Fintech investor and co-founder/GP of Better Tomorrow Ventures, a pre-seed and seed-stage fintech VC firm.
Sheel notes the 30-year mortgage was designed for an era where you bought in your late 20s and owned outright by 60. For the median American retiree today, nearly 80% of net worth is home equity.
“So even today, for when people retire, the median American, when they retire, almost 80% of their net worth is the equity in their home.”
Sheel cites Japan's 1980s bubble, fueled partly by 50-to-100-year mortgages, where the land under the Imperial Palace was valued above all real estate in California. Tokyo home prices remain half their 1989 peak.
“So Japan did this in the '80s. They, they had a bunch of problems, like interest rates were zero and asset prices went through the roof at one point. A single property in Tokyo was worth more than all of the real estate in California. Like, it was an insane bubble. And part of that was they extended mortgage times to 50 years.”
Sheel pitches a tool that takes a homeowner's address, pulls satellite imagery, and instantly generates measurements plus sample designs for landscapers — modeled on Deep Lawn, which auto-quotes lawn care from aerial imagery for a few dollars per quote.
“And the idea for this came to me from a buddy of mine who has a company called Deep Lawn. All they do is they help lawn companies quote. And so the lawn company, you put in the address, it looks at satellite imagery, uses some AI to determine how much grass you have. Comes up with a square footage, it knows what you charge, and it instantly gives them a quote. And they charge like a couple dollars per quote.”
Steal thisBuild an AI-from-satellite instant-quote tool for one outdoor niche (landscaping, pools, decks, fences), then expand to the others.
Sheel pitches giving contractors an AI voice office manager for a few hundred dollars a month — answering calls 24/7, scheduling, texting follow-ups, and quoting — so they respond instantly, which dramatically raises win rates over slower competitors.
“So I think instead of a contractor hiring an office manager, you give them an AI office manager for like a few hundred bucks a month. And it's actually, you, you might think of it as a money saving thing, but it's actually not. It's more than that. It's like you have super fast response time. People responding round the clock.”
Steal thisSell contractors a few-hundred-a-month AI voice agent that answers, schedules, and follows up instantly — speed-to-lead is the wedge.
Sheel sees a longevity-sized opportunity around peptides, which people buy through sketchy 'dealers' since they're only legal for research use. The gap is trustworthy dosing guidance, safety, supply chain, and coaching — not direct sales.
“So I feel like there's some educational opportunity. There's some like dosing guidance, safety, some high trust supply chain and coaching opportunity in this space. But I don't know what it is. And the FDA approval thing obviously is a big problem.”
Steal thisBuild the most-trusted info/coaching brand in a legally murky category now, so you're positioned to sell or affiliate when rules clarify.
Sheel shares his own surrogacy economics: the full process costs roughly $150,000-$200,000, of which the carrier herself receives about $75,000, with the rest going to agency, legal, and medical fees.
“Yeah, so it costs roughly $150,000 to $200,000.”
Sheel argues surrogacy matching is broken because each agency only shows carriers on its own platform — like a realtor showing only their own listings. A broader matching marketplace that recruits more carriers (by paying them a bigger share) could be a strong, if not billion-dollar, business.
“Imagine if you were buying a home and your real estate agent could only show you homes that they had listed. That's kind of what it is today. I think there's an opportunity in making this much more common.”
Steal thisBuild a cross-platform surrogacy matching marketplace and grow carrier supply by offering carriers a larger cut.
Sheel uses Whatnot to illustrate fringe-to-huge: it began as a collectibles marketplace for Funko Pop toys and, five years later, is reportedly worth around $12 billion — a reminder to dominate a weird niche first.
“So I think Whatnot's a great, great one because it started out as a collectible marketplace for Funko Pop toys. And if you told me that a collectible marketplace for Funko Pop toys would 5 years later be worth, I think it's like $12 billion or something, I would say you're crazy. But you start somewhere and like you dominate that niche.”
Steal thisDominate one weird, underestimated niche completely before anyone believes it can become a giant market.
Sheel pitches a branded class-based EMS (electronic muscle stimulation) studio — a Barry's-style fun, 15-minute group workout in electrode suits — using member transformations as viral marketing, since no such studio exists yet in SF.
“But I think you basically build a Barry's of BMS where like you have a workout routine and it's really fun and there's a class and people put on this thing and they're used to it and, and they get jacked and people see them getting jacked.”
