. That ecosystem became access, and access became lobster capital. But here's the part that stuck with me. Lobster didn't just become just another YC fund because Gabriel added something almost nobody else brings media, help, something outside of money. He built the largest independent media brand covering Y Combinator. And in a world where everyone is drowning in noise, founders gravitated to the people who actually serve them, showcase them, and tell their stories. That's what built Lobster Capital's edge. Now, not just deal flow, but founder trust. And his story reminds you of something you forget when you're stuck on the grind. The market rewards people who show up with courage, conviction, and consistency. Gabriel talks about building seven startups, failing, selling three, learning every at every step, relying on traction instead of ego, betting on teams with real momentum instead of all of this hype that we hear, and being willing to change his mind publicly. Like when he went from I'm avoiding AI to if you're not using AI today, it's a red flag. That level of humility mixed with conviction is rare. And it's exactly what makes a great fund manager dangerous. Now, before I jump in, I want to invite you into something we're building that mirrors that same spirit. If you're listening to Gabriel's story and thinking, man, I want to build my fund, I want to raise capital, I want my lane in this space. That's exactly why we created fund founders and the founder circle. Inside the founder circle, you get a community of operators building real funds. There's weekly coaching, my entire AI-powered CRM and capital raising system, and step-by-step guidance to launch, scale, and grow your fund. It's for people who want to raise capital ethically, compliantly, and consistently, not just once, but on autopilot. And if you want to start at and if you want to start at zero pressure, I built a full free capital raising course to get you your first million raised the right way. You can get that at We Are Funfounders.com slash free capital. And I'll put that in the show notes. Again, that's we are fun founders.com slash free capital. No fluff, no teaser videos. It's a real training with real frameworks you can use today. Because what Gabriel's journey shows, and what I want you to remember, is that fund management isn't reserved for people born in the right zip code or with the right investor uncle. It's the people willing to learn, build, iterate, and show up with conviction. So let's get to it. Here's my conversation with the founder of Lobster Capital, the man who built one of the most recognizable brands and venture, Gabriel Jorasson. Welcome to Funds on Fire, the podcast that ignites the passion of investment funds and capital raising. Here we turn the complexities of fund management into clear, actionable steps that drive results. I've invested into diverse real estate across the United States and managed thriving funds. And I'm committed to transforming lives through the vehicle of investment funds and helping others to do the same. Join me as we document the journey of scaling businesses, raising capital, and impacting tens of thousands of people around the world. My name is Devin Robinson, and welcome to Funds on Fire. What's up? Welcome to another episode of Funds on Fire. I'm actually very excited today because today we have a special treat. We are we are venturing over into venture funds today from real estate. And we have Gabriel Janson, Janson, on from here from Lobster Capital. And I've got to say, I've really, really enjoyed as as I've started kind of my journey in tech and all those things, I've really enjoyed coming to Gabe as a beacon of information, of knowledge, and then even just hope. He does a really great job providing a ton of value on any platform he goes into on his podcast, on his YouTube channel, and even other places I've seen him. And it's just a really nice breath of fresh air to see that in a new space that I'm in. And so if you guys are looking for more information, this is your guy to follow. He has, and I'm really excited to talk about his track record on what he does when he invests into companies, but he's just doing it at a all at a high level and he's giving. And it's really cool to see the intent in which he does it and the high level of intention in which he does it. And so I'm so excited and thankful to have him on the show today. Gabe, why don't you tell people who you are, where you're from? And first of all, I hope it's okay I call you Gabe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's fine. Well, you know, what an introduction. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited as well to be here. I love the energy. I'm a pretty enthusiastic guy as well. So, you know, this is going to be fun. Everyone should just stick around. Let's go. So, a bit about myself. I'm originally from uh Paris, based now in San Francisco. I now run Lobster Capital. We're a VC specializing in YE combinator startups, YC startups. We invest only in the top 2% of YC startups. That's uh usually the top 2% of the best founders and teams, and also the companies with the biggest revenue. And we also operate a media on the side that you mentioned, which talks about YC and the VC ecosystem. And we're on every platform, you know, um newsletter, podcast, YouTube, social media, et cetera, et cetera. That's me now. Uh in the past, I'm an entrepreneur, built seven startups, failed many of them, sold three, not huge exits, but allowed me to become an angel investor. I've I've been angel investing for 12 years now before the fund. And then in between VC and Angel Investor, I was running an angel syndicate that grew to be pretty large, and that's how I got started with uh investing in YC. So that's sort of how I've come to all of this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's great. Now, I've actually always been curious. So I'm such a funny thing. It's like a little bit of a selfish thing, but I've always been curious. The name of Lobster Capital, where does that come from? So, like I feel like it stands out, which is great, but it's a little bit unorthodox in the name of like a VC fund.
Why “Lobster Capital” And The Power Law
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, I I've always wanted to have fun names. I've had other businesses because I've started seven businesses, I had the time to think about a lot of new names. And so I always liked names that people remembered. Uh, because when you're called, you know, uh Silicon Valley Ventures, it's like everyone's called that. And I hope no one is actually called Silicon Valley Ventures, otherwise, I just insulted them. I apologize. But that's all right. It's it's you know a made-up generic name. And so um I wanted an animal, I thought it was fun to have animal capital or animal ventures, you know, elephant ventures, whatever, squeed ventures, but it needed something that's not already taken, and actually a lot of them already exist. If you look at, you know, my yeah, my first idea was B Capital, and I was like had this idea of like, we're gonna make you honey because you know, we're gonna make you money, we're gonna make you honey, whatever. But then I go, you Google it, and it's taken. There's like three firms, not one, three firms called B B Capital or B entry. It's like lobster, no one dared to do it in the past, I guess. But then very quickly, when I found lobster, a lot of things clicked. First of all, lobsters are red. We went with orange, which is sort of the that's the YC color, and you know, it's just very close. Yeah, yeah. But there's a lot of things that are super interesting with lobsters. One, lobsters grow forever, they never stop growing, just like our startups. If we choose them well, they just never stop growing. But in order to grow, you need to break out of your shell, and so it's sort of get out of your comfort zone or whatever. So that's one thing. Lobsters are extremely faithful, they're made for life. That's the you're my lobster in in friends. You know, I was I also grew up with friends. My wife loves friends, loves friends, exactly. So it there's a lot of you know, who doesn't love friends? It's a great, it's a great uh show. Show is true. You're my lobster. We want to be very faithful with our entrepreneurs when we invest in them. We're gonna be their you know investors for life. And so uh that's another thing. Another uh very interesting, a couple, a few more. Uh one, there's a very rare breed of lobster called the blue lobster. One in, I don't know, one in a million or something. It's extremely rare. So that's how we call our unicorns. They're not unicorns, they're the blue lobster. So it allows us to look at it. And the last thing is there's a power law distribution in the lobster behavior. There's a very little number of lobsters that will end up dominate all the ocean floor physically. Like most of the lobsters are dominated by by by a few who control the the land and who get the food, etc. So the power law also applies in the startup world. There's a very few number of startups investments in a portfolio that will give you most of your return. So that was another pellet. So there's lots of things happening. That is cool, man. There's layers to it.
