Kevin Jiang: From Founding SoftBank's $100B Vision Fund to Launching Mangusta Capital at 32

What we're really trying to build is a long-term platform that's known to be the number one AI-focused, application-focused Bento Capital Fund. Fund one, you know, make an amazing portfolio of companies and build a real good track record. Our goal really is to be known for our performance. And I think the Mongoose's name is also very representative of that. I was at SoftBank for nearly 10 years, helping build out the Vision Fund, which is the largest venture capital growth equity fund in the world.

And being able to work side by side with Masa across those 10 years was a super amazing experience. At 32, it's like a lot of people would even dream to be like getting into Goldman or getting into a VC or getting into private equity or whatever it is. And for you to have checked off all of those milestones of got into Harvard already, got into Goldman, did my time at Goldman, did my time at Apollo, did nearly a decade at SoftBank.

Now I'm going to go venture and do my own company and raise my own fund. And I already have this track record and I'm only 32 years old. Like, how did you do that?

Meet the architect behind SoftBank's biggest wins. When SoftBank Vision Fund deployed $100 billion to reshape the global tech landscape, Kevin Chang was there from table. Part of the founding investment team that wrote the playbook of a mega scale venture. Over nearly a decade at SoftBank, Kevin led the marquee deals that defined an era, Flexport, ShipBob, and Wiz, generating billions in returns and serving on boards through IPOs and exits.

But what Kevin saw was something that others missed. The future wasn't just about throwing capital at problems. It was about AI transforming entire industries. So he did what a few founding team members dared. He left the world's largest tech fund to build something completely new. Today, Kevin is the co-founder and managing partner of Mangusta Capital, a venture firm. He is deploying capital to accelerate America's AI transformation, with a focus on vertical AI startups, quietly redefining industries like logistics, healthcare, and enterprise infrastructure.

Not chasing the hype, but solving hard sector-specific problems with lasting impact. Since its inception, Mangusta Capital Fund has delivered the top decile performance 2.2 MOIC for 144% IRR. The fund is now nearly fully subscribed. And the next closing has been set for September 30th, 2025. From Goldman Sachs to the Soros Fund Management to Apollo Global Management, Kevin has seen capital markets from every angle. But his real expertise, spotting the infrastructure plays, that power entire ecosystems.

And he did all of this by the age of 32. This is my friend, Kevin. The investor who helped build SoftBank's empire. And now is finally getting a chance to build his own. So what we're really trying to build is a long-term platform that's known for to be the number one AI-focused, application-focused venture capital fund. And so, you know, similar to other VC funds, we'd like to start with, obviously, our fund today, fund one, you know, make an amazing portfolio of companies and build a really good track record that ultimately we can parlay into raising fund two, fund three, and onwards.

You know, our goal really is to be known for our performance. And I think the mongusta name is also very representative of that because mongusta means mongoose in Italian. So we're very focused on being fierce like the mongoose. And for those people who don't know, the mongoose is like kind of like a little honey badger or, you know, an animal that you wouldn't really imagine to be super fierce and powerful. But it's actually a very symbolic and mythical creature in a lot of cultures where you actually can, it can fight snakes and cobra.

And there's like a fable called Rikki-Tikki-Tavi where, you know, a mongoose saves a family. And so for us, we kind of think of ourselves as the mongoose in Silicon Valley where there's obviously huge firms out there like the A16Zs of the world that have obviously built an amazing platform and brand for themselves. But they are huge behemoths and they've raised billions of dollars. You know, we're obviously playing with them much less.

But I think we want to have just as big of an impact and find just as amazing companies and entrepreneurs to back so that we are known to be the best at what we do. So it's kind of hearkening to the idea that we are a brand new player on the block, but we want to be able to punch above our weight. And what do you think it is about what you guys offer from the funding to the team to the mentorship that really differentiates you from all these other firms?

So why would a startup want to take your money? Yes, absolutely. So it's a good question. One that comes up both with LPs that we talk to as well as with companies that we end up funding and startups that we work with. So I think there's really three main kind of pillars of it when I think about what makes us differentiated and what is our secret sauce as a firm, right? First is really my experience, background and network that I bring to the table.

So I was at SoftBank for the last nearly 10 years helping build out the Vision Fund, which is the largest intercapital growth equity fund in the world. And being able to work side by side with Masa across those 10 years was a super amazing experience, right? I got to fly to Tokyo a bunch of time bringing founders to meet with him, negotiating deals in back rooms, figuring out how to kind of bring in the ecosystem that SoftBank has to support our founders.

And then ultimately being able to take a lot of these companies to, you know, exits through M&A or IPOs. And so, you know, having that experience of meeting thousands of unicorn founders and helping them from their journey from the bottom to the very end is something that a lot of founders that I talk to really value the expertise that I can bring to the table to help advise them and support them as they go about their journey.

And so that includes everything from, for example, if they're looking for growth equity funding down the road, you know, I have a very strong network of folks from all the major firms in Silicon Valley that can write those 50, 100, 200 million dollar checks, which we can't as a smaller early stage fund. But those are my friends at other places that I've been able to introduce our portfolio companies to. So in this environment where capital isn't free anymore and it's really hard to get your company funded, that's one thing that portfolio company founders really care about that I'm able to provide to them.

The other thing is, is I would say just the network of Luxottica. So the second pillar of our kind of ecosystem and our kind of core expertise is being able to bring in our corporate partners, whether that's Luxottica or others, to be able to help them with, you know, bringing in them as a customer partner, you know, an ecosystem partner to share learnings as well. And that's something that a lot of our portfolio companies also really care about and being able to really leverage that ecosystem that we have to bear.

And then the third and final thing that I think really is a little bit more intangible, but I think certainly differentiates us, is that I'm really focused on building relationships. And so for me, a lot of the founders that I back and a lot of the founders that I spend a ton of time with are people that I've known for many years. So people that are either friends, former colleagues, you know, I followed them when they were building their previous company.

Maybe it was a soft bank portfolio company that we had backed before. And now we're going to back, you know, now they're starting their next company. And from the ground up, you know, starting at the pre-seed or seed stage, I have first kind of pick of the founders that I want to continue to build that relationship with. And so for many of them, they care about working with someone they trust and they value. And I think that can't be understated, especially in the early stage side where really everyone has, every VC has a real shot of being able to invest in all these companies.

It's a question of who the founder selects to work with. And I think a lot of that comes down to who do they actually feel like they have a good relationship with and who do they get along with, who do they trust. And so I think that's another very important element that, you know, I've always felt like I have a very strong skill set in. But it's hard to really leverage that in growth equity and later stage investing, because frankly, all the growth funds are going after the same companies.

And all of those late stage companies may not necessarily care as much about the relationship they have, but rather just what capital and valuation can they get from later stage growth investors. So I think that was one of the key things where I wanted to bring that skill set to the early stage where I know it's much more potent. And what about with LPs when you're having conversations with them? What is the true selling factor that differentiates your team, your philosophy and why you're most excited to align with them?

Yeah. I mean, frankly, it's a lot of the stuff that I just kind of talked about, because frankly, if you're able to win the investments and win the deals, that means you're going to be able to create a really good portfolio and a really strong performance track record of returns for your LPs, which is ultimately what most outside of maybe some strategics who want more strategic benefits involved with their investment in the fund.

But for the most part, if you win great investments, founders and deals, that translates into LPs who believe you have a winning strategy as well. But I do think the relationship element is certainly one that I also think a lot of LPs care about. Because if you think about these LPs, a lot of times family offices care about having much more of a closer interaction with the GPs that they're working with. And they actually want to use it as a learning exercise in terms of learning about AI, technology investing, and how they can really get deeper into it.

