We are thrilled to announce the closing of our Social Leverage Capital Fund IV, LP, a $99M seed-stage fund focused on backing exceptional founders in the Fintech, Enterprise SaaS and Consumer space.

Since our inception in 2009, we have been seed-stage investors in some of the world’s leading startups, including Robinhood, eToro, Kustomer and Manscaped and have made investments in over 150 seed stage companies to date. As our fund size has grown, so has our ability to invest additional capital as the portfolio raises later stage capital.

In addition to backing great founders and their exemplary visions, we also take immense pride in being their first call. Whether it’s hiring, building company culture, getting strategic partnerships, or raising their next round, we love helping them with all of it and work to be their biggest cheerleaders. As implied by our name, our ethos from the beginning has been that social leverage is the new financial leverage. The network is the thing.

We have stuck to our original seed stage style over the years which is more art than science. We like to make relatively quick decisions because we trust our network and instincts.

Thank you to all of our LPs, most of whom have been long-term backers of Social Leverage. We are very grateful for your trust and support. And we are equally thankful to our incredible founders who do the hard work on a daily basis. Your passion, creativity and relentless grit is a continued source of inspiration to us all.

We can’t wait to welcome more amazing founders and teams into our portfolio. If you are ready to build a Fintech, Consumer or Enterprise SaaS company, we want to hear from you!

As a reminder, Marketsmith (by Investor’s Business Daily) is now a sponsor of the weekly show. All the charts you have been seeing in the videos and will continue to see are from Marketsmith. They are offering my readers a three week trial for $19.95. Click this link if you would like to try it out.

My sleep patterns have been off because of the east coast travel so I apologize for the duplicate emails the last few days.

I have my settings so that the email goes at 6 am pst no matter what and if I am late one day it resends the same post the next day …

It is a forced way to make sure I write every day and be accountable.

My aim is to write something new each day on this blog but this week I have definitely fallen off the bike.

Onwards….

This tweet made me LOL today…

One last happy note before I get to Momentum Monday…my good friend Craig Lauer had a hole in one yesterday and though the shot is not caught on film (he’s not some degenerate millennial that can swing while holding an iPhone), his reaction to finding the ball in the hole is awesome. Would have been fun to be there getting free drinks.

Ok…here is this week’s Momentum Monday (on a Wednesday, I know…). I have embedded it here on the blog below:

There is a LOT to like. It is that simple. I shared some fresh ideas so have a listen or watch.

Here are Ivanhoff’s comments:

The Nasdaq 100 and the small-cap index Russell 2000 started the year strong. Then, in mid-February, entered into consolidation building a long multi-month base. While QQQ and IWM were in a range and many momentum stocks from 2020 experienced 50%+ drawdowns, the so-called old-economy stocks – financials, industrials, transportation, basic materials, energy, outperformed significantly – the market tried to manage quickly rising inflation expectations. In the past week or so, the roles began to reverse. It seems financial markets have woken up to the possibility that they might have over-discounted the threat of sizable longer-term inflation and are now backpedalling to correct the excesses. This is nothing new. The markets are often too fast to react to new dangers and opportunities and therefore, swing too far to the upside or the downside. This is what makes trading and investing so interesting, challenging, and exciting at the same time.

We might have entered a new narrative that is positive for the so-called new economy stocks – software, semis, solar, biotech, medical devices, etc. Growth stocks are setting up and breaking out again, the general price action is bullish and the most appropriate action, for the time being, is to remain long.

Here is the weekly Stocktwits 25 list where I start my week of work each weekend.

Charlie’s 6 chart Saturday is always good.

Nikita continues to cover the SPAC sector very well – here is this weeks post with a good take on Weedmaps. I share it here every week because of course Social Leverage has a SPAC ($SLAC) and I am the CEO and I want to stay up to date at all times on prices, leaders, people and deals. The SPAC is an old ‘feature’ that is here to stay in a retail investing world. A few weeks ago, Nikita put together a buy list because we thought sentiment and maybe prices were out of wack to the downside. It is worth reading again as there has been a good pop since and worth tracking if you are interested in this part of the market.

Back to work…

Disclaimer: All information provided is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice, or an offer to buy or sell any security. For full disclosures, click here. 

Quick note – Momentum Monday will be Tuesday this week.

Onwards…

I got into town the other night and headed over to my friend Kevin Wechter’s house who was throwing a post COVID birthday party for his wife.

Kevin and I go way back. When we were 16. we were both in charge of the CIT’s (councelor’s in training), which meant parents paid the camp a bunch of money so that their kids could keep an eye on Kevin and I. The camp was Winnebago (still open) in northern Ontario.

Kevin and I became best friends. Kevin was from El Paso and me Toronto.

In 1985 we did a camping and fishing trip down the west coast and it was epic.

We lost track of each other for 20 plus years but he tracked me down when we moved back to Coronado as he lives in La Jolla.

