Dealflow

In this episode, Keira sits down with Mike Taylor, Co-Founder of GTM Ventures, a firm that has publicly refused to pick a thesis.Mike explains why attaching yourself to a narrative becomes a filter that quietly stops you from reading the market, and why the only red thread in their portfolio is the founder. From there the conversation moves to the thing he keeps circling back to all episode: distribution. Anyone can build now. Claude Code and Codex mean a person with no technical background can spin up an app by talking to it. So if the tech is no longer the moat, what is?Mike breaks down why Web3 built the plumbing before anyone lived in the house, why thousands of L2s launched with almost no users, and why it was simply easier to raise money on infrastructure than on a product. He shares his own story as one of the first 50 tokens listed on Binance back in 2017, what token launches actually cost founders today, and the exact moment a startup earns the right to launch one.The conversation also covers how a Master of Architecture turned into a career in crypto venture capital, the fitness landscape idea he borrows from evolutionary biology to explain why big companies cannot adapt, and a live teardown where he redesigns the DealFlow podcast on the spot using the same framework he runs with portfolio founders.Plus, the red flag he watches for in every founding team, why stablecoins are being adopted faster in emerging markets than in the West, and the one message he would send back to his 17 year old self.Key takeaways:A thesis can turn into a filter that stops you reading the market.When anyone can build the tech, distribution becomes the only real moat.Web3 built infrastructure first and forgot to check if anyone wanted it.Tokens work when the buyers and the users are the same people.The service providers show up exactly when a founder is most desperate.Big companies cannot move. Small ones can. That is the whole advantage.The most successful person in the room is usually the most relaxed one.Timestamps:00:00 Intro07:44 The venture firm with no thesis 15:10 Are we in an AI bubble? 19:53 Why code stopped being a moat 23:27 Web3 built the plumbing before the house 26:47 One of the first 50 tokens listed on Binance 36:57 When a startup actually needs a token 44:10 From architect to crypto investor 55:40 A live teardown of enablers and blockers 1:10:04 The red flag that kills startups 1:15:14 A message to his 17 year old selfGUESTMike Taylor, Co-Founder, WTG VenturesX: https://x.com/taylormikerobX: https://x.com/wtgventuresLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikertaylor/Website: https://www.wtgventures.com/HOSTKeira Nesdale, Portfolio Manager at MH VenturesX: https://x.com/RealMissAILinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keiranesdaleInstagram: https://instagram.com/RealMissAIDealflow PodcastX: https://x.com/dealflowpodcastApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dealflow/id1859528286Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6RKf6kRL2q0XEgQeYp9r0dYouTube: https://youtube.com/@DealFlowPodcastMH VENTURESWebsite: https://mhventures.ioX: https://x.com/mhventures LinkedIn: https://ky.linkedin.com/company/mhventure

In this episode, Keira sits down with Will Patterson, Founder of Third Earth Capital and Head of Ventures at Hashgraph Ventures, where he is deploying a new $100 million fund.Will came to crypto through banking. He took his first bonus, put all of it into Bitcoin at $22,000, and watched it fall. What kept him in was not the trade. It was noticing how much an international wire transfer cost compared to what was actually being moved. He went to Avalanche, spent six months asking the basic questions nobody senior wants to ask out loud, and turned that into his own fund and first checks into Movement Labs and Nirvana Labs.He is blunt about what went wrong in the last cycle. Teams raised too much, spent it on incentives, and bought users who left the day the money stopped. The infrastructure got commoditised. The value moved to the apps.Will explains why he thinks stablecoins are the biggest thing crypto has ever produced, why banks and fintechs are suddenly racing to issue their own, and why crypto ends up being the natural rails for AI. If AI touches money, and agents can already spend on their own, that money has to move somewhere.The conversation also covers the one question he asks in every pitch, why paying influencers to tweet has mostly stopped working, exactly how to slide into his DMs without getting ignored, and the wallet he is quietly building on the side that gives away free Bitcoin to anyone standing in the right place.Key Takeaways:Stablecoins are the biggest thing crypto has ever built. Banks are only now catching on.Most tokens went to zero because teams bought users instead of earning them.The chains are commoditised. The value has moved to the apps.If AI touches money, that money runs on crypto rails.Every pitch comes down to one question: what is your unfair advantage?Paying accounts to tweet is over. Better products win retail now.Patience is king. Get good at something and the money follows.Timestamps:03:58 The bonus, Bitcoin at $22k, and the wire transfer that changed everything07:16 Raising a fund in a bear market11:02 Why most tokens go to zero17:48 What he actually looks for in a founder20:09 Do tokens still have value?25:33 Is paying influencers dead?30:52 Why stablecoins are the story right now36:56 How to pitch him without getting ignored51:39 Is AI a bubble?58:44 Building when AI can copy you in an hour1:03:01 A message to his 17 year old selfGuestWill Patterson - Head of Ventures, Hashgraph Ventures / Founder, Third Earth CapitalWebsite (Hashgraph Ventures): https://hashgraphvc.com/LinkedIn (Hashgraph Ventures): https://www.linkedin.com/company/hashgraph-ventures/X (Will): https://x.com/iwillpatLinkedIn (Will): https://www.linkedin.com/in/whpatter/HostKeira Nesdale - Portfolio Manager at MH VenturesX: https://x.com/RealMissAILinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keiranesdaleInstagram: https://instagram.com/RealMissAIDealflow PodcastX: https://x.com/dealflowpodcastApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dealflow/id1859528286Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6RKf6kRL2q0XEgQeYp9r0dYouTube: https://youtube.com/@DealFlowPodcastMH VenturesWebsite: https://mhventures.ioX: https://x.com/mhventures LinkedIn: https://ky.linkedin.com/company/mhventure#HashgraphVentures #CryptoVC #Web3 #Blockchain #Stablecoins #Bitcoin #DeFi #AI #EarlyStage #Founders #Crypto #VentureCapital #StartupAdvice #DealFlowPodcast