But also getting co-invest opportunities, you know, sometimes they want to, what that means is they want to invest directly into companies, as opposed to just investing in a broad, you know, based like funds. And so being able to offer them those co-investment opportunities into our portfolio companies is something that we can also provide as a GP that is more focused on building those relationships, right? I don't want to name any names, but a lot of the larger, later stage, platform, Silicon Valley funds, you know, here that have raised billions of dollars,

they have hundreds or thousands of LPs. They just cannot provide that same level of personalized service, nor do they care about providing that same level of relationship and kind of one-on-one interaction with all the GPs that sometimes these LPs are looking for. So it's just a, it's a different kind of value proposition that I bring to the table where I actually really do try to make a meaningful relationship with a lot of the LPs that we're talking to.

Can you tell us a little bit about your track record? You've had some amazing deals like Flexport, Wiz, XAI. How did you cultivate the relationships? Again, you were talking about the network, the connections that you built, and then winning those deals, and then the deals becoming winners themselves. Can you talk us through a little bit of the strategy, how you approach building relationships, and then how to win? Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, I think those are definitely great examples from SoftBank, right? But they are a little bit more on the growth side of things, where I will say the relationship element of things is not necessarily the most important thing that a founder at the growth stage is looking for. So a lot of times, growth stage investors are just more looking for how much capital can you invest? So how large is your check size?

And what valuation can you give me? And so that's why I kind of go back to one of the reasons why I wanted to go more early stage is because I think the relationship matters a lot more at that stage. You know, everyone, there's a lot of VC firms out there that can write a $1 to $5 million check, and it's more of a question of how do you win that deal? How do you win over that founder, right? And so in the case of, you know, situations like that where you are really trying to win a deal and source a deal,

I think a big part of it is just really going back to basics of like, what does it mean to be like a trusted friend or partner to someone, right? I think a big part of it is, you know, developing a rapport in terms of being genuine, authentic, and how you communicate with them, not hiding anything, not sugarcoating anything, not saying anything behind their back, like very simple things, to be honest. But you'd be surprised how many people aren't very authentic and aren't able to really build these meaningful relationships with people.

I think a big part of it is supporting them, helping them with whatever it is that they need help with. So, for example, introductions to other investors, you know, for example, giving them strategic advice on how they should approach go-to-market, how they should approach hiring, you know, helping them maybe with some interviews and helping them source good candidates to hire down the road, helping them figure out how to negotiate contracts with customers or other investors, right?

These are all things that a founder is looking for someone who can actually help them navigate these types of situations. And so it sounds all very simple, actually, but you'd be surprised how many people actually do put in the effort or don't put in the effort to actually do these things, right? And then ultimately, it's finding ways to work with people that you enjoy working together with and playing together with, right?

So it can also be something as simple as, do I actually want to have dinner with, you know, this person? And this, you know, does this founder actually want to spend time with me? If we had to go on a trip to, I don't know, Hawaii or do, you know, play a tennis match or play basketball, like, would I actually enjoy spending time with this person? Because once an investor is in your cap table, it is very a long-term journey, right?

You want to be able to really feel like you're actually enjoying spending time with whoever it is you're doing business and working together with. So I think that's another big element of it is you can approach it from a, I think it's very short-sighted to approach it from a transactional standpoint where, you know, hey, I'm just investing in your company, that's it. But rather, like, I find it very valuable and important for me to actually really build a personal relationship with each of these founders and say, hey, like, can I get to know you as a person?

What are your interests? What is your kind of family life? How can I kind of really support you both in your business but also in your personal life and integrate all that together? Because I do frankly think this is a human business at the end of the day. This is a relationship business. And obviously everyone does work and likes to work. But there's also other elements to life. And you want to make sure that you understand all of those other elements of someone's life as well.

So those are the things that I really think about whenever I interact with founders, whether it's the first meeting or the fifth meeting or the tenth meeting. You know, it's a lot of really how do I get to understand that person at a deeper level across all of their different facets and really try to build a meaningful connection there where they also understand who I am and where I come from. And is this a good fit?

Right. Sometimes it's just for whatever reason there may not be a good fit. And that's fine. You each go your separate ways. But really, like, my belief in life is that you want to work with people that you do connect with and there is somewhat of a natural fit on. And I pride myself in trying to find those people when I invest in them as well. Thank you for breaking down the playbook on how to build those authentic relationships with founders.

And I'm sure that that instills a level of trust in them when they have this rapport. And that when you are genuinely interested in adding value to their lives, that they would be so keen on working with you again and again, especially as their company continues to grow, that you can both benefit from that relationship. What about working with executives? Your time at SoftBank, you were talking about traveling back to Japan, meeting with the executive leaders.

How do you build that connection and that level of also trust and this sense of building such a great relationship that you are the one that gets exposure to these types of deals? Yeah. It's an interesting question, right? You know, going back to maybe thinking about working in a more corporate kind of environment, like as you start to interact with people who are at the C-suite level of maybe your company or your organization, what is the right way to kind of interact and work to make sure that you present yourself in the best light?

Right. I think that's kind of what you're asking. It's like politics. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, which is a very fair question. Look, everyone has their own style, right? There's no one answer of like, this is how you should do it and that's it. I think everyone has a different way of doing it. My personal belief, which I think generally has served me well, is really do good work and show that you know what you're doing and you can add a lot of value.

Mm-hmm . And then I think the second is really speak up when you have something that is worth speaking up about. Mm-hmm . You know, I've never been someone who is super salesy and always speaks up in the meeting and maybe that comes from perhaps the Asian background of like, I grew up as a first-generation immigrant and in the Bay Area and my parents, you know, came from China and they never had kind of the American mindset of like, always speak up in meetings and everything like that.

Right. And, you know, I think that works for some people certainly can work very well. But for me, I've always felt that comes a bit unnatural. And so for me, I've always wanted to be focused on deliver really good work and then speak up when I have something very meaningful and very impactful to say. Mm-hmm . Because when people see that I've spoken up and I don't speak up that often, it means that I have something really important to say if I'm going to speak up.

Yeah. So I think that has actually served me quite well. Obviously, you want to read the situation and read the people and know the people that you're working with because that certainly works for some people and it may not work for others. Mm-hmm . But I think a big piece of it is really trying to figure out what your kind of C-suite or executive management likes, right? So, you know, I'm talking for myself like what has worked for me because the people that I worked with kind of operated under that circumstance where that you don't need to speak up all the time.

In fact, if you spoke up all the time, it'd probably be perceived negatively. Mm-hmm . But that may not be the case depending on where you work. So it is very much like read the situation, read the people, get to know the people and see what works for them versus other people. So it is case by case, really. Of course. But that's great advice that when you choose your timing to speak wisely, people will really lean in and listen.

Can you tell us a story of how you built that close relationship with Matsuyoshi-san? Mm-hmm . And the time that you had together with him? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, he's a guy that's running around super busy all the time. So to be able to get, you know, 15, 30 minutes even with him is a lot of work, right? And you know that those 15 or 30 minutes you get is like extremely important. So you have to capitalize on it.

And, you know, that was certainly the case for the first kind of five years or so when we were, you know, investing at a very, very fast pace at the Vision Fund because we had a lot of capital and we wanted to invest in... There's a lot happening in Silicon Valley and a lot of amazing companies emerging and AI was just starting to kind of get off the ground and we wanted to really invest in the leading companies out there.

And so I remember over the course of many different deals, I was able to get really good exposure to Masa, educating him on what kind of companies we were looking at, bringing forward founders that we thought were really impressive and ultimately helping him strike a lot of these deals that we wanted to do. So I think it was in 2020 or so 2020, we were looking at a lot of robotics companies. And so there was a really interesting robotics company that was doing fulfillment for warehouses and e-commerce services that Masa was super excited about.

We had brought the founders to Tokyo and then at the end of the meeting, Masa was like, Kevin, I need you to close this deal. I want to own 20% of this company and you need to make it happen. And, you know, when Masa gives you a command like that, you've got to go and make it happen, right? So even though the founders didn't want to sell that much of their company, they didn't want to raise that much money, like you've got to figure out as the deal team leader, how do you really make this happen?