SPEAKER_01It's not just a name. You came up with something that was super, like I said in the intro, super intentional about what you guys are doing. It's not just a name, which is cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And and but also, I mean, I'll be I'll be transparent with you. Um, it's it's luck. I didn't know how well it would resonate with people, but people just love it so much, remember it. So I don't know, you know, bit of luck here, just like you need in the startup world as well. Uh, but it's you know, people love it, so I'm glad. Yeah.
What YC Is And Why It Matters
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. Just for so we can like lay the table. Um, sorry, so people because like I think the found lay the foundation of the podcast, because I I think a lot of people are gonna need to reference this, because a lot of people here, a lot of are are used to real estate. What is YC? So just uh just for context, what is YC so people understand that? Because there's a reason why you go and gravitate towards those kind of startups that come out of YC. So, what is that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so first of all, we're a VC fund, so we don't invest in real estate, we invest in startups, obviously. I think that was pretty obvious, but just want to remind everyone here. So we're looking at a you know young company that's hopefully growing quickly, giving it capital, and hopefully the company becomes the next Facebook, the next Uber, etc. Um, YC, so Y Combinator, their full name, is a startup incubator, probably not probably, certainly the most famous and most successful startup incubator in the world. And for people who, if you have never heard of YC, you've heard about their companies for sure. For example, they incubated Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Coinbase, Reddit, Twitch, DoorDash, Instacart, you know, the list goes on. They've created now around 120 unicorns. So same thing, unicorn company valued valued over a billion. I think everyone knows that. Out of 400, 450 to 500 unicorns in the US, 120 come from YC. So that's how prominent they are. That's how big they are. Yeah, that's crazy. And and so that's what I gravitate towards. Uh, that's where I invest. The thing is, it you know, listeners or yourself might be asking, well, why doesn't every VC just invest in YC if they're so good? The reason is YC is not necessarily that easy to access and to invest into. Most of the investment is made by either YC alumni, founders of uh previously mentioned unicorns who've made some money and come back and reinvest, or some specific what's called sort of YC funds who are really gravitating in this ecosystem, which I'm a part of now. But if you're not a fund in this ecosystem, it can be sometimes difficult to access. And they're they have their own rules for a lot of things. So again, if you're an outsider and you don't know the rules, it's kind of tricky to navigate at the beginning. So that's why most funds don't invest in YC or or rarely. We decided to focus only on that. I wasn't I'm not a YC alumni, by the way, but I've built my relationship with them, my access over the last almost 10 years. And um that's that's YC. And and so to explain what how does it work? You apply to YC as a startup, it's free to apply, you go on their website, but the acceptance rate is around 0.6%. So uh it's easier today to get into Harvard than to get into YC, just to give you an idea. They get uh tens of thousands, if uh close to 100,000 applications every year, and they accept uh 500 companies per year. Um so and then it's a three-month program. So you have to be in person in San Francisco, and it's a bunch of founders together. It's three three months, and it's just you know, a bunch of uh deadlines and office hours and stuff, and you have the best entrepreneurs in the world who come and help you and coach you, like Brian Chesky, founder of Airbnb, comes and helps you. Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI. OpenAI was started at YC, by the way. Yeah, comes and helps you. So, like, you know, have you have the all those people in the same rooms who just help you and you build? So, yeah, that's why they're so successful. That's YC.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and so for you, and this is cool because like thank you for laying that for social. So everybody kind of understands the the importance of your thesis, right? The importance of why you go there and nowhere else. It's because you're going to choose from essentially what statistically 30% of all billion-dollar companies in the country come from, uh, or in the world come from. And so for you, in the world, there's more. Oh, okay, okay, okay, cool. Good to know. In the country. So, and for you, what I guess was that journey like? Because I think before, I think back in 2020, like you told you you had a French community that you kind of told that in and you said investing in YC companies with Leonis, because that was your other company, right? Leonis was like investing in Silicon Valley with a French passport. And today, like lobster cal uh lobster capital, you've kind of crossed the borders and flipped the script in a sense, which like so so how does you did you kind of as an outsider or that outsider perspective shape your early conviction in why the YC ecosystem before most LPs like ever touched a deal in the U in the in the US, especially coming from Paris, to here. Does that make sense? Does that question make sense?
Breaking Into YC Without A Network
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, it does. So that's true. I did not start there. I started most of my businesses that I built were built in France, where I'm I'm from and where I was living at the time. And so when I started angel investing, my first angel check is 2013, so it's 12 years ago, and I invested in Paris in a startup that I met that was right there. And um, for me, Silicon Valley was sort of this faraway land. I was keeping tabs on what was happening in the US just for inspiration. I can speak English, which is not the case for everyone in in France, but I was just keeping tabs on it and start investing in France. And I just didn't get the idea that I could just invest there. One morning I had this, you know, the you know the the light bulb moment in the movie? Like I was like, wait a minute, like I'm investing in tech companies in France. But like, are tech companies in France good? Well, not really. But is there a place that I know of that tech companies are actually very good? Yes, it's Silicon Valley, and like can't I just go there? And I was like, Yeah, I can. So 2019, I literally never set foot in California anymore. If I'd been to the US, but not in California, book a plane ticket to SF and just show up and be like, Hey everyone, that you know, by that time I had the angel syndicate that you mentioned, and we're doing deals in France. So I had the community who was trusting me to bring them deal flow, the best deals of my network in France, in Europe, etc. But then I just showed up in SF and I called, messaged a bunch of people and be like, hey, you know, we're doing investments in in France. We would love to do them in the US if we find some deals. And uh, you know, people in SF told me, you know, deals like that's not a problem here. If you're in SF, they're like, there's deals everywhere. Finding deals is not the issue. So I was asking her, so basically, YC is the sort of the end of this road for me. I realized I could just get better deal flow if I was if I went out and looked for it. So first it meant going from Paris to SF. And then when I was in SF, I was like, okay, now SF is very big. What inside the valley are the best places, the best sources of deal flow? And this name kept coming back up. YC, YC, YC, YC. The best deals come from YC, the unicorns come from IC, etc. And then I was like, okay, I want to invest there. And I was faced with the same problem that we just talked about. It's like, well, you're not an alumni, you're not in the network, it's gonna be tough. But you know, tell me something's impossible. And I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna try. And I had a few lucky breaks. One being a French company that I had invested in before actually made it to YC after I had invested in the in them. So that that really helped because I had invested in them before.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's cool.