Steal thisWrap an emerging fitness gadget in a branded, social, class-based studio format and market the member transformations.
Sheel's contrarian stance: he hasn't read a book in 15 years because one podcast with an author delivers ~80% of the book's value, and the extra 20% isn't worth another 5 hours of reading.
“But if you like listen to a podcast, it's like one podcast by that author is at least 80% of the value of the book. And so is it worth spending another 5 hours reading to get the additional 20%? In my mind, no.”
Sheel's habit: when he has a bad experience with a brand, he finds and emails the founder or CEO directly instead of leaving a review. Founders want to know before it becomes a public complaint and often respond with fixes and white-glove treatment.
“The other one was just reach out to the owner. So this is lately a few things have happened like I'm booking. It's my wife's 40th birthday and we're— we booked a trip for like 40 of her friends and I was having some trouble with the cruise. It's a Virgin Voyages and I was having some trouble, so I just reached out to the CEO. I just found the CEO's email and I reached out to him”
Steal thisWhen a brand disappoints, email the founder directly and frame it as helpful feedback before you'd ever leave a review.
Selling colored iPod mini headphones, Sheel Mohnot exploited early Facebook's $10/day campus flyer ads by getting high-school friends at huge state schools to hand over their logins, letting him reach 30-40k students per campus for the same $10.
“And the way that they monetized Facebook at that time was you could set up a flyer. So like I went to Carnegie Mellon. I could pay $10 a day to have the sidebar at Carnegie Mellon. And it was basically for like a flyer. Like if I was throwing a party, I could advertise on Facebook. And so what I did was I went back to my high school friends who went to the biggest colleges. So like University of Michigan, Ohio State, like those, Penn State, those kind of colleges where they had like 30 or 40,000 students. And I said, give me your Facebook ID.”
Steal thisWhen an ad platform prices by account rather than reach, route your spend through accounts that unlock the largest audience for the same flat fee.
Sheel Mohnot's college-era business making and selling replica iPod mini headphones (off a $20k initial outlay for 10,000 units) netted him roughly $80,000.
“Yeah. So how much money did you make? I want to say net was probably like $80,000.”
Sheel Mohnot invested in Flexport at a $10M valuation; the company later reached several billions, and the shares he sold returned more than 100x.
“Yeah. Um, and I sold some of my shares, uh, and the ones that I sold, it was more than 100x return.”
Demand for the Indian retirement community Sheel Mohnot's parents joined was so strong that buyers prepaid the full price and still waited 5 years to get their home, evidence of how underserved these affinity communities are.
“For this, for the one my parents did, there was a waiting list. So my parents prepaid, they put 100% of the money down and didn't get the home for 5 years.”
Sheel Mohnot's wife's idea: a fast, standalone teeth-cleaning shop modeled on Drybar (blow-dry chains) where you pop in for a 20-minute cleaning for $100-$120 every couple of months, unbundled from the full insurance-gated dental checkup.
“And so the idea is you go to a place and all they do is clean your teeth. They don't do any— they don't do x-rays, they don't do anything else. You're in and out, 20 minutes, $100, $120, something like that. And she would do that like every couple months, and that's the idea.”
Steal thisUnbundle the one routine service people want more often than insurance allows, productize it as a fast cash-pay shop, and franchise it to existing dentists.
Sheel Mohnot invested in Pizzeria Luna, which arms mid-range hotels (where guests constantly order pizza, often Domino's) with an oven, hand-tossed pizza shipped from near Naples, and table tents, the Hunt Brothers model applied to hotels.
“And the idea is when people go to hotels, they most often order pizza, like mid-range hotels, people order pizza constantly. Domino's is coming in. So the idea was, what if we gave you the ability to sell a high-quality pizza? And originally it was like, we'll give you the oven and the pizza that's like hand tossed, made in Italy, actually shipped over from Italy, tastes amazing.”
Sheel Mohnot pays his taxes via card at a 1.82% government processing fee and earns 4% back on the US Bank Smartly card, netting roughly 2% on his entire tax bill, a hack that scales to any large spend like Facebook ad budgets.
“I pay 1.82% to the government to use my credit card. And then I get 4% back from US Bank. It's just like, I'm getting 2% back on my taxes.”
Steal thisPay large unavoidable bills (taxes, ad spend) on a 4% cashback card when the processing fee is under ~2%, pocketing the spread.