And so I remember that very distinct kind of occurrence because it's like he's just, Masa is such a charismatic and very commanding figure that, and he's such a optimist too, right? And he's someone who always believes so much in the possibilities of the future and all the amazing things that the entrepreneurs we work with can do. And so he's always pushing the boundary on like, I want to invest more, I want to do more.

And that energy is very contagious as well sometimes where he brings you into the fold and he wants you to also be a part of his vision or his dream of what he wants to achieve. So, you know, that was just one of the examples where I just distinctly remember being very motivated and excited to kind of help get what we needed done in terms of the specific investment. But like things like that would happen very frequently over the course of like the 12 deals that I led because, you know, he really wants to surround himself with like the most amazing entrepreneurs and be like a meaningful partner to each of them.

What did you learn from spending so much time with him and how did you close that deal? Well, I mean, ultimately it's all a negotiation, right? Like if you want to invest more, you want to own more of the company, you know, you find some way to sweeten the deal for the founders, right? Like maybe you find a way to provide more strategic value as part of the deal or maybe you raise the valuation or you sweeten the terms of the deal a little bit.

So, you know, that was kind of the way that we ended up getting that deal done ultimately. But it's not a very uncommon story, I think, in SoftBank for Masa because he's always someone who's when he gets excited about something, he just wants to go all in and he wants to invest more. He wants to establish a stronger partnership with the entrepreneurs. And so that's always part of the persona of what we have to figure out as a investment team is like, how do we accomplish what Masa wants, even if it seems impossible sometimes?

What did you learn from being with someone like that? This podcast is about mentorship and working and aligning yourself with people who are really admirable and have these great traits. Yeah. And your time being there for almost a decade, you must have absorbed a lot of wisdom and even the way that you lead. Yeah. No, it's an interesting, it's an interesting question. I mean, one thing to know about Masa is he's actually an amazing storyteller and salesperson, actually, which people don't necessarily appreciate as much as they should.

But he is extremely charming in person and, you know, he has created a bit of an aura for himself of this like Oracle figure, someone like Warren Buffett, but for technology where people look up to him and people respect him because of what he's been able to accomplish. Right. Nothing to scoff at, you know, obviously Alibaba has been an amazing investment. Arm has been an amazing investment. At one point, SoftBank was the largest shareholder of Nvidia.

Unfortunately, they sold it before it got to today. But, you know, he's made a lot of very good investments over the years. And he's built a little bit of this aura around him that he kind of continues to carry into a lot of his day to day interactions and meetings, which is that like he seems to know something that other people don't. Or he seems to have an idea of what's coming in the future that other people don't.

And he's not afraid to make bold, big, bold moves in those directions. And so I think, you know, for me, one of the things is kind of learning how do you present yourself? How do you storytell? How do you pitch kind of who you are and what makes you special? I think that is something that Masa does very well that I also kind of try to take on and learn from him. I think the other thing that he does really, really well is actually developing like bold convictions and moving boldly when he believes something is the case. Right.

I mean, he's made some huge bets where he's bought, you know, arm completely outright as a company, which has, you know, he bought it for 30 billion or so enterprise valuation. And now, you know, in the public markets, I think it's probably traded as high as five or six times that as a public company. And so he's made, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars from just that investment alone. And it was a very bold move at the time that people questioned.

But when he kind of saw all the things that were happening in AI, he wanted to make make that one of his core positions as core investments. Right. And it's paid off very handsomely since then. So I think one of the things that I've learned from him is you've also got to make these high conviction, large, impactful investments when you see something and know something that other people don't like. Don't be afraid to take a big bet.

And I think a lot of people forget that in investing, that is actually a very core concept of investing is if you just want a diversified portfolio that's going to on average return whatever the index returns, then you might as well buy the index. But the way that you actually outperform from an investing perspective is you actually develop large core positions in things that you have high conviction in. And those core positions actually outperform the rest of the market, which is what creates alpha or excess returns above where the rest of the average index is.

And so I think Masa has actually done a very good job of picking and choosing where to place those larger investments that are core part of his positions to be able to really extract as much alpha as he can from those. Let's talk about how you developed your investment thesis. And how did you hone your own ability to find what others may have missed or to be able to predict the future? Sure. Yeah, yeah. It's very funny because like my mom also says like, how do you like, would you see the future?

Like what makes you think that you're a good BC person? Like, are you able to see things other people don't? And it's funny because like, it's not really predicting the future per se, but I think it's more like going back to first principles and understanding things that make sense or things that don't make sense. And really trying to figure out like, do you agree or do you disagree with what other people are thinking and what the rest of the world is doing?

Right. And I think one of the main things that I saw very early on, say one or two years ago when this generative AI boom was starting was that everyone was really focused on hardware and infrastructure and the model layer. Right. Everyone was and still are piling into AI data centers, large language models, infrastructure as a service companies where it's helping provide compute and training models, generalized models, for example, using billions and billions of dollars.

And for me, I always thought, well, that's great. Like you need the foundation, of course. But then after you have the foundation and it's extremely competitive and you've got an amazing generalized model that you can work with and hardware that you work with, what is actually really valuable above that that you can build on? And that's where we came up with kind of our AI application thesis, which is that we want to invest in companies that can build and utilize all of the hardware and foundational models that are out there that are going to continue to get cheaper and cheaper and better and better, but really build something truly defensible and monetizable for specific industries.

So for us, you know, we're focused on finding, say, AI software that really makes, say, tax professionals more efficient and productive. So one of our portfolio companies is a company called TaxGPT that specifically does that. And what we find so compelling about it is because it has proprietary data, which no one else has access to. So they've been able to fine tune their product and their model to be specifically oriented toward tax professionals and tax data.

So generalized models don't have that. And it's going to be very hard for anyone else to replicate the same trove of data and fine tuning that they have such that it's become one of the best products for tax accountants. Right. Another company in our portfolio that's focused on consumer luxury goods. So they work with a lot of the largest brands out there like LVMH is a company called Markvision. And they essentially work to bring down counterfeit listings or fake goods on a lot of these online marketplaces.

And so we're really trying to they could have a massive data source of all of this visual information that can help them detect whether something is fake or authentic goods. And being able to take that down is very valuable for the large customers and brands out there because they're losing tons of money on brand protection and IP issues every year. Right. And so really we're looking for applications that are built upon this foundational layer that are able to truly deliver value and monetize, create revenues for these companies or save costs for these companies.

Because that's what we're really interested in in building businesses that are scalable, high margin and have a large market to go after. And I think for me that's that's really going back to the first principles of like what what is the point of AI and technology if they're not really improving things that we have today. Right. If they're not improving businesses, if they're not driving value, it's all cool and fun if we can like go and chat GPT and type in, you know, funny homework things or, you know, ask it to write like a story for me.

But where are we actually going to take these solutions and these these technologies to actually drive a difference in humanity and difference across industries? That's where we think there will be big changes. And these businesses are not as capital intensive as the foundational models and hardware that it's built on. So for me, it's it's not necessarily seeing the future, but just seeing from a first principles perspective, what makes the most sense and where we think amazing businesses are being built as opposed to where is everyone else rushing in to throw capital at and who is following who and what is Sequoia or Andreessen doing?

Like, I think that is a lot of the noise that frankly, I try to just make sure you stay you stay grounded above that. Yeah, thank you for breaking that down. I think you really saw the trend of what was happening and you built upon that. I think you identified exactly what humanity, where humanity was going to go and then how it could be improved in a sense for those that are developing their own investment thesis. Maybe a couple of years behind you. How do you think they should approach having their own unique point of view?

Yeah, I mean, I think a big part of it is start where you feel you have a edge or personal passion or interest in. So, you know, for me, I've always loved vertical software. So even before AI was a big thing, you know, at SoftBank, I spent a lot of time looking at restaurant software, at supply chain software, at healthcare software. I just felt like there were so many different industries across the world that were operating in like the dark ages, right? Using paper and pen.

For example, restaurant labor scheduling has always been a clipboard and pen type of thing where people clock in for their shift. They say, I'm going to sign up for, you know, the 10 a.m. shift here and the 5 p.m. shift here. And then they have to text their friends or the other workers in the restaurant to like swap shifts. We invested in a company at SoftBank that was focused on providing a technology tool to be able to automate and digitize a lot of this process. Right.

