Sheel Mohnot

Co-Founder / GP

2019 - Current

BTV is a seed stage venture fund focused on building the future of fintech by leading seed and pre-seed rounds of fintech and fintech-adjacent companies.

Board Member

2019

Board Member

2020

Founder / GP

2016

I run a fund called 500 Fintech and invest in technology businesses that impact the financial world. The fund invests globally and was originally set up with my own capital, but now includes outside capital. We are typically but not always the first investors in our companies, and we help with capital but also connections and strategy. I've led investments (generally as the first institutional capital in) in Albert, Kin, Indio (acquired), ChipperCash, YayPay (acquired), Jones, Ethic, PeopleFund and some others. I try not to do boards, but sometimes I end up doing so anyway, as is the case in Albert, Kin, Jones, and Smile Identity.

Co-Founder

2015

The podcast where founders pitch investors. I started it in 2015 due to what I thought was a gap in the podcasting world. It worked really well and 100s of thousands of listeners from around the world tune in to hear what we think about startups. After we got acquired by Gimlet (and then Spotify) and moved the studio out of my office, I don't participate in all of the recordings. The podcast does well over $1m in ad revenue a year. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/the-pitch

self

2012

deals as a personal angel. Luckiest ones are Flexport, Ironclad, Ethos Insurance, ApartmentList. Most of them were at the seed stage. https://angel.co/sheel/

Co-Founder (not day-to-day involved)

2013

Thistle is a healthy food company, with a mission to provide access to delicious sustainable nutrition for all. We started the company because we found ourselves choosing convenience over health (in our previous banker, consultant, lawyer incarnations) and wanted to provide a sustainable healthy alternative, and didn't think the existing companies had solid business models. We were right about the other food companies, as most of them went out of business. Although I'm not involved in the business on a day-to-day basis, I still serve as a very active advisor. We're growing fast (#495 on the Inc5000 list!) and hiring for lots of positions! (front of the house, back of the house, technical, operations, etc).

Adjunct Professor

2012 - 2024

Taught "Creating and Financing Technology Ventures" Evaluated 4.85/5 by students Stopped teaching after one semester because it was interfering with my work/travel too much, though I enjoyed it immensely and am still in touch with students many years later.

Investment Committee

2016 - 2022

Catalyst Fund addresses a common problem for frontier market early-stage fintech startups: they have a hard time securing the capital and expertise needed to complete and test their products. This throttles innovation and limits the impact from new approaches. In 2016, Catalyst Fund started deploying grant capital from the Gates Foundation and JP Morgan Chase alongside of tailored advisory services to about 20 startup enterprises globally.

Co-Founder

2013 - 2016

Co-founded an auction company with GMV in the 100's of millions USD. Innovative Auctions Limited (IAL) is one of the worlds leading providers of services for high-stakes auctions for telecommunications spectrum, natural resources, electricity, and top-level domains. Our team includes economists, software engineers, auction managers, an in-house lawyer specialized in auctions, and quality assurance experts. Our exceptionally deep understanding of high stakes auctions results from projects with government regulators, bidders in spectrum auctions, non-governmental organizations, consulting firms, and economists in academia.