SPEAKER_02The founder liked me because I helped him on a bunch of stuff, and then he went and vouched for me with YC and be and he was like, Hey, you know, I've been I have Gabriel as an investor, he's okay, like you should let him in. And yeah, that's how I got started. But to be fair, at the very beginning, so that's sort of the first level. Then at that time, I was investing in some YC companies, but I could not access the top of every batch.
SPEAKER_01So even within YC, you want the cream of the crop of the cream of the crop, like the 80-20 rule, right? Except you went with the 298 rule.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. YC's 0.5%, uh, and and you know, so I want to play in the 0.5% world, but then within that, I'm also doing the top two percent. So then it's top uh you know, whatever 0.000001, whatever, whatever it is, right? So uh I realized within YC there's there's a lot of different levels and hierarchies, and so the sort of deals that all the big funds passed on, I could get, but the best deals like everyone wanted to get into, I couldn't get into them. And so again, you know, tell me something's impossible. I wanted, I was like, okay, let me try to figure this out. And so I started by just you know building my network and my reputation and being super founder friendly and helping all the founders with my background as a founder and be like, hey, where can I add value? And this worked. I was getting better intros, better reputation. People were like, okay, this guy really is helping, this guy really understands the community and blah blah blah. So it was good, but then it was up to a point because there's a lot of other people in SF doing exactly the same thing. Might not be French, might not have had all the journey. Maybe they're from their YC alumni, so it's sort of so much easier for them, but they're still here providing value and helping, and so you're we're still competing with each other. And so that's this was enough to raise the first fund in 2023. We've deployed the first fund in some amazing, amazing deals. We very often got the allocation that we wanted. This is that was great. Now we're working on fund two, and uh, I was like, okay, that's not enough. Like, there's a few other people doing this. Sometimes LPs, investors who are very versed into the space, were like, Well, yeah, you're a YC fund, but there's like three, four, five other YC funds. Why are you different? And it's true, there's a few others, and so I was not happy being just one of many. I was like, okay, how can I be different? And that's when the media play kicked in. I'd always been doing a lot online on social media. The Angel Syndicate in France grew very big on the back of a YouTube channel in French, where I was talking about startup investing, and the YouTube channel blew up, and so the the the investing group blew up as well. And so I've always been good uh at that thing. It's like, okay, I'm gonna create a media brand. And so, yeah, today we're the biggest independent media brand about YC, uh, YC being the biggest about YC themselves, but the yeah, second biggest and independent is us. Yeah, we do a ton of stuff uh uh with with YC founders and yeah, uh try to try to show the community to the world, and this helps us now being unique because the founders they know us, they know who we are, they trust us, they know what we think and and how we think, etc. They also want to come onto the media to be able to, you know. So this again puts us in a unique position now. We're the you know, we're not the biggest YC fund by far, but now we're the most famous. So that's that's pretty cool.
Media As A Venture Advantage
SPEAKER_01That's cool. So really quickly, too, because I want to hit on a couple things here. But have you you've written a book, haven't you? I've written two, but they're in the IS but so listen, I told you, I do my research. So one, but this is what this is what I like. This is what I like about you, is like you live out what you say. So I think you said something along the lines of extreme outcomes come from extreme conviction. And so, like this idea in it, and it's very much a like, I love seeing you live it out, and I'm sure you play that, like you look at that in the people that you invest into. So, like, but now now as you're managing a fund with LPs and LP capital, how do you balance the boldness with the fiduciary responsibility? But like also I'm sure you use that as a filter for who you invest in as well, right? Because like, absolutely, yeah, you're playing it out right now.
SPEAKER_02It's fun to watch. You know, rules and and and constraints allow you to be more creative. So, yeah, what I tell my LPs is when you're giving money to a fund manager, you just trust that person with a blind check. You have no idea what they're gonna invest. Maybe they tell you we invest in Series A in the US. And you're like, that could be anything. When you give money to lobster capital, and I'm not just and I'm not promoting myself here at all. I'm just answering your question. But it is, yeah. I tell my LPs, you know, no matter what, even if I'm terrible at my job, I I sure hope I'm not, but even if I am, you know it's gonna be a YC company no matter what. And so what's really interesting is now I can uh sort of take some very bold shots and and bold moves as long as they're YC, because I tell my LPs, hey, listen, you know, YC accepted them, they have traction. And so yeah, it sounds like a crazy moonshot, but that's what you want. It's it's also making my life so much easier because when you when it's within the YC community, you have all of those trust layers implied. YC already did the background check, they did, you know, established in the US and blah, blah, blah like, you know, when you're giving money to when you're giving, you know, a quarter million, half a million, a million to someone you don't know, and it's not your money, yeah, you gotta be super duper careful about who you're giving. But with YC, you know, everything is sort of fluid. But yeah, we've invested in some wounds. By the way, that's what you want. You want to invest in companies that, if they work, are you know big, big, big, big, big outcomes. And you know, probably they have a good chance of failing, but the you have to optimize for the outcome, not for the size of the outcome, not for the chances of it.