You know, you can think of other similar areas across every single sector and industry where software was able to make those industries much more efficient and solve a lot of these problems that, you know, that industries had. And so it was a very natural area that I was very interested in. And so when I started the fund, I knew that this was an area that I wanted to also spend more time in was verticalized AI solutions.

So what specific areas and industries do I think will now be really transformed by AI technology? And AI is so much more powerful than just traditional software. And so the opportunities are really endless. But I think it really came originally from this original passion of mine of really liking vertical software and seeing how it could impact a bunch of different industries. And so what I would say is like for, you know, investors out there thinking about what should I do?

You know, how do I develop my own thesis that's maybe differentiated? Think about like what you enjoy, what you know really well and what you want to spend your time on and see if there's ways that you can kind of develop a way of thinking about the world or conviction in some of the analysis you've done that is a little bit different perhaps from what others think. And use that as a starting point for how you want to kind of build your strategy.

Because the advice that I usually give folks when they're kind of asked for career advice is I usually say try to triangulate the three things when you're focused on kind of figuring out what you want to do. One is what do you enjoy doing? The second one is what are you good at doing? And the third one is where's the world going? And so typically I will say like try to find something that at least checks two out of three boxes, if not three, you know, ideally three out of the three boxes.

But that's really where you're going to find perhaps the most passion and excitement and happy and fulfillment, frankly, in your career is if you can try to find a way for all three of those to intersect. At 32, it's like a lot of people would even dream to be like getting into Goldman or getting into a VC or getting into private equity or whatever it is. And for you to have checked off all of those milestones of got into Harvard already, got into Goldman, did my time at Goldman, did my time at Apollo, did nearly a decade at SoftBank.

Now I'm going to go venture and do my own company and raise my own fund. And I already have this track record and I'm only 32 years old. Like, how did you do that? So excited to welcome this extremely distinguished guest, ecosystem builder and head of community in San Francisco, Christopher Floyd. He runs one of my favorite organizations in San Francisco, Founders Bay, along with Marian Becker. And here to talk to us a little bit about all the amazing things and how you guys can be involved in person through different conferences, events and get connected.

Christopher, so can you tell us a little bit more? First of all, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and I love what you're doing. Founders Bay, it's awesome. So we're based in San Francisco. We're a community of getting close to 80,000 members. That's huge, guys. You have to be a part of it. Yes, you have to be a part of it. So we're based in San Francisco, but our members are spread across the country, across the globe.

But we have a very high concentration of folks that are based here in the city. We do events constantly. We do large events, you know, 2,000 plus people. We also do smaller events. Basically, what we're trying to do is connect founders, investors, operators and even just tech enthusiasts to each other and give them an avenue to share ideas, collaborate and kind of expand their networks. At founderspay.com. Thank you.

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Be Creatives and I have partnered for a special discount of $150 off per month for the icons community. Please click the link here to sign up. Now I'm going to go venture and do my own company and raise my own fund. And I already have this track record and I'm only 32 years old. Like, how did you do that? Yeah. I don't know. It's not like I don't think it's something that you plan. Right. Like, it's not like I plan to do A, B, C, D.

It was more just like, OK, well, I've got to go to college because that's what my you know, that's what I probably want to do. I want to get an education and obviously as Asian parents like they want me to go to a really good college. So that was kind of very natural, like step one. And then it's like, OK, well, now I'm at a great college. You know, I've got to probably need to find a good job right afterwards, something that, you know, I'm excited about.

Hopefully my parents also like like to some extent a lot. The beginning of the journey in life is almost like following what like your parents set you up on this kind of path. Right. Obviously, that path kind of opens up at some point in your life where it's not just what your parents want. Like you've got to figure out what you want as well. In the very beginning from like high school to college to probably your first job, like there is definitely some parental influence.

So I think my parents were also very like, OK, go to a good school, get a good job. And I was thinking, OK, do I what should I do? Like I originally was like, oh, maybe I want to be a doctor, lawyer. You know, maybe I want to go into business. But what is there in business? And I had to figure out all the stuff that there was available in business. Right. I had to actually explore what is investment banking, what is sales and trading, what is a hedge fund, what is private equity.

I actually didn't know any of what these things were when I got to school. And ultimately, I started to learn about these things from my peers or upperclassmen or, you know, a lot of companies would come on campus to like talk to students and educate us about what they did and what else is out there. So I kind of like educated myself by going to these information sessions that these companies would host or talking to my classmates who had done an internship or talking.

I mean, I did tons of networking when I was at Harvard, too, with like alumni. And I would reach out and I'd say, hey, what you know, I'd love to learn more about what you do at, you know, X, Y, Z firm. Do you have internships like just kind of like networking and trying to expose myself to as much of that as possible so that I could get a good job when I graduated. Right. And so that's why I ended up at Goldman and then from Goldman, you know, in some ways, a lot of the first few steps of your career, I feel like when you're on this kind of path are almost set for you in the beginning.

But obviously, at some point, the path disappears. Right. Then you've got to make your own choices. But in the very first, like maybe three to five years of your career and college, it feels very much like there is this path that's been set up for you almost. And so at Goldman, everyone was looking at going into investing. So everyone wanted to go to the buy side, which means, you know, private equity or hedge funds or venture capital, like things that are focused on investing capital to generate returns. Right.

And so I ended up interviewing and learning about those fields as well. So like I interviewed at Apollo and I ended up getting an offer to join their private equity group. So I went and worked there for a bit as well. And so that was also part of the path because every investment banking analyst is also going through that same program and that same thought process of like thinking about if they want to go into that field, private equity or hedge funds or others.

So I would say that for a lot of those like check the boxes that you talked about, it's actually something that was almost like the set path for quite a while. And then I would say after you get to that kind of first private equity hedge fund investing job, that's kind of when the path disappears a little bit where you can stay there. You can go to business school, you could go do something else, you could go do something else, you could join a startup, you could pivot to do venture capital, like maybe you didn't like private equity.

You could go completely something different, you know, you could be a professor, you go back to school, like then the world of possibilities kind of opens up. And at that point, you've got to decide for yourself, I think, what do you want to do with your life? And I think that's where I kind of the funny thing is, I never took as focused of an approach to like thinking, okay, analyzing, what is it do I want to do? I kind of just I've always been a proponent of life kind of takes you where you're meant to go.

And so when I was at Apollo, I didn't really like the strategy that they were pursuing. I didn't really think it fit my personality and what I like to do. It was very value oriented. It was very financially financial engineering, very technical in terms of like adjusting financial models for very small changes in projections based on amount of like a large amount of data you'd be getting from these data sets. And, you know, negotiating tons and tons of legal documentation.

And so I was like, okay, this is probably not the right thing for me. But, you know, what else is there out there? What else should I explore? And around that time, a lot of venture opportunities came up. So, you know, I ended up getting inbounds from a couple of different firms, including Sequoia at the time that was like starting a growth fund and SoftBank as well. And a lot of other firms as well had reached out.

And I was like, well, this seems to be something that's the world is moving in this direction. Like a lot of people are doing. There's a lot of technology innovation. There's starting to be a lot more AI and on-demand services like Uber, ride sharing companies popping up, online marketplaces. And I think there seems to be a bit of a move in that direction of where the world is going. And then I was thinking, okay, do I like it?

Am I good at it? I don't know. That I'll need to figure out. But at least it sounds pretty interesting to me right now. Maybe I should go and give it a try. So that's where I ended up interviewing, got an offer from SoftBank. And I was like, well, it's pretty interesting. Maybe I'll give it a shot. And, you know, lo and behold, it was a really good fit for what I'm good at, what I enjoy doing, and where the world is going.