Yesterday he dug up some pictures from the trip and shared them.

His dad had just bought a new Blazer for us to eventually get to El Paso. I think that was a mistake…

Here is Kevin…you guess which one:

Here we snuck onto Pebble Beach

Yes….we did fish…

The digital age kids won’t have these particular problems with tracking down photos.

I am really glad Kevin saved them.

I write when I wake to get my posts out by 6am PST and yesterday was the first time in ages I woke at 6-30.

I doubt I had anything important to say and I must have needed the rest.

I hit the road for Coronado yesterday and plan to be here for the summer. I left Phoenix at 10 am and it was 109 degrees and arrived on the beach 6 hours later to 71 degrees.

While SOHO was busy and spotty, Coronado is jam packed. This Spring, I had been telling local stores that I frequent that this summer would break all records in traffic and commerce and it sure looks that way from first glance.

I am really excited for Rachel beginning her post pandemic life in New York, but I was getting very used to having here live with us again and Coronado will be quiet, with less messes, without her.

On Sunday, I share some reads so here we go…

Morgan Housel penned ‘Getting The Goal Posts to Stop Moving‘. Investors should make a habit of reading Morgan’s posts.

Ben Thompson has a great piece on the Apple ‘monopoly’ titled ‘Integrated Apple and App Store Risk‘.

Last but not least, I was with Van Eck at The Bitcoin conference, but he stayed on and his Bitcoin team and their dispatch from the conference was excellent. Have a read.

I had never heard of this company $FIGS until their IPO but it is rather amazing.

The most amazing stat to me is that this $5 billion DTC (direct to consumer) brand was built on Shopify.

A LOT of companies call themselves platforms (this old Ben Thompson post is a great primer on platforms), but Shopify is really delivering on the platform promise.

My friend Fred Wilson has always warned founders (myself included) about trying to build a big business on the platform of others. Unplugged he has said ‘Don’t Be Their Bitch‘.

How many times has Twitter or Facebook crushed startups that were ‘their bitch’…a lot!

Early on when building Stocktwits I had to make the decision to just be Twitter’s bitch or raise more money and build our own platform to have more control of our destiny.

We raised the money and did that back in 2009.

Back to Shopify…

There will be many more billion dollar DTC brands to go public built on Shopify. That makes the stock hard to value which is what I love in a growth stock. The catalysts are all to the upside as Shopify continues to build trust in a massive part of the economy.

Stocktwits now has one person full time dedicated to the Stocktwits store built on Shopify that has some really cool products for the community.

Today, Netflix is launching their store on Shopify.

I had Shopify President Harley Finkelstein on my podcast back in February and he dove into all this so it might be worthwhile to have a listen.

Have a great Friday.

Disclosure – Long $SHOP

I am still in New York working, but I continue to have my weekly ‘Panic With Friends’ podcast dropping every Thursday. A few weeks back, I sat with Jim Lanzone (CEO of Tinder) to discuss a couple of my favorite topics…media and attention.

There are few executives who know more about the internet and these subjects than Jim.

You can listen to the episode here on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

For more details on Jim and the episode, scroll down. I hope you enjoy and share the episode

Guest: Jim Lanzone

Profile: CEO of Tinder

Where to Find Him: LinkedIn, Twitter

What’s the Panic About:

Jim Lanzone is a legend in the internet industry. He’s racked up over 20 years of experience in the space, with former CEO titles at companies like Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves), Clicker Media (which he founded) and CBS Interactive (where he was my boss for a brief moment and probably fired me – at least under his breath). Currently, he is the CEO of the juggernaut dating app, Tinder. It was great to have Jim on to not only offer his insights on all things media, streaming, and the internet – but also help give some tips to our Panic co-host Nikita on her own adventures into the world of online dating. In this episode, we chatted with Jim about branding, growth, the early days of web video, his experiences as a CEO, content consumption, generational trends in dating, brands he’s rooting for and more. Enjoy!

We’ve also gone in-depth about the media industry in the past with Jason Hirschhorn’s two-part episode. Listen to part one here and part two here.

The Takeaway:

As trends in the media, internet, streaming and even online dating evolve, the ‘seasoned’ CEO position will never go away. We will always need people like Jim to help manage and navigate brands through these changes.

Favorite Quote:

“Those are my two favorite things to do: build great teams and great products.”

PS – I am now doing one ‘Panic With Friends’ podcast per week. Thanks for listening and make sure you subscribe over on Spotify or Apple.

I am still in New York. Yesterday was a fun full day of face to face meetings and dinner with good friends.

Today I have the Stocktwits board meeting and it will be fun to do it from the Stocktwits HQ.

Onwards…

My friend Justin (JohnStCapital) penned a piece titled ‘FinTech 3.0 Re-Architecting Financial Market Infrastructure & DeFi‘ which I am reading through a few times this week to get his handle and insights on the new world of finance that has been opening.