Conviction Vs. Fiduciary Duty
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's good. And and so when you invest into other companies, I know traction is an important thing. People are always like, oh, what's your traction? Oh, ARR, blah, blah, blah. It's funny too, because like you see things on Twitter where they're like, oh, or on X, where it's like, oh, my I'm at I'm at 10 million ARR, and it's like we're five months in. And I was like, that's not ARR, like you're barely even done anything. Um, and it's funny because like as I've grown and sold other companies as well, I have a whole spreadsheet of the 16 companies that I've started, failed, or sold, and done stuff like that. So I'm very aligned in what you're seeing. Yeah, it's a lot, Dan. Um, but like, but like uh I would say some of those are like podcasts or like educational platforms, things like that. So, like like real companies, I would say it's like eight or nine. But um, and so I've been through this roller coaster and I understand. So this comes to like two questions. One, I know you've talked about um you have this proprietary traction filter where instead of just like the hype or the user growth that people have on like X and stuff, you track early revenue momentum. Uh, can you walk us through where that filter is either made you say yes or no, or to like a buzzy startup that everybody wanted? And like you were like, no, and like, did it work out for you? Did it not love to hear that? If you're flipping houses, building or running a fund, here are two statistics that you need to hear. First, 70 to 80 percent of investors reinvest purely because of clear communication and consistent updates, not returns, not deal size, just communication. And 47% of investors decrease or pull commitments from managers who aren't transparent, almost half, not because the deal failed or below expectation returns, but because the relationship failed. And that's why we built Funflow OS. It's the world's smartest platform for raising capital and managing investors for operators who want to automate their follow-up, track commitments, and manage investors with real structure instead of scattered spreadsheets. Inside Funflow, your investors have a portal where they can track everything. You can automate updates and reminders, track commitments, wires, distributions. There's a smart matching feature matching investors to deals with AI and deliver the kind of communication that keeps capital coming back. So whether you're raising for your first flip or you have a full fund, this gives you the infrastructure you need to run it like a pro. You can get 20% off your first three months at funflowos.com slash fire. Again, that's funflowos.com slash fire. Now back to the show.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that happens a lot. Um we are we say no. So, you know, of course, on the surface, what we say, and I mean it's it's true, is our biggest criteria to choose where to invest is strong early traction. And the reason for that, by the way, is humility because most VCs fall in love with either a team or an idea, and probably in their career they had a bit out the big outcome, and they're thinking, oh, I discovered them early because I'm so smart. And actually, uh, this is probably luck. This is the book full by randomness by by Nessan Nicolas Talib. Basically, you could be lucky a few times, and it doesn't mean you're super smart, and um then you're gonna repeat that pattern and just invest in companies that you believe in, but nothing proves that your taste or your judgment is the is the is the best one here. So I come at it with a lot of humility, being like, my opinion doesn't matter, I'm not smarter than anyone else, and and I want to look at the market. If I love an idea but there's no traction, the market doesn't like it. And so I could love it, it's not an investment. But the other way around, if I don't really get the idea but there have they have huge traction, well, the market wants this, they're paying for it, let's go, I'll invest in it. So that's where we come from. So uh um our number one criteria is stronger only traction. But of course, when you say that, there's 10 degrees of finesse that goes into it of what is that revenue, what does it look like, what is the pace of growth, and what are what is the retention and the churn, and what's the NR net revenue retention? And also, interestingly, what's the way of acquiring that revenue? How do you get the new customers? And there's a lot of things that go there. And my background as an entrepreneur, having also founded seven stars, already seven, I th I think is insane and too much, but you're like eight, nine, or sixteen or whatever. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. I it means that I just fail fast, bro.
SPEAKER_01I fail fast and it's fun and I learned. Yes. Failed failed a bunch of times.
The Traction Filter And Saying No
SPEAKER_02But so I understand what customer acquisition is and what it takes and how hard it is. And and and when they tell me this is how we get customers, I understand because I've been in their shoes trying to get customers for new businesses day in and day out for years and years and years. So there's a lot of uh of nuance that comes into that. And so to answer your second question, which is I think really cool, uh people love those kind of stories. Yes, we do say no to a lot of trendy startups that for a lot of people are very obvious. And often I believe they they're you know it's it's FOMO and and they haven't digged a lot into actually how it works. And so, does it work out for us or not? It's very interesting. I would say majority of the cases, it works out. So the company turns out to not perform that well, and so we're like, huh, we were right, it's good. Sometimes it's the other way around. We don't invest in a very hyped company. The numbers don't actually look so good for us when we sort of scratch under the surface, but sometimes for some reason the company keeps going and growing and growing and growing. So there's two things here. Either we were wrong, and you know, we're very happy to be wrong in VC. You don't need to be right all the time, you just need to be right a few times and you make money, and that's fine. So I'm not at all pretending like I'm God and I know everything. I make judgment calls and I will be wrong, and I will be right sometimes as well. Uh so sometimes wrong. Sometimes the company's big, big, big, big, big, but I still think I I I see a few things that I remember from when I and I'm like, is it really as as as good as they say? And so sometimes I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and but sometimes it takes forever. Like there's a company that I said no at seed, it was really fishy. I didn't like it at all. It's like but the numbers were great. But then there's a few red flags when I talked to him, I was like, ooh, that sounds really weird. And I I passed. But the company's a unicorn now, so they're still going and going really strong. And I'm like, is it all a scam? Is it gonna crumble? Or are they gonna make it? And by the way, like I hope they make it, and everything, and and maybe it's not a red flag, and I was wrong. Like, I hope everything's legit, right? But it happens that you know companies get very big before they go to zero as well. So yeah, that is that's that's my answer to your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think we've seen a couple of those. I think we've seen a couple of those. Okay, you you and I have a very similar saying, and I think it plays into what you're saying because I have a question on after the saying, but you say founders fall because they climb the wrong hill too long. And so I have this thing where I say don't climb the uh the ladder of success on the wrong wall in like your career. I'm very curious on a lot of the the people that you've seen, I mean, even in in like your own career, what have you seen people do that? Um I guess like have you seen a difference? I'm gonna reframe my question because you see there's a lot of in in because of AI, because of all this stuff, and I'm sure just because of even the culture of YC, it attracts a lot of really young kids. Like just crazy. Like they have seven, they have 17-year-olds in this most recent batch, which is wild. And so then, like, but then you've got, I uh I like to say I'm seasoned, but then you've got seasoned people like me that are 35. I got four kids, I've exited a company, I've I have crashed and burned companies, learned really hard lessons, but I also know what direction I'm heading into, where I'm going, how I'm passionately doing that, like all that stuff helps because I look at some of these kids and I'm like, you have no idea. Like you like, you just you have no idea. And so, like for you and your thesis, does that stuff play into effect, or do you kind of go, well, they started this company, it's working. I'm investing in the company. I like them. The company works. They seem a little bit young, but that's okay. You know, like how does how does age, experience, all that stuff play into what what what you what you invest into?