So I'm very grateful because I felt like I was able to find something relatively early on after kind of leaving that path of like, oh, this is something that I really like and I think I'm pretty good at. Let me just keep kind of doing that and let me just keep kind of leaning into it. And once you find that thing that you just really enjoy doing and you can kind of continue to lean into it, I think that's where you start to really harness the potential of like compounding your experience and compounding your network where you start to really accelerate your career if you're in the right place and you're doing the right things.

Because I think up to that point, you're kind of building your foundation and building your initial skill set for a lot of different things. And then at some point you find, okay, this is what I want to specialize in. Let me just really lean into this and get really, really good at this. And that's when you can start to see, okay, someone who's been doing this for like five or ten years has a lot more skill set and an exponential kind of growth curve versus someone who's been only doing it for a couple years.

Like they've got the foundations, right? Yeah. And so that's when I was at SoftBank, that was when I just really decided to like lean into it. Like this is what I probably want to do for the rest of my career. Let me just try to find a way to really, you know, supercharge my career as much as possible within this kind of venture capital space. So it sounds like it wasn't so much that you were calculating your moves as to, okay, I'm going to Harvard.

I'm going to get this job in this many years. This is the path in the next 15, 20 years. This is what my life is going to look like. More that you were so curious and eager to lean into asking questions, networking, learning more and seeing where that wave took you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Constantly adjusting, seeing what your strengths were. And if you didn't enjoy a certain element of something, not being afraid to pivot.

Yeah. And then again, keeping that open mind. And when you finally struck what it was that set your soul on fire or really pushed you into what you thought your potential could be, you continuously wrote with that. Yeah. And compounded that growth. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. No, you got it perfectly right. I think that is exactly how I've kind of approached it. Not to say that that's how everyone should approach it, but I've kind of always believed that life kind of is slightly always nudging you in the right direction.

Right, right. Because if you do something that's probably not a right fit for you, then it will nudge you in the other direction. Right, right. And if you're doing something that is a good fit for you, it will slightly nudge you that, yeah, you're in the right direction. Like you're getting warmer, right? Yeah. So I've kind of always believed that let yourself be open to serendipity because you never know where kind of life takes you and it might be giving you a hint.

Yeah. As to what you should be doing, whereas like I know a lot of people like especially, I don't know, certain Myers-Briggs, I don't know what the exact types are, but people like to like overanalyze. Okay, I've got to, at this age, I've got to be doing this. At this age, I've got to be doing that. At this age, I've got to get married. And it's like you think you have this whole life planned out in front of you, but that's, in my opinion, that's not really how life works because you can't really predict where and when you should be doing what.

And I don't know. Sometimes it's hard, it's frustrating because like there's a lot of uncertainty and you don't know where things are going to take you. But I do think that things in life generally work out the way that they should. And so, I don't know. It's always been my kind of philosophy to do that. I think the serendipity is such an important element and leaning into what your strengths are and being open to where life takes you.

But I think at the same time, you can create your own luck and you can create your own opportunities. And I would be remiss not to say that you were very strategic and put in a lot of work to get those opportunities. Yes. Don't get me wrong. I don't think you can, you know, I guess I didn't mean that you can just sit around and hope that luck happens to you. You know, you've always got to be working hard and putting, I think the way that people describe it is like increasing your surface area of luck, right?

Because, you know, you've got to set yourself up for success, which is when luck and hard work kind of meets together. So, you obviously have to put in the hard work and be strategic and think about what you want to do and how you want to do it and put in the effort to, like, improve yourself and work on yourself and develop skill sets. But it's also, there is a lot of luck and serendipity in life. Right. And so, who, like, how can you increase the surface area of your opportunities and of luck such that if you're prepared and you have the right skill set, married with having a good piece of luck in a specific time and specific place, that it sets up everything for you to be able to make it to the next level.

Right. And so. Optimized. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, there's, it's not, I'm not saying, like, just sit around and hope that something great happens. Mm-hmm. But it's more like do good work and then see where kind of the best opportunities emerge in your life and kind of surface and try to see, like, pick the ones that kind of naturally speak to you or naturally, like, surface for you. Because I think the right ones will generally surface in your direction, usually, like, the ones that are a good fit for you.

Mm-hmm. Can we dive a little bit deeper into increasing the surface area of your luck and serendipity? Yeah, yeah. And your own experiences, maybe we can walk through crucial things that you did to really set you up for success. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Let's first start at Harvard and then maybe we can work our way up to where you are now. Sure. But maybe you can point to maybe one or two specific things that you consciously, you consciously practice as a form of habit.

Mm-hmm. Things that maybe set you up from your peers or things that you consciously thought, this is what I want to work on in this chapter. Mm-hmm. Or things that you did in that chapter that propelled you to success in the next chapter. Mm-hmm. So let's start with your time at Harvard. Yeah. No, it's an interesting, it's a great question. I think, and to be honest, I haven't usually thought about it in that way. There is one that I do think a lot about, was very important when I basically started at SoftBank and throughout my entire time in venture, I have been focused on.

So I can certainly talk about that one. But I think starting at Harvard, you know, there's a lot of things that I did. I think the one that I will say was probably the most impactful was just pushing very hard when it came to networking, thinking about what I wanted to do, learning about different fields out there, whether it was, you know, investment banking, sales and trading, hedge funds, private equity, investment banking, venture capital.

Just kind of learning as much as I could either online or through networking with alumni, you know, setting up cold emails, cold calls to them, people that worked at all these places I might want to work at one day, attending these information sessions on campus when companies would come to recruit students. I mean, you know, even if I wasn't super interested, it would be a great opportunity for me to learn from them and actually hear what they were talking about, what their business did, meet some very interesting people, you know, always get their business cards, send them a follow up email, you know, develop hopefully a relationship, do a follow up call.

Like these are all very basic things that, you know, everyone knows they should be doing. But I think very few people actually do them in a very disciplined and systematic way. And so I think for me, it was just, you know, kind of blocking and tackling and doing all these things consistently over the course of like four years. Like from the second that I actually stepped foot on campus, I started doing these things because I was very gung ho, I was very eager to figure out what I was going to do after college.

And it may sound a little bit intense, but I think that's what sometimes what it takes is like if I've been preparing for four years before someone, you know, compared to someone who just steps right onto the job, you know, in investment banking once they graduate. I've got four more years that I have on someone else of experience of learning and doing a lot of preparation that they don't have. And so I was definitely a very, very gung ho eager student when I was on campus of learning as much as I could about business, finance, investing.

I did, you know, I did a number of different investment organizations. There was like a student like hedge fund that I was a part of. I was like the president of many a couple of different kind of finance organizations that organized like treks to visit, you know, investment banks and other things on campus. So, you know, I was very, very involved with all types of extracurricular things as well on campus. I think, you know, every step of the way, it's like preparation, right?

Like you prepare for what you want to do next. So when I was at Goldman, I prepared for interviews for private equity. So I would study, do tons of modeling tests. I would practice answers, question and answers for what I think the interviewers would ask during the interviews. I would do, you know, a lot of, you know, fit questions as well. I'd research, like get to know people. I would network, you know, I'd meet people here in this private equity firm, that one, figure out, you know, who I could build a relationship with.

Because, you know, obviously those relationships matter too. You know, the interview process is a piece of it and how well you do in the interviews. But also, like, they also want to choose people that they like as well, right? So hopefully building some relationships where they get to like you as a person, that can also influence how that process plays out. So I think at each step of the way, as you're building the foundations of educational and, like, early skill sets within, you know, whatever field you choose to enter,

I think a lot of it is studying, preparation. And then I think the main thing that I would say that increases the surface area of luck when you get to a point in your career where you are a little bit more mature in your career and maybe you've picked kind of where you want to start to establish yourself is really your network. So that's the thing that I would say has been the most important thing for me from probably the second, like, I would say right when I started at SoftBank nearly 10 years ago.

That's kind of one thing that I've always focused on pretty religiously in a very disciplined manner of always building my network as much as I can and trying to maintain as many strong relationships as I can and not necessarily even, like, selectively, like, picking and choosing, but rather just building meaningful, good connections with almost as many people as I can without, you know, overwhelming yourself, obviously.