The US Bank Smartly card pays 4% cash back on everything but requires $100k held at US Bank; Sheel Mohnot satisfies it by holding $100k of a single stock in a US Bank brokerage account, getting the perk for effectively no cost.
“And now it's called US Bank Smartly and you have to have, you have to have $100,000 with US Bank. But what I did is I just have a brokerage account with a single stock and that's my $100,000 at US Bank. It's a great deal. Like, they, they're losing money on me for sure.”
Steal thisMeet a card's asset-minimum requirement by parking investments you'd hold anyway in that bank's brokerage, so the perk costs you nothing.
Fintech investor Sheel Mohnot says stablecoins are real but overhyped: the genuinely hard part of moving money is the on-ramp and off-ramp (guarded because of money laundering and tax-evasion controls), and stablecoins don't solve that.
“I think still at the end of the day, I think people, people, people are overhyping stablecoins because at the end of the day, you need an on-ramp and an off-ramp to get money. And they aren't that.”
Sheel Mohnot's customer-service hack: he quickly reads whether a phone agent is good or bad, and if bad, he simply hangs up and calls back to draw a more capable rep who can actually make exceptions happen.
“one thing I do is like, I know pretty quickly if I've got a good agent or a bad agent. And then if I have a bad agent, I hang up and call again.”
Steal thisWhen a support agent can't or won't help, hang up and redial for a fresh rep instead of escalating with the same person.
Sheel Mohnot's father, an IIT grad who raised money from his community to fly to the US and arrived with exactly $300 in his pocket, sold encyclopedias door-to-door across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama and became the best encyclopedia salesman in the country.
“He came with exactly $300 in his pocket. And so he raised a bunch of money and he had to pay them back. And he had the stipend as a master's student and then a PhD student. And he decided to work as an encyclopedia salesman. Indian guy, thick Indian accent at that time. He was in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama door to door selling encyclopedias. And he became the best encyclopedia salesman in the country.”
Sheel Mohnot ran auctions for new top-level domains like .app, .blog and .church, brokering roughly half a billion dollars' worth of these new internet extensions.
“So I sold internet real estate to the tune of half a billion dollars worth. And when I say internet real estate, I mean top-level domains, which is like, a domain would be like million.com, but a top-level domain would be the .com part. So there are all these new ones that came out, .app, .blog, .church. Some of these you've probably seen. My company was responsible for selling a lot of those.”
To apply for a new top-level domain in 2012 you paid a non-refundable $185,000 fee. With 2,000 applications submitted, the governing body collected $360 million before any domain even changed hands.
“So let's say that me and you applied for .app. You had to pay $185,000 just to apply. And by the way, they got 2,000 applications, which means they made $360 million in application fees.”
Sheel's auction format: a timed clock ticks up every 20 minutes, starting at $200K times the number of bidders, rising by that increment (minimum 20%) each round until only one bidder remains.
“So in a 3-party auction, we'd start the bidding at $200,000 times the number of bidders. So it'd be $600,000 to start. Every 20 minutes it goes up by $600,000 with a minimum increment of 20%. You know, once we get to $3.6 million, it goes up higher.”
Steal thisIn a multi-party standoff, use a timed ascending clock so nobody has to reveal their true ceiling up front.
In Sheel's domain auctions, the winner's payment doesn't go to ICANN — it's split among the losing bidders. He frames it as the cleanest way to dissolve any 50/50 partnership: whoever values it most pays the others to walk away.
“So in this auction, the people that get paid are you and Donald Trump. So the $10 million that I paid— go away. Yeah, we pay— we're paying you off effectively to go away. And really what this is, is like anytime you're splitting a partnership, this is like a good way to do it. So like if you and me we're in business together, 50/50 JV, right? How would we decide, like, how much would I have to pay you to, like, give you my shares?”
Steal thisTo dissolve a 50/50 partnership fairly, run an auction where the high bidder buys out the other and the payment goes to the loser, not a third party.
The most valuable top-level domains in Sheel's auctions went for over $100 million each, while even the cheapest still cleared around half a million dollars.
“It's over $100 million. Wow. Yeah. So I can't talk about the exact prices on the names, but the top couple went for over $100 million and the cheapest one probably still went for like half a million bucks.”
Needing every party present to make an auction work, Sheel memorized faces from LinkedIn, then spotted a hard-to-reach bidder smoking outside a Buenos Aires conference — so he bought cigarettes he didn't smoke just to strike up a casual conversation.