Age, Maturity, And Team Signals
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is a very, very good question. And it it's so good, it's not easy to answer. Um, I mean, I'll answer sort of both. So it plays and it doesn't. It does play. So team is probably I I said the number one thing for us is stronger traction. The second thing is team. And actually, why we like strong early traction so much is because it's one of the best information you can have about the team. Which is to say, if they've achieved one or two million of AR in a few months, and of course it's projected AR, but so you know, so K of of MR or something like this, it doesn't happen by accident. The team has to be exceptional, they need to know how to build something. Like you can't fake a K of revenue, like you need to actually ship software, you need to know how to sell it and to find your market. Um, and so unless you have two customers paying 50k and it's your dad and your cousin, but otherwise, you don't get 200k by chance. So the team has to be exceptionally good to achieve this in such a period of time. So that's why we lack strong early traction is it's a very good indication on the team. But we look at other other things on the team, including where they studied and where they worked before and uh and and who they are and what they did and if they started previous businesses before, etc. Now, all of that being said, yes, there's a lot of very young people at YC, and studies show that actually most of the unicorns at YC were started by young first-time founders. Nice. So there's probably a bias here because most of YC founders are young first-time founders, but still, if you want to invest in YC correctly, you can't really say to yourself, Oh, I'll start investing at 30 plus. Otherwise, you're just cutting 80-90% of the batch. Most everybody, by the way. So that being said, you know, I also believe age is not as important as maturity. You have some, you know, I was I'm 35, and I guess at 20 I was not mature enough to do YC. And case in point, I didn't do YC at 20. But then you have founders who are sometimes I'm amazed. I talk to them and professionally at least, and in their in their domain, in in their field of expertise, they're just so deep down the rabbit hole and and and they have so many levels of knowledge and awareness. And then sometimes I'm like, What wait, how old are you again? 23 is like, oh my god, like, but that's great. And remember, some of those are people who've been coding and thinking about business and the world since they were 12. Like I started at 13, and uh many of those learn how to code when they learn how to read or stuff like that. You know, it's not easy. Uh and and and sometimes not. Sometimes you see people in very clearly, you know they're 19 and you know they're sort of ignorance about their field, and you know they don't know much about the world, and you can spot that as well. You know, it is it it does come into consideration, but there's no strict rules on my end. And again, age is one number, it's more like I should say mental age or whatever it is, or maturity, whatever that is. So and and it it doesn't correspond always to the physical age.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would agree because so um when I started the when I started our like our the you know the software company that we had, I vibe coded a lot of it. It was incredible, and we'll talk about AI in just a second. Vibe coded a lot of it, it it vibe coded like 500,000 lines of code, and then um, so then I was like, okay, no, let me go ahead and find a it worked and I had people, I had people in it, and then it kept breaking. So then I was like, let me go find technical co-final, help me with this. So I ran into these two young kids, like two young kids, but they're incredible. They're like, so they're now my you know my co-founders, but they're 22 years old. I'm 35, I've been through this, so it's really funny for us to lead because like they came from this other startup that had they came with this other startup that like didn't where they had a bunch of interns, but also like they're 22. So it's funny for them to like bring them over into this, and for me to be like, okay, guys, this is actually how you lead and lead a company and lead people and like how you manage that stuff. And so it's really fun to see like what you said. They are, I look at them and I'm like, I keep forgetting they're 22 because like the maturity level is way off the charts, way better than I would think, and they are very good at what they do. But then also there's other things that correlate to that that I'm like, nah, you guys are definitely 22, but this is fun. So it's really cool to see. So, in that though, it's very interesting because AI has kind of like accelerated the I think it's done two things. One, I think it's you were gonna say something. I don't want to stop you, but also I agree.
SPEAKER_02It accelerated everything.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say everything. You said two things, it accelerated everything. Keep going everything. So it's done two things. I think in this tech world, as I've kind of like from my 30,000-foot view, it has made the barrier to entry like non-existent, but it also has separated the wheat from the chaff like significantly more, where like you now go, oh, they vibe coded that and they know what they're doing. Like there's a clear separation between the two now, which is kind of cool because you get people like me who had an idea, put it together. People were like, wow, I didn't know vibe coding can do this. Let's fix that. And then you have some people who are like vibe coding, and then it's just like that didn't work out. Let me go into something else. Like you, I think you had mentioned in 2023, I think I saw somewhere in 2023, you you said that you were intentionally avoiding AI deals at the time. Um, like what were you seeing that other people missed? And then another thing is, what's has anything changed your mind now that they're like that you've started writing AI checks in 2024? You know, like I'd love to hear hear about that.
SPEAKER_02I mean, you went back quite a while uh to find this. Congrats. Yeah. Um, you know, the the AI craze, I I would say started in November 2022 when ChatGPT came out. And uh everyone was building ChatGPT, what's called what was called at the time, still it's called the GPT rappers. And uh most of them are dead now. And so at that very time, early 23, I wrote uh something, uh I don't know, a blog or something that's saying I'm not investing in AI, and this is why. And this is because it's too early, we don't really know how where the models are gonna go, all of those rappers are gonna get destroyed. Uh and it's a bunch of uh NFT bros who are jumping on the next trend. And I I'm not at all for that, and I don't uh I don't see anything real in the real world coming out of it. That changed very quickly, obviously. So that was that was how it got started, the first few technology like this. Uh but it changed changed very quickly, and I wrote other articles ever since, and even probably edited this one, being like, hey, you know, that was true when I wrote it, and it's not true anymore. So I've been investing in AI.