Right. I think that has been probably the most impactful, positive thing in terms of building that surface area of luck because you never know where an opportunity comes out and you never know who you might be working with. Right. And so that has frankly led to a lot of different opportunities, right? For example, like this current opportunity, I was introduced through a friend of a friend of my kind of anchor LP, the Italian family office.

It was from, you know, a SoftBank colleague of me, mine, who actually knew a couple of contacts of the family. And so it is a very small world when you can literally connect, you know, people from different continents to here. Right. And so increasing that network you have increases the surface area of luck of different opportunities that will surface for you. And so when you end up having the background or the right skill set, which, you know, thankfully, I've been able to build over, you know,

all these different experiences from Harvard to Goldman to Apollo to SoftBank, you know, someone's able to just look at that and be like, well, he has the skill set I want. Like, I want someone like that to be, you know, building this fund for me. And I want him to lead all the investing for, you know, Mongoose there. Right. You know, you have that you have that skill set, you have that background and then you have that surface area of luck, which hopefully if you built it out well,

the right opportunities will surface at the right time. And so I think that is kind of what I've always done is really try to always build good relationships with people. Don't burn bridges. And, you know, be genuine, be authentic. You know, you don't have to promise someone the world and, you know, go back on the promise or anything. It's just like be yourself, be a good person and build these relationships. You know, be a good, you know, be a good social person as well.

Be a friend, be a, you know, a helpful, supportive person. And people remember that. People remember you. And when something good comes around for, you know, and they think of you, then that's like that's like the luck that you need. Right. Exactly. The network, again, is a crucial element that keeps coming back as a common theme. Yeah. In this conversation, it's taking time to cultivate these relationships, not burning bridges.

It's thinking about how you can add value, not be transactional. What do you think people get wrong about networking or staying in touch with people? It's an interesting question, actually, because I'm sure there's different people have different kind of opinions about it. I think for me, you know, it's weird because I always feel like the people I have the strongest relationships with and I view as really good friends.

I don't necessarily need to see or talk to them to know that they will always be there for me at some point. Right. And if I if I do reconnect with them on a call or in person, it almost feels like we've never really been apart. Like we've always been kind of still in touch. Like, for example, like you and me, like I feel like, you know, it's probably been a while since we've seen each other. But like I still feel very much of like a close kinship or relationship.

And I don't know, maybe I'm just too optimistic or friendly of a person, but I've always felt that way versus like some people I like some friends I talk to. They they feel like if they don't have like regular communication with someone, they may not feel as close to them. But for me, I've always felt like, hey, if I've met someone and I've spent a lot of time with them and we've developed a friendship over some period of time, but I don't see you for a couple years or something.

I will still feel I still remember kind of all the stuff that we we did together for, you know, many years ago. So I think for me, I've always I was approached it with like an idea of maybe just having a kinship and a friendship that like I feel like is always there. Yeah. But I think that can be different depending on the person. Right. And I know for some some people, it's like you do have to stay constantly in communication.

Right. Like they they may want to hear from you every few months or weeks or whatever it is, in which case, like. Staying top of mind is important. And so for me, like for a lot of the fundraising conversations that I have right now for for Mangusta, you know, we are talking to a lot of family offices, a lot of high net worth individuals, some institutional investors as well. And one of the new things that I've had to do a lot of is actually just finding ways to stay in touch with them, because I recognize that some people may not feel, especially if we've only met for maybe half an hour or an hour on a zoom or in person.

And they may not feel that kinship or relationship with me yet. And so I do need to find a way to kind of stay top of mind and continue to reinforce that that connection that we have. Right. So I've been using, say, WhatsApp or using a CRM system that we have for emails or setting up events, whether it's like dinners or lunches or breakfast or webinars, doing things that kind of bring people together and provide more touch points for me to connect with folks.

Right. So I think I have certainly been doing a lot more of that. But when it comes to really like deeper friendships, I feel like I've never had to, say, force them or like stay in constant contact. So it is a little bit of an interesting dynamic in terms of, you know, the personal friendships versus perhaps more of like the new relationships that I'm trying to build from a fundraising or business perspective into hopefully I would say friendships over the long term as well.

But I recognize that that that takes time. Right. So so it's an interesting it is definitely an interesting dynamic. And I think, you know, for me, obviously, there is certainly things that like I love to mix kind of business and pleasure in some sense as well. Like I think I think some people I don't think I won't say whether it's right or wrong, but I think some people like to keep their like personal lives and their business lives kind of separate.

So like you have your business connections and you have your personal connections. But I actually really love to to mix and match them if I can, because I often feel like some of the closest friendships I have are with people that I've worked with before, whether it's a soft bank or outside of soft bank. And I think that being able to harness the synergies that you can actually get from a person that's both a business as well as a personal connection is super valuable.

And so and also I love I love what I do. I love, you know, my job. And so it's like if I can combine, you know, my personal life and the stuff that I love doing for my work together, like it's a win win for me. Right. So I think that's one thing that I maybe is unique for me that a lot of other people may not actually view in the same way is that like they kind of want to keep things separate. But I actually love to like combine them if I can.

Yeah, I think it's a it's a very common shared philosophy. What you mentioned is working, working or partnering with friends with friends and that the best relationships in business can often come from those close friendships. It reminds me of the conversation we had with Emmett Shearer, the founder of Twitch, who said when he was selecting his co-founders, it was the people who were his friends and the people that he he knew their character and he could trust them.

Yeah. And that these were the people that were going to be able to go the distance. Yeah. And really great to hear that for you as well, that you keep you keep these worlds closely enmeshed and can add value. And given that time is so finite as well. Yeah. That you can make sure to be able to prioritize both work. Yes, absolutely. No, that's a good like it's time is finite. Right. Like if I have to do if I have to do a dinner and, you know, I've got to choose between like work or personal, like it's hard.

Right. Like I it'd be amazing if it's both. Right. So I think if you can find amazing. Obviously, not say every friend needs to be like someone that you would want to do business with. But if you can get the best of both worlds, why not? Right. Yeah. Maybe we can talk a little bit about how you found your partners at Mangusta. Yeah. You were mentioning how they were friends of friends introduced. But maybe you can tell us a little bit about the origin story.

Some things about your founders. Yeah. What you guys bring to the dynamic. Yeah, absolutely. So, look, I'm very, very excited and happy that I was able to find amazing co-founders alongside me. So I have two co-founders. One of them is named Leonardo Del Vecchio and the other one is named Tommaso Chiabra. So Leonardo is part of the Luxottica family. So his father was the founder of Luxottica, which is the world's largest eyewear business.

And they own Ray-Bans. They own Oakley's and have a lot of great partnerships with global leading consumer brands out there to produce eyewear. And my other co-founders, Tommaso Chiabra, we call him Tommy. And he is a serial entrepreneur. He's started a bunch of different businesses, including Neat Burger, which is an alternative protein startup, as well as running one of the largest yacht businesses in the world called Royal Yacht International.

And so he's been super helpful when it comes to an operating perspective and helping a lot of our portfolio companies. So, you know, the two of them I actually met about two years ago when I was at SoftBank. And a former colleague of mine from SoftBank essentially introduced us all, you know, via email, WhatsApp. And over the course of kind of a year or a year and a half, I basically met with both Tommaso and Leonardo many, many times across the oceans.

So we met once in Miami. We had lunch together, talked about kind of my experience at SoftBank, the types of things I was investing in. We spent a bunch of time in Milan, which is where Leonardo is based. We, you know, we went through kind of what we would be building together, the types of track record that I have. And then we had a very long dinner meeting together as well. And then over the course of that year and a half, we essentially were able to invest in a number of different opportunities together.

And so they were very interested in AI. They're very interested in consumer technology as well, given kind of the Luxottica angle. As you know, Ray-Ban has been building smart AI glasses with Mark Zuckerberg at Meta. And so that was one area that they were very interested in, all the different applications of consumer technology to health, wellness, and also the next generation of AI services and technologies. So, you know, we basically worked on a number of different investments, including XAI.