In this episode, Keira sits down with Simon Dedic, Co-Founder of Moonrock Capital.Simon spent years in a lab at Oxford working on one of the deadliest cancers there is, on a clear path to a career in science. Then he walked away from all of it. He took a bank loan at the bottom of the 2018 bear market, lost most of it, and stayed anyway. In 2019 he started Moonrock with his own money, no outside investors and no safety net. Six years and 76 investments later he is still here.He is refreshingly blunt about how venture actually works. Most funds are just waiting to see who A16Z backs. Being a real first check means having conviction before there is a product, revenue or a track record to point at.Simon tells the story of Collector Crypt, a fifty year old collector building something every investor in the room laughed at, now doing over a hundred million a year on Solana.The conversation also covers why he reads every DM but replies to almost none of them, why meme coins were the worst thing to happen to crypto and what they cost the industry, what he tells founders whose token is down 95 percent, why the most convincing person in the room is often the scammer, and why he thinks attention is now the only genuinely scarce thing left.Key Takeaways:The best time to raise is when you do not need the money.Most investors are just copying whoever led the round.Back the person, not the idea. Early founders pivot anyway.If a token does not behave like equity, it is not worth owning.Meme coins turned crypto into a casino and burned a whole wave of newcomers.Software and content are getting cheap. Attention is the scarce thing now.Play long games with long-term people. Everything else is noise.01:15 Why the best time to raise is when you do not need it03:29 What a real first check actually looks like05:45 Judging a founder with no product and no numbers09:39 The Pokemon card company every VC laughed at13:19 Why attention is the only scarce asset left25:14 Quitting cancer research and taking a bank loan at the bottom31:01 Why meme coins were the worst thing to happen to crypto38:33 Your token is down 95 percent. Now what?41:27 The biggest red flags in a pitch43:46 Why nine out of ten DMs get no reply1:00:29 A message to his 17 year old selfGuest:Simon Dedic, Co-Founder, Moonrock CapitalX: @sjdedicX (Moonrock Capital): @MoonrockCapitalLinkedIn: Simon DedicLinkedIn (Moonrock Capital): Moonrock CapitalWebsite: moonrockcapital.ioHostKeira Nesdale - Portfolio Manager at MH VenturesX: https://x.com/RealMissAILinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keiranesdaleInstagram: https://instagram.com/RealMissAIDealflow PodcastX: https://x.com/dealflowpodcastApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dealflow/id1859528286Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6RKf6kRL2q0XEgQeYp9r0dYouTube: https://youtube.com/@DealFlowPodcastMH VenturesWebsite: https://mhventures.ioX: https://x.com/mhventures LinkedIn: https://ky.linkedin.com/company/mhventure