Changing Views On AI And Moats
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, and I love I love that because like that, but that's how like that's the whole NFT craze. That's whole this 99.9% of it's gonna be fluff. And then what ends up happening is it crashes and dies, and then it separates the wheat from the chaff, with which is why you were like, okay, this is real. Let me let me read like reiterate or even just like adjust my my thought process on this because I think that's just the natural progression of technology. I think that's that's just how it is. And I think you as a smart, savvy, yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02Sorry, by the way, I I think I'm I'm always happy to change my mind. And so I, you know, whatever I say, I'm very happy to say the other way, say the other thing in next month, next year, and explain to you why I've changed my mind and and what what happened there. So people probably felt that AI had potential, so no one really dared to say that it was it was crappy at the time. I I I said it. I said, you know, I'm not investing now. And very loudly, just a few months later only, I was like, okay, now it's good. Now I'm investing in AI. And what I'm saying now actually is people sometimes ask me, Oh, you are investing in YC, it's only AI, like it's a bad thing. And I tell them, if you meet a a founder today, whatever he's building, that's not using AI at all, we're like, no, no, no, no, we're not an AI company at all. There's zero AI. Like that's a red flag. Like you that is if you don't find any way to use AI in your business today, especially if you're a startup, like that's a big problem. So every company is an AI company now. It's pretty much like being a you know an uh computer company or being an online having your website is being an internet company, like everyone uses AI. So it was early until it was not. I believe those early bets either died or pivoted. If you're betting on the team and the team pivots, that's fine. We don't want to do that. We want to we want to bet on teams that already have found their market and already have strong traction. So we don't want to bet on something that's just not gonna exist in in six months. But now it's very clear the directions the models are taking. It's very clear the types of businesses you can build with AI and the value you can create. And yeah, we've been investing heavily in AI, just like YC has, of course. This is why I bring this up.
SPEAKER_01So, like, I don't want to I don't want you to think I brought this up to be like, well, you said this, it wasn't true. The reason why bring totally fine, don't worry. Yeah. The re the reason why I bring this up is because I think what you did is what I think a lot of people lack the the one, the integrity, but also like the the guts to do, right? Like where I think that it's not the when it comes to like put into like a a sports analogy, it's not the team that's even most prepared and not the most talented team that wins the game. It's the team that adjusts at halftime. And for you, like you went in, you saw something, strong conviction, like you say, you had strong conviction in it, which I respect. And I think that if you're gonna lead something like a fund, you have to have strong conviction in what you're doing. And then you decided, look, guys, I now have my conviction is this, but also my conviction and my responsibility as a fiduciary of the fund is to adjust to what actually works. And so I see that a lot, especially in real estate. For me, uh, you know, I've got a real estate fund in my fund. Um, we went through the worst housing market in the last 30 years. So we had to pivot, right? We have to do things like that to make sure that one, we remain a good fiduciary to our investors and our investors get their money back, regardless of what the market does. And so for you, regardless of what your initial thoughts are with AI, you saw and you pivoted. And I think that's a really strong thing that you do and you have to do. Um, and so I love that I no, I love that you um as we I love that you put it out there and then you also said, actually, this is where it's heading. And so I'm curious. I went to I actually went to an AI forum here in Charlotte for tech startups, um, which was cool. I'm very curious on what you see then. What becomes like the defensibility and the moats a lot of these companies if they're all just using AI? Well, because like everybody has it. Then now is that the criteria that you base your investments off of? You know, I'm curious.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's uh uh I love this uh topic. Uh my investors have been asking me the same question many, many times. Like, yeah, you know, everyone's doing it, especially I think a lot of people realized with vibe coding and all the new tools that basically anyone can build anything pretty easily now, and it's only getting better. Like it's the worst it's ever going to be today because it's only getting better every day. And so I actually think this is sort of a false narrative, actually. Um, the reason is those are the reasons. If you remember 10 years ago, you could go on YouTube and you had a video of how to build the Instagram app in two hours. So it was already available for anyone, even without vibe coding and AI, to build the Instagram app in two hours, or how to build the Facebook or the Twitter website in two hours, etc., or the uh how to replicate the Airbnb website. The value does not come from coding the actual software, it comes from everything else around it. And so it's the same, you know. You could say, oh, how does anyone get value from building their website when everyone else can also build a website or anyone else can also access cloud storage or whatever? Like, yes, but that's not it. So you build a business around everything else, and so for AI companies, it's still the same thing. What's different? So uh yeah, it's still the same thing, and then I'll go into what's different, but it's still the same thing. What makes your business is your brand and marketing, your customer acquisition strategy, how do you get customers, UX and UI and customer service and how you treat customers, like you know, Amazon, Airbnb treat you, you know, every time there's a problem, they're gonna be here for you. Uh well, Amazon more than Airbnb, I should say, but you know, I'm sure Airbnb is trying. The proprietary data that you get, even if you're using AI, you get the data from, you know, I get a merchant company that I'm that I talked to today that I'm evaluating for a deal, and they just store the customers' credit cards, and so it's the in their vault, and so they have that data that's proprietary that's they own, and you know, regardless of AI. All of those things are what makes a business, many more that I'm forgetting, but you know, everything that goes around it. What's different here is the models keep changing and evolving. You're not, you know, a website is always a website. This is www.lobstercab.com, it's not gonna change, but the models get better all the time. So what I look for and what I tell to my investors and to my founders when they need to hear it is think of it as a car. A car has a lot of parts, but the AI model is the engine. That's what actually makes the car go. But if you only have an engine, you can really sit on the engine and go. Like it needs, you know, the wheels and the doors and the whatever, the windows and the roof and the car seat and everything else. And so this is your business. You build everything, you build the windshield and you build the car seats. But then when there's a new model, it's it's just like swapping for a better engine. And then your car is actually going to go faster. But that's how you should think about it. You should make your the models interoperable and easy to switch, but you should build everything around. And again, that's the brand, that's a customer acquisition, that's the UX UI, that's how you serve your customers, that's your data, that's everything else around it. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, that's that's how you should think about building today.