We invested in a longevity startup called Life Force together. We also looked at a number of like celebrity-backed brands and businesses as well. So we invested in a company called Cali Water, which is a cactus water beverage, much healthier alternative to coconut water for those who are health freaks out there. And essentially one of the co-founders of that business is actually Vanessa. And so we were able to really bring in a number of also celebrity athletes who are now our co-investors and potentially LPs in the fund.

So, you know, for example, we work very closely with Leonardo DiCaprio's team, who we know very well. We work with Lewis Hamilton's team. We work with Will Smith, Will Smith's team on a number of investments as well. And so for us, a big part of it is building this ecosystem of different partners across Hollywood, consumer technology, athletes, that we can really supercharge kind of our portfolio companies with their influence and star power as well.

So, yeah, you know, we were able to work on a number of different investments over the course of a year and a half. And at some point, you know, I kind of floated it to them like, hey, I'm thinking I've been at SoftBank for almost a decade. I've been thinking about leaving and doing something. I've always wanted to start my own fund. I have this really interesting AI thesis that I want to focus on doing early stage vertical AI investing.

What do you guys think? You know, is this something that we want to do together? And I think from the relationship that we had built over that period of time and the fact that they'd seen all the amazing stuff that I'd done before, you know, going back to that kind of surface area of luck and the background that I had, they were very excited to anchor the fund. And so that's when we got the anchor commitment from Leonardo's family office and Leonardo himself to say that we wanted to build Mangusta together.

And I think for all of us, we saw clear synergies across the different things that we all brought together, right? I think what's most powerful in a team is if you have complementary skill sets where you each bring different things to the table, but ultimately creates a stronger platform and a stronger team. So I think for Leonardo, obviously, he's got the consumer technology strategic angle that he brings in from his time at Luxottica,

that he can really see the latest innovations and developments and trends in that space. Tommaso is very, very well connected across the celebrity athlete ecosystem. He's been an operator himself as well. So he knows how to really strike deals, bring together people, drive synergies to a lot of our portfolio companies. And then for myself, you know, I've got, you know, a decade of experience investing in AI companies and technology and VC structuring.

And so I know how to structure these deals, diligence these deals, source these deals. And so each of us brought together a very unique piece of the puzzle that we felt like would make us a very strong team together. And so about seven months ago is when we ultimately pulled the trigger, signed up the legal documentation to get this all started. And that's when Mangusta was born. And we've been off to the races since then.

Congratulations. It's a testament to knowing you that you're all about helping people realize their potential. So I have no doubt that you'll be able to do that at an even greater scale. One thing I wanted to add, which we didn't cover, but it is, can you talk about how much you've raised so far? Or how much you're looking to raise for the next round? Absolutely. We can add this at the beginning. Sure, sure. So we've already closed $50 million of capital from our anchor investor.

We're going to be raising somewhere between $75 to $100 million in total for the fund. And we have our next upcoming close in April where we have a good amount of that capital already committed. So hopefully we'll be finished with our fundraising this year. Can you talk about who your LPs are? Yeah, absolutely. So our anchor LP is the Luxottica family office, which is the Delvecchio family, one of the most prominent families in Italy.

And then other investors across high net worth individuals, other family offices, and a few institutional LPs from Asia as well, in particular in the Korean ecosystem. So I'm very excited to be building out what we think is a very global ecosystem of investors and partners. Thank you. Thank you. Embarking on this journey, it's a culmination of your life's work between the three partners. And I think given that there had been this relationship and this trust that had been building, and you had essentially already put in the work, showed them, this is what I can do, this is what I can bring, that it must have been given your partners a lot of confidence as to now that we formally embark on this together, it will only be this times 10.

Mm-hmm, yeah. I think interviews in general are just so hard to truly assess if someone's a good fit for a job. You can say whatever you want in a 30-minute or one-hour interview, but when the rubber hits the road, when you're actually doing work, you're actually jumping on calls together, getting stuff done, that's when you know, is this actually a good fit? Do we interact well? Do we interact well? Can they actually run the miles that are necessary for what we need?

And so I always like to really do trial runs, do work together to figure out, is this going to be a good fit? What makes a really great pitch? Interesting, yeah. You know, for me, it's, you know, someone, I think I resonate a lot with this, is basically if a founder can essentially pitch and describe their vision and illustrate their passion and knowledge about what they're doing without a pitch deck, I actually think is a very, very powerful indication of how good they are and what they're going to be able to do.

Because, frankly, they should know everything they need to know and they should be able to demonstrate that passion very visibly in the conversation that they have with you. And so I think, to some extent, you do have to have someone who knows how to present and knows how to really illustrate and sell what it is that they're building. But, you know, look, there's plenty of founders that are not great pitchers as well, right?

So I think what makes a great pitch is really the components of kind of like a hook and, you know, really keeping it short, concise, illustrating a big vision and how good you are, you know, where you are positioned already to kind of achieve that. Actually, maybe a random shout out is HF Zero, I don't know if you've heard of, is like a very interesting residency program. They always have the best pitches, in my opinion, for the companies that go through the program.

I've been to a couple of their demo days and I think that they do an amazing job with helping companies with their pitch. But outside of just the pitch, there are obviously other things that matter as well in terms of how good an opportunity it is for an investment per se. So we've actually had Emily from HF Zero. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, I saw her yesterday. Last week. Yeah, I was at the HF Zero house yesterday. They had like a corporate VC kind of day.

And so it was awesome. You know, they've always done a very good job with helping their companies pitch. Yeah, and I think it's fantastic the level of confidence that they give in their founders and what they're doing, what they believe in, which I think is integral to what you were saying about a really great pitch. Yeah. Are there key elements, whether it be metrics or like particular metrics that you're looking at that make a company very desirable for investment in that initial pitch phase when you're having a conversation with them?

Or are there particular characteristics that make a company really stand out when you're first meeting? You know, it's interesting. So I have a bit more of like a holistic approach to analyzing opportunities. So the philosophy that I typically go through is four M's. So it's nice because it kind of matches with Mangusta and all the M's that we have. But the four things are market, model, management, and money. So market stands for how big is the TAM?

How attractive is it? Is it competitive? Is it fragmented? How does it kind of all fit together? And do we think this is a really attractive market for us to be going into? The second one is business model. So how attractive is the business model? Is it high margin? Is there a lot of capital expenditures? Is it scalable? Is there hardware? Is there software? Where kind of whether working capital needs, like what does the income statement kind of look like?

What does the cash flow look like? And then the third one is management. So how strong is the management team? Do they have prior founding experience? Have they exited another company before? Are they really hungry? Are they driven? That piece, I would say, is the one that matters the most for early stage investing. And also is the one that I have a lot of experience with because I was able to see thousands of entrepreneurs come through our doors at SoftBank.

Right. So that pattern recognition of being able to see which ones are successful and which ones aren't is something that you can only, I would say, develop over a long period of time of getting experience of recognizing, you know, the wheat from the chaff. Right. And so I think it's one thing to be able to have that experience and volume of pattern recognition. And then the third thing is, or sorry, the fourth M is money, which is what are the terms of the deal?

What's the valuation? Are there any particular other particularities about the round? Who is the lead? Are other existing investors participating? What does that kind of all look like? So those are really the four holistic components that I'm looking at when I analyze an opportunity. Quite frankly, the earlier stage you go, the more management matters. The later stage you go, the more, I think, model and business model and financials matter and the terms of the deal as well, because then you're really playing a pricing game, I think, where you need to price the deal appropriately.

And what are the terms of the deal? So when you're looking at early stage, though, it really is very centered around management because you may be very early on in the product development. You may be very early on in the financial traction of the business. And so what you really have to be judging the opportunity on is the management team, the founder, and who he's surrounded himself with. Has he built a really strong team that we think is going to execute, he or she is going to execute really well?