In this episode, Keira sits down with Greg Schvey, Chief Operating Officer at Yuma and one of the most credentialed repeat founders in crypto. Greg walked away from a fixed income job at Citibank for Bitcoin in 2012, built the first institutional crypto data platform and sold it to DCG, then built an infrastructure company the London Stock Exchange Group acquired.He is now making the same bet again, this time on AI. His argument is simple. Bitcoin took money out of the hands of a few powerful gatekeepers. BitTensor is trying to do that to intelligence.Greg explains how it actually works in plain English. Anyone anywhere can compete to build a specialised AI model and get paid on results alone. Nobody needs to know who you are. He tells the story of someone working in the energy industry who entered a drug discovery competition using an algorithm built for a completely different problem, and beat the pharmaceutical industry's gold standard.The conversation also covers why he thinks cheap open source models are about to squeeze OpenAI and Anthropic on price, what happened when a hundred billion parameter model was trained over the public internet, what it is like to build two companies with your brother and have it actually work, and the message he would send to his 17 year old self.KEY TAKEAWAYS- Bitcoin opened up money. BitTensor is trying to open up intelligence.- Anyone can compete on these networks. Nobody needs to know your name.- Someone from the energy industry beat big pharma at drug discovery.- Centralised AI has a hard ceiling. There are only so many data centres you can build.- Cheap open source models are about to put real price pressure on the giants.- Work out what you actually believe and go at it hard. The rest is noise.KEY TIMESTAMPS00:03 Intro00:44 What decentralised AI actually means02:48 What happens if the AI giants keep the keys04:55 How BitTensor works, explained simply09:11 The stranger who beat the drug industry13:53 Why this is the same bet he made on Bitcoin28:16 Leaving Citibank for Bitcoin in 201231:06 Building two companies with his brother33:49 What he looks for in early founding teams43:12 A huge model trained over the public internet46:40 Are we in an AI bubble?GuestGreg Schvey - Chief Operating Officer, YumaWebsite (Yuma): https://www.yumaai.com/X (Yuma): https://x.com/yumagroupLinkedIn (Yuma): https://www.linkedin.com/company/yumagroup/X (Greg): https://x.com/GSchveyLinkedIn (Greg): https://www.linkedin.com/in/gschvey/HostKeira Nesdale - Portfolio Manager at MH VenturesX: https://x.com/RealMissAILinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keiranesdaleInstagram: https://instagram.com/RealMissAIDealflow PodcastX: https://x.com/dealflowpodcastApple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dealflow/id1859528286Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6RKf6kRL2q0XEgQeYp9r0dYouTube: https://youtube.com/@DealFlowPodcastMH VenturesWebsite: https://mhventures.ioX: https://x.com/mhventures LinkedIn: https://ky.linkedin.com/company/mhventure

In this episode, Keira sits down with Spencer Applebaum and Shayon Sengupta, the newly appointed general partners and co-heads of ventures at Multicoin Capital, one of the oldest and largest funds focused entirely on crypto.They break down, in plain language, how Multicoin actually picks winners, why they will hire an analyst off a single essay instead of a resume, and how AI has rewritten what it takes to get funded. The conversation also covers why most people will soon use crypto without realising it, why a quiet market is the best time to invest, and the personal bets that got Spencer and Shayon to where they are today.Key takeaways:AI now lets a founder do six months of work in a single weekendOne of crypto's biggest funds will hire you without ever reading your resumeWhy a quiet, fearful market is the best time to invest, not the worstThe real reason most people will use crypto without ever knowing itWhat makes an investor back a founder, and what gets you passed overX (Spencer): https://x.com/SpencerApplebauX (Shayon): https://x.com/shayonsenguptaX (Keira): https://x.com/RealMissAILinkedIn (Keira): / keira-nesdale-b287899bX (Dealflow): https://x.com/dealflowpodcastGuest:Website (Multicoin Capital): https://multicoin.capitalHost:Website (MH Ventures): https://www.mhventures.io/LinkedIn (MH Ventures): / mhventureChapters:00:00 Meet Spencer and Shayon04:09 Who Multicoin is and how they invest11:14 Will you use crypto without knowing it?15:43 Why every asset is moving on-chain23:47 Why a down market is the best time to invest26:54 Spencer's college dropout story29:30 How to actually get hired at Multicoin43:57 How AI is changing who gets funded59:13 Why tokens are still a superpower01:04:47 A message to your 17-year-old self#Multicoin #MulticoinCapital #Crypto #VentureCapital #Web3 #Blockchain #Stablecoins #DeFi #AI #CryptoInvesting #Founders #Startups #DealFlowPodcast