Beyond Money: How Lobster Helps Founders
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think that I think the thing that people underestimate is the power of a brand. The brand is what you build. So one of my partners in my other company is a brand expert, does it for like Chick-fil-A, for all these, he's very good. And so uh we talk about that constantly is like, how do you make sure that your brand is when it speaks exactly to who the people it's supposed to speak to? Because I think like branding becomes a majority of your evaluations. I'm sure there's revenue, but also like the amount of the brand that you have out there, the the the reach that you have, the the cult that you create, the people that are a part, like that becomes a big part of evaluating your company, which I think is really important. So I'd be curious for you, as a media company, as these things, as a VC, what type of things do you help the people that you invest with outside of just money? You know, like I think I think a lot of people don't understand it. It's very different in real estate, right? In real estate, hey, you invest into my fund, great, we're gonna do this. I'm gonna give you distributions, great, perfect. Have a fair have a great day. But I think in VC, it's a lot different. I think you're a little bit more involved, you're a little bit more engaged, you're a little bit more helpful. So I'd be curious to see what what does that look like for you and what you guys do at Lobster Cap.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's uh true in VC. It's even truer in Y Combinator and in this ecosystem because a lot of VCs, you know, from what I've heard, I'm not targeting anyone specifically, but a lot of VCs say they're helping, but then when you ask the founders, they're like, oh, you know, they give us the check, and that's it. That's probably the case for a lot of VCs. But uh for YC startups, it's very different because it's the best incubator in the world. When they go through the program and usually they have a feed raise at the end of the program, and they uh let's say raising usually two, three million for the sort of high profile that we uh invest in, it's maybe a little more, maybe five million. But usually they will get five to ten times that money offered to them, which is to say, you know, they want to raise maybe five million or not even maybe three million, but they're gonna get thirty million offered to them. And of course, they don't want to take the entire 30 million because that would be too much dilution. They just want to take the money that they need and not give away too much of their equity. So, how do you choose? So money at that point is almost irrelevant. Everyone has the same whatever millions of dollars, and they have to choose only 10% of uh the people that get to offer, get offer to them. How how do they choose? The answer is they choose on what you can bring on top of the money, obviously. A lot of people have a lot of different answers. For us specifically, that was your question. I'm happy to uh answer that. It's probably three things. One, I help them personally with my past as a founder. Having built seven startups, sold three, and just struggled so much, to be honest. I know usually when they're stuck somewhere, I remember I've been in their shoes at some point, in their shoes at some point. So there's almost always something I can help them with. Almost always. Uh, whatever they're they need and wherever they're stuck, I can help. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I've invested in more than a hundred YC startups now, you know, in my life, and many more startups in general, if you just don't do the YC tag, but even in just YC startups, it's more than 100. So I've seen a lot of stuff. What works, what doesn't. I've seen companies succeed and fail. I've invested at seed stage in companies that became unicorns. I've invested in companies that became unicorns and then failed and went back to zero and we lost all our money. Like, I don't want to say I've seen it all, but I've seen a lot of stuff. So again, I can help them here do some pattern recognition and matching, put them in touch with other companies, like, hey, I know another company that had that problem. Let me put you in touch with them. This is how they solved it. So that's the second thing. So my own experience, my experience as an investor and all the companies. And the third is the media itself, both giving them visibility, showcasing them on our media platforms to give them visibility, and also helping them building their own medias and brands. Whatever it is, if they need LinkedIn, we know we do LinkedIn really well. If they need YouTube, we do YouTube, if they need podcasts, we do podcasts. So again, there's almost always something that we can help them with in terms of media, and almost every it's valuable for probably every company in the world, regardless of what they're doing. So those are what we help with.
SPEAKER_01That's cool. I'm curious too. So you're just a YC, like you just invest into YC. So I'll ask this question too. I'll ask I have so many questions. But have you ever considered and have you thought of even just like starting up a second fund? Because like I feel like what's cool is like now I think because uh YC has done it so well and people have seen the emergence of it, I feel like there's starting to be an emergence of other incubators like A16Z speedrun and things like that. Have you ever considered being like, well, what if we start an A16Z podcast or uh fun? Because I do think the quality is going to be similar there, maybe not in other incubators, but I really do think it's gonna be like YC A16Z, and then like who whoever knows who else. Like, would the same conviction apply there without as much of a track record as YC? Like, would you ever consider anything like that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I get asked about this a lot. I don't think it's reasonable to run several funds in parallel. So I guess there's room for someone else to come and do it next to me, especially with where we want to take Lopster Capital. Like we have very, very big ambitions. But that being said, for now with YC only, it doesn't have to it could be that it's not YC only in the future. It could be YC and Speedrun and a few others best incubators in Silicon Valley. So far, YC has served us well. And still, I still believe YC deals are better than speedrun deals on average. Not on average, actually. That's interesting. On average, it's it's probably the same, but the very best deals of YC are the ones that I'm interested in. Those ones are only in YC for now. Again, like remember, we talked about changing my mind and stuff like that. I I love changing my mind. I want to change my mind. So I will re-evaluate, I'm re-evaluating constantly. So maybe in two years, YC is completely toast and it's only speedrun, then I'll do speedrun. Or another one that we don't even know about yet. For now, I still believe YC is by far the best. They get a lot of people saying it's not as good or whatever, but that's mostly people who don't really need it. YC. Yeah, because they didn't get in or sort of don't really understand YC, or they see only some companies, but they don't see the best. Yeah. So objectively, today I still think YC is the is is the best. Uh but we're yeah, we're we're aware that this might not be the case forever and and and we can adapt.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Now, a part of that too, a little bit more of like the legacy play. Like you you've built your fund, your brand, and even your investor community around your name, but you've also said that you want lobster capital to cultivate or sorry, to outlive Gabriel Jarison. Um, so like what are you doing now to remove yourself from that bottleneck? Because as we know, like bottlenecks typically are the things that slow businesses down the most if you've actually grown and you know scaled a business. Do you find that you are can be a bottleneck, or do you find that like you're putting systems and processes in place to eliminate that?