All these founders that you've seen across your lifetime of investing, are there particular founders that maybe you met that you thought they're really going to do something historic? Or particular qualities that you've seen across successful founders that have gone to do really well in the early stage? Yeah, you know, I think there's a little bit of a just, I don't know how to describe it, like a hungry, ambitious quality that I see sometimes in founders.

And I'm just like, I really want to be a part of whatever they're doing. Yeah. And honestly, it's hard to describe sometimes what that exactly looks like per se, like concretely. But it's almost like you just feel the level of hunger and the level of kind of ambition that they have and the level of passion that they have that they're just going to run through walls to do what they need to accomplish. So there's certainly a few companies, for example, in our pipeline as well that I'm looking at where, you know, I like what the founder is doing and what they're building.

But to be honest, like I have some questions about it, but I just really, really love them as a person. And I think that they're going to do something amazing. So there are definitely a couple of situations like that where it's just very clear that this person is going to run through walls to get what they need to get done. And they can be on a plane if they need to go be in a meeting, an important meeting somewhere the next day and get on another plane to go on another meeting the next day.

Like they will literally do anything that they need to do to kind of end. And they're just super brilliant, super smart, very good at what they've they have relevant experience in the field than a previous company already. So I think there are certainly examples like that where I'm just very excited about who they are as a founder and why I want to back that specific person. You know, in other cases, there are, you know, there's there's there's I think there's founders who surrounded themselves with with a good bench as well.

Right. And where it's like a little bit more of a holistic, like I can see that they've built and maybe it's a little bit later stage. Right. So it's not someone who's, you know, screams off the page like, oh, my gosh, this is like someone that I really want to, you know, throw money at. Right. But like they've clearly built out an amazing team, amazing product, amazing company and traction. So like I think this is still, you know, and I really like them.

So I think this is still an opportunity we want to invest in. So it really does. There's a variety. But there are certainly some founders out there. I'm like, OK, this person is really, really amazing. The level of hunger, ambition and the stop at nothing mentality that, you know, that whatever it is, they're going to succeed. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that that's something that is innate or can be taught being a great founder and having that quality?

I think by the time they are in kind of a founder seat that it's already either have it or you don't. And the reason why I say that is because I think a lot of that hunger and drive kind of emerges when we are either relatively young, like in our lives or like childhood up to perhaps, I would say, maybe like five years post college. I think that's kind of where I would say you see that hunger and ambition develop. And I kind of think of it as like chip on your shoulder slash something out there to prove to someone.

Right. Right. And that usually happens in a developmental period, not after you've, you know, after you've already had some sort of a decent, you know, amount of time in your career. You know, you've, I think at some point people kind of move on to personal life, have families, whatever it is, they have other priorities. Right. But that hunger, I think, really develops from kind of childhood through to probably college slash right post college.

And some people just have it and they, for some reason, they just have this. And, you know, to be honest, I don't know if it's necessarily mentally healthy per se because you almost have a neurotic obsession with being able to achieve what it is you want to achieve or prove something to someone. Right. And so it's a perhaps not the most healthy mindset, but it is an extremely strong motivator to be able to achieve success because, you know, that they will be so, so compelled and so motivated to do anything to make make things happen.

Right. So it's a very, it's a double-edged sword, I think, in some cases because, you know, these founders are absolutely incredible. But, you know, sometimes I worry about the ability for them to, you know, to really have a normal life outside of what it is they do. Right. Yeah. But that is really where we want to find our founders because those are the people who are going to be most successful. Hmm. Any advice for those who really want to stand out as an investor to do really well?

So I think the main thing I would say is really, like, learn as much as you can and try to build as much experience as you can. So, like, volume of deal flow and tracking companies, seeing how they perform, doing a post-mortem after you've done the investment to see, hey, this is what went well and this is what went wrong. Because ultimately, I think investing is a very long-term game. Right. You have to be able to see from the beginning to the end of the life cycle how that investment has performed.

And because the feedback cycle in venture capital is usually quite slow, you really have to be checking in probably, like, every year, every few years to see how your investments are doing. And that will help you give, that will help give you a sense of what kind of companies, what kind of markets, what kind of business models, what kind of founders did you originally have a thesis on? And did it play out in the right way or the wrong way?

And why and why not? And that's ultimately how you're going to learn what are the types of businesses and types of founders that you really want to be backing. So I think to become a really good investor over time does require some level of seeing that feedback cycle and tracking companies that you've invested in over a period of time. Because ultimately, that's how you'll learn and become better as you continue to do more investments.

If you were to try to be an investor today and someone on the other side of the camera may be watching, what are the three strategic moves that you would make if you were to enter your VC today? For someone new to the field? Someone new, yeah. I think a few things. One is definitely read and learn as much as you can. Nowadays, there's so many resources online. There's no excuse for not knowing the latest news, not knowing how a term sheet works, not knowing how venture capital or valuations work.

If, you know, there's so much information that's just free on the Internet. At this point, you know, it's almost an expectation that if you're truly interested in it, you put in the work to learn some of this yourself. Right. So I think that's like table stakes. I think the second thing is really the networking and surface area of luck kind of concept that I mentioned, which is go meet as many people as you can that are in the space in venture capital.

I'm sure you have friends that you know that would want to, you know, that you can talk to about what they do. They can introduce you to other folks that they know in venture capital as well who work at startups. You know, just really leverage that network as much as you can. Help provide value to them as well. So, you know, obviously it sounds like, you know, you want to learn from them and you want to hopefully get them to help you within some introductions.

But also try to add value and provide reciprocity in some way. Right. Like maybe help them with analysis that they're doing on a specific company that they're interested in or maybe a specific field or sector that they're interested in. You know, maybe come with a research report or just like a one page about what you think about this specific company that you stumbled upon. And maybe it's something interesting for them to look at.

So I think develop that that network, but also try to do it in a way that really adds value to them as well. Because then they'll be much more willing to chat with you and help you and provide advice and introductions to you as well. And then, yeah, I mean, I think the third thing is perhaps just like find other ways to to really network. And, you know, honestly, you could even technically do some angel investing yourself.

Right. So if you really wanted to get into it, you can write small checks into companies. A lot of times early stage companies look for angel investors before they raise a real institutional round. And so that's another way for you to dig your, you know, dip your toes into the water and try it out first before you actually take it on professionally. But, you know, that's obviously it involves risk. And, you know, if you're investing your own capital.

So that's something that you want to be careful about. But, you know, if you're really serious about it, maybe that's one way you can show folks that you are. Hmm. It's the same piece of advice that Nicole Quinn, general partner at Lightspeed said is if you want to be an investor, start with angel investing. Yeah. Start the job now. Yeah, exactly. And my final question for you is what do you want your legacy to be? You know, it's so funny.

This is literally the one of the questions that we thought about for our podcast as well. So for me, I just really love helping entrepreneurs and seeing them succeed. So for me, that's the number one goal of everything that I do at Mangusta is obviously, you know, we want to deliver good returns to our LPs and stakeholders and investors. But that is a byproduct of us really helping our entrepreneurs succeed and investing in the right entrepreneurs.

So ultimately, that's what I want to do is meeting, finding great founders that we believe are going to create generational AI companies of tomorrow and helping them succeed, whether it's strategic, financial, whatever advice that we can provide them, connections that we can make for them. And as long as, you know, I feel like I've done that well, I would say, and, you know, hopefully people recognize what we've done there.

I think I'd be very happy with the legacy that I've left behind. How can people find you and reach you, whether it be founders or LPs? Yeah, absolutely. So you can certainly reach out through our company inbox. So it's info at Mangusta Cap. You know, we're also super active on LinkedIn and Instagram as well. So my Instagram handle is K-J-I-A-N-G-M-C. And you can find me on LinkedIn if you want as well. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on this Icons podcast.

We're so excited to celebrate your journey. Talk a little bit about how you got to where you got and hear a little bit more about your pearls of wisdom. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. It was so much fun to be here. So I'm excited to do this and hopefully do some more in the future too. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. For an investor, a builder, an entrepreneur, and someone who likes to attend events in person, you guys have to check this out.

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