“So this party that I could not get in touch with no matter how hard I tried, I was in Buenos Aires, saw this guy outside smoking, and then I was like, how do I get in touch with this guy? I don't smoke cigarettes, but I bought a pack of cigarettes and then I just went outside and started smoking a cigarette with him. And I was like, as if I hadn't been trying to get in touch with him this whole time. I was like, just shooting the shit.”
Sheel contrasts a sealed-envelope bid with a live escalating auction: a sealed second-price bid is 'fairest' because everyone bids their true max, while a live war pushes prices higher through emotion and momentum.
“I mean, so typically in that thing, what I would've suggested is like you each put a number in an envelope and, and that's what it is. Right. But actually like, What you guys did allows the bidding to go higher, right? Because there's like excitement and like you said, like they had to go out and come back in. Yeah. But like generally in auction theory, like we optimize for the fairest price. Okay. And we're not necessarily optimizing for the highest price.”
Steal thisIf you want bidders to reveal their true ceiling, use a second-price sealed bid so the winner pays only one increment over the runner-up.
A registry paid roughly $3M for the .photography extension, which seemed absurd — but they sold about 100,000 names at ~$50 each in the first year, making $5M, on what behaves like a recurring annuity.
“But in that first year, they were selling these names for like $50, a .photography name, and they sold like 100,000 in that first year. In the first year, they made $5 million out of it. And then if you think about it, recurring, right? It's a recurring— it's like kind of like an annuity.”
When Apple wasn't yet selling replacement earbuds, a 21-year-old Sheel flew to a Hong Kong electronics fair, negotiated by calculator, and sourced look-alike iPod earbuds — color-matched to the iPod Mini — for 80 cents apiece including packaging.
“And so ultimately I got these headphones. I got these Apple headphones for $0.80 apiece, including packaging, everything. And I did like I at this Hong Kong fair, I went, I like negotiated and I went to visit the factory.”
At 22, Sheel bought his first rental property in an up-and-coming Pittsburgh neighborhood for $47,000 — about one month's San Francisco rent for the whole house.
“Okay. Close. Yeah. I paid $47,000 for it.”
Sheel's real estate edge: a building with four units or fewer still counts as residential, so you get a favorable residential loan instead of a costlier commercial one — making small multi-units a sweet spot.
“realized that there's an there's a good opportunity if you buy a multi-unit. So like if you buy under a 4-unit, it's still considered residential. Yep. So you don't have to get a commercial loan. You get a residential loan, which is favorable rates. So I started, I really liked the idea of buying multi-units.”
Steal thisBuy small multi-units of four units or fewer to qualify for a residential mortgage instead of a commercial loan.
As one of Facebook's first advertisers, Sheel realized early campus ads were priced per school. So he collected the Facebook passwords of friends at big universities like Michigan and Ohio State and posted ads as them to grab the cheapest ad space.
“So what I did at that time was I got friends who went to the University of Michigan and like Ohio State, and I was just like, what are the biggest universities that I have friends at? Because that's gonna be the cheapest ad space. So I got their Facebook passwords and I posted as if I was them, right? These ads. And that, that ended up being like amazing. Clever.”
Sheel and Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen bonded over a growth hack: they advertised their Uber referral codes on Google AdWords, pocketing the $10 referral credit and effectively buying Uber rides for 20 cents on the dollar.
“So you were just advertising. We were just advertising our referral code on Google. And so we were buying Uber for 20 cents on the dollar.”
Sheel's angel checklist runs through Team, Technology need, TAM, Traction, Terms, and Totally Random (do you actually like the founder) — with a half-joking 'Faith' as the hardest T. He starts with Team, betting on founders who 'break through walls.'
“But you know, I said that early on and it was really strength of team. So like the first T is team. Okay. Like this guy, you know, I could tell he's somebody who's going to break through walls to make success happen. And not only that, like he'd already been successful. He had this other company called Import Genius.”
Steal thisScreen early-stage investments against Team, Technology, TAM, Traction, Terms, and whether you genuinely like the founder.
Sheel's $25,000 seed check into Flexport at a $10M cap is now worth 87x after dilution as the company hit a $3B valuation — turning into over $2 million.
“So actually where this one sits today, I think is 87 times. So that $25,000 ended up becoming over $2 million.”