I’ll pester him in person later today to unpack it for me, but thought everyone who reads this blog might enjoy reading it as well.

Have a great day.

I don’t think it is a secret anymore, but everyone wants/needs a super wallet.

Right now I can quickly open a Current.com account, Venmo my kids money from my bank account, trade in a Robinhood and FTX account, buy a collectible on Rally Rd., log into or call my broker at Morgan Stanley and log into my Pensco account (IRA) to check my accounts.

It is a pain and I have been doing it forever but there is NO way this persists as the next generation goes deeper down the investing rabbit hole.

It is 7 am in the lobby of my hotel in SOHO and I ran into a friend at another venture investor friend that invests in the same space and we talked about this very thing.

There are enough investing apps (mostly me too variety at this point in cycle) in circulation and you can’t believe how many more are in the pipeline, but the big win/s going forward will come from the products and companies that seamlessly make the super wallet a reality.

If you do not believe me about the amount of investing apps at your fingertips have a scroll through Moneymade.io and give a few apps a try.

I wrote about the ‘individual risk score‘ a few months back and the super wallet is right up there with it.

Hit me up if you are working on these problems.

As a reminder, Marketsmith (by Investor’s Business Daily) is now a sponsor of the weekly show. All the charts you have been seeing in the videos and will continue to see are from Marketsmith. They are offering my readers a three week trial for $19.95. Click this link if you would like to try it out.

Good Monday morning everyone.

I had a great weekend and I have a full day of meetings in the city.

As always, Ivanhoff put together a Momentum Monday, but today my internet connection in the hotel room was terribly weak so Ivanhoff led the way.

Here is this weeks episode. I have embedded it into my blog below:

Ivanhoff’s take follows:

For a brief moment last week, I thought that the meteoric surge of the so-called meme stocks like AMC, GME, BB, BBBY, DDS, etc. will “break” the market. The last time we saw similar short squeezes in late January of this year, the main indexes had a swift 4-5% pullback. They have held a lot better this time. The QQQ bounced near its 20-day EMA. SPY is close to new all-time highs. Small caps (IWM) are acting constructively.

We are back in the phase where bad news for the economy is good news for the stock market because it means that the Fed’s injections are not going away. The stock averages had a decent rally last Friday on the back of weaker than expected employment numbers.

Crude oil and oil stocks had one of their best weeks in years. Major breakouts in the entire space. The oil and gas exploration and production ETF – XOP, went up 8%.

Steel stocks are holding well and digesting recent gains: CLF, X, STLD, NUE, SID

Car makers are reliving a renaissance. The push towards electric vehicles, the chip shortage, and the change in supply/demand dynamics because of COVID, have been a boon for the shares of Ford, GM, Toyota, and many others. So many new 52-week highs in the space. Chinese EV stocks are also waking up – NIO, LI, etc.

It’s not just inflation-related sectors that are perking up. Tech has stabilized and we are starting to see the emergence of appealing setups. Quite a few semiconductor stocks are setting up for potential breakouts: SMH, AMAT, LRCX, TSM, XLNX, HIMX, UCTT, etc.

The US media is caught up in the silliness of the meme stocks like $GME and $AMC but the only take you need is from Josh Brown. This Instagram riff from Josh sums up the behavior and why you should just ignore and leave them be.

The stock market is offering up a lot of breakouts and winners that make sense while the meme stocks confuse the media and market ‘purists’.

I like to share the Stocktwits 25 lists because I sane these Saturday to get a feel for where the strength and momentum lie. I mean GM and Caterpillar are all-time highs. Not stocks the millennials care about but a trend is a trend.

Here is Charlie’s 7 chart Sunday.

Last but not least is Nikita’s weekly SPAC report. The supply is drying up, but the weirdness keeps coming. Nikita unpacks the Bill Ackman SPAC.

Have a great week everyone.

Disclaimer: All information provided is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice, or an offer to buy or sell any security. For full disclosures, click here. 

SOHO was a different place last night.

It was a beautiful evening and wherever there were open restaurants, the streets were packed. It was nice to see.

A lot of silly and weird behavior is driving some stocks right now. Obviously, technology has a hand in this.

This old Forbes cover started circulating that caught my eye as well. Here it is:

I would add…only the technology changes – fear and greed and stupid behavior have been around forever and fun to see this 1998 Forbes cover making the rounds.

Back to the 1998 cover…

My friend Jason Wild saw my link and added this:

Of course, Jason than found him on Twitter of course:

I of course pinged Serge on Twitter because he invests in fintech startups and will chat with him this week.

Now you know why Twitter is a miracle and should be valued much higher.

Now a few reads…

Travis Barker is not afraid of dying is an inspiring read.

David Perell shared a long list of his all-time favorite links on his blog that should keep you busy and learning for a month. He is a great curator on all things business and writing.

Have a fun Sunday.