Fund Structure, Liquidity, And Secondaries
SPEAKER_02Yeah, both. Uh I've been building companies and and uh for for for I don't know, 15 years now or or even more. And uh I've always been passionate with building systems. Uh it's very interesting. I built a company to one million AR with no employees, just myself, before AI. And so everything needed to be uh automated one way or another or delegated. Um so I've been I've been a sort of a um I don't know, systems implementation geek for many, many, many years. So I have to be. I I still try to to bring this to Lobster Capital today. But in a sense, a VC fund is uh somehow different in in its early years. I have to be the bottleneck. For example, fundraising, you know, uh when you're talking to LPs who want to commit big checks, they want to talk to the to the manager and to the GP. So it has to be me, it has to be my time. And so this way I am the bottleneck. Investing, I've also developed a philosophy, but I'm still that I can teach to people that I'm still making the investment decisions, and so in a sense, I am the bottleneck as well. I I'm planning on doing this for the next 30, 40, 50 years. So I don't have an urge to replace myself quickly, but yeah, I'm always thinking of how can the fund run without me, and then I can be involved wherever I want, whenever I want. But if I don't want to be involved in one thing, it can just run without me. So yeah, it's um it's weird with the fund. Like if it was any other business, I could remove myself better and more efficiently and quickly. This one, there's a lot of things that need to be me, but I love it. It's the business I chose and and I gave away other businesses to focus on this one because I love this more. So um, you know, I'm I'm pretty, I'm pretty happy being a somehow a bottleneck sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Well, I love it. And I love that you love it because like, so I teach I teach launching and scaling investment funds and I do trainings every single week. And I always tell people like the most lucrative business structure in the world is funds. And so being able to leverage and use other people's money to be able to fuel what you do and the expertise that you have allows you to scale infinitely. And so for you, I'd be very interested because I know I know similar structures for um for real estate and all those things. Are you structured? Like, do you do like a typical two and 20 model? Is that how you structure it for your LPs? Or just because I I know some people are separate, some people do different things. Is that what people who invest in your fund expect? Is something like a typical two and 20? And then is your horizon, like are your cash events, are those things where like, hey, this company sold or IP'd or whatever, here's the profits that came from it, and you do it then? Or are you like at the end of the five, 10 years, the value of the fund, you split it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we are standard 2020. You know, someone told me if you do something weird or exotic or whatever, then the discussion is not about the fund, it's about the fees. And so, you know, you just want to remove the conversation like we're standard 2020. Yeah, we we target to sell at either uh exit like uh acquisition or IPO, just like you mentioned. But the fund has a life of 10 years, and so after 10 years, we are supposed to give the money back to our investors. I'm saying are supposed to because we can always decide and control the outcome. But there's actually a lot of options uh after 10 years for investors who want to. So by the way, I think with AI accelerating everything, most investors will get more than their than one time their money back before the 10 years. Yeah, you should have at the 10 years mark, you should already have multiple times your your money back, hopefully. But for the remaining, there's a lot of solutions today, including secondaries. You could sell a position, like you could sell shares of a startup. You could also have liquidity between investors. Someone is exit, someone to add more, and you could sell between each other. And then you also can sell the entire fund portfolio. There's a lot of secondary funds who would buy from LPs, just buy all the positions at once from several LPs. So all of those things are possible, pretty well developed in the US in Silicon Valley. So there's lots of options. You don't need to be stuck with the cash if you don't want to.
SPEAKER_01That's good. And I've I'm I I've I've seen an emergence, which is really cool, of these GP stake funds, very similar to what you're saying, where people will come in and they'll buy uh shares of the GP, which is that's that's fantastic too, because you get really massive upside on a lot of that stuff. Um, okay, now this podcast is called Funds on Fire. I would love to know for you what fires you up about your fund heading into 2026 as we kind of in this year and we're heading into 2026. Even for you heading into the new the new YC batch to go on on a demo day, which I'll see you there. What fires you up the most about your fund currently heading into it?
Scaling Media And Hunting YC’s Best
SPEAKER_02I mean, there's there's two things that I'm so always excited about and just give me so much energy and you know, I guess make me make me happy. One is just the media that we're building. It's it always feels good when you're building something and you get the results that you want. So the our media is sort of an inflection point uh we've been building for uh many months, but that's also I I've been building the team and the and the processes and the stuff so that I'm not the bottom like on the media, just so we can do more and more and more and more. And and every month we're just doing more stuff. Like we keep publishing as much, but we add new stuff better, and you just make it better and better and better. And so the results are are trickling in. We're getting more and more and more and more views and and exposure and visibility. So that just makes me very happy. I think we've only done one percent of where we can go with the media. I think it can grow much, much, much, much, much, much, much bigger. I'm excited about that. I see the potential and I see we're headed there. So that gives me a lot of energy. I think 2026 hopefully will be a pivotal year for the media. Again, we're in the YC ecosystem. We're we're we're famous, but we're not one of the biggest US medias by far, even on the investing front. But there's the potential together, and there's the energy and the will, and so that's what we're building towards. We want to go have bigger, like as big a media play as Andreessen Horowitz and and and and the big, big, big names out there. So it's a lot of work, but we're getting there. That's that really fires me up. The other thing that fires me up, you you you touched on it, is going into a new demo day. Now there's four batches a year and four demo days a year. So YC is almost non-stop. Like as soon as a batch ends, a new batch starts. Just uh always seeing uh those new companies, those new meeting those new entrepreneurs. I mean, I get to uh work and meet people who are much smarter than me all the time, all of those founders who just have amazing ideas and energy and ambition and want to change the world. And uh it's just so fascinating. My my investors tell me I I sort of get to live into the future because I see everything being built. Like very often, you know, the newest technologies and innovations and the the new startups and the new you know, the the unicorns of tomorrow are being built IYC right now, and I get to see them and see what's possible with AI and what you can do. It's pretty insane, by the way. It's very impressive. So that just gives me so much like I'm so lucky to be talking to those people almost daily and and and and then investing in them and you know sharing in the profits as well. Like I get to talk to them, pick my favorites, give them money, and then some of them end up doing really well. That's what's happening in the first fund. Like, we have amazing companies growing at an incredible pace. Good. And then, you know, my investors are gonna make money from that. The fund is gonna make money from that, and it's pretty uh incredible, honestly.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, I love it. This is awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on, man. This has been incredible. Um, I've enjoyed getting to know you and being able to hear more about your story, what you do, who you are, and how you're leading and changing the world. Where can people find you? Uh just so they can follow along the content and along the journey.
SPEAKER_02We're onto every platform that you guys are. So wherever you like your content, you know, our biggest platforms are LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Podcast, but where everyone else. Uh we have a sub stack as well.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, wherever you like. Cool. And is that lob at lobster capital or is it at Gabriel Jorison?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's both, uh, but it's mostly, you know, you Mostly follow Lobster Capital. I mean, or follow whoever you want. You can follow Lobster or myself, like you know. But yeah, I'll put the link to above. Subita both. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for having me. I had a blast. It was really cool.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, thankful for you being here. I appreciate you. And um, I look forward to meeting you one day and hope you have a fantastic day. Thanks, man. Thank you. You too. Wow. I hope you enjoyed that. I have a quick favor. If you've been enjoying the show, there's one simple way you can support us, and it's by hitting that follow button or that subscribe button on the app you're listening to. I want to level this podcast up in every single way possible, bringing you more value, incredible content and guests, and new strategies. Following the show and leaving a quick review goes a really long way in helping us to grow and continue to deliver top tier content. It's the only free thing I'll ever ask you to do, and it makes a bigger impact than I can possibly put into words. So thank you for being a part of this journey, and I'll definitely catch you on the next episode. To great success and greater impact. Peace.