The fact that Bill Gates's daughter was able to raise $44 million dollars only to find out that the deal was underwritten based on misleading financials should tell you everything you need to know about what I mean when I say it truly does not take a rocket scientist to play in this market.

The fact that Bill Gates's daughter was able to raise $44 million dollars only to find out that the deal was underwritten based on misleading financials should tell you everything you need to know about what I mean when I say it truly does not take a rocket scientist to play in this market. And for anyone who's like, girl, what are you even talking about? I'm lost. The long story short is, Bill Gates's daughter, Phoebe Gates, recently raised $35 million for a total of $43.5 million of invested capital for her consumer tech app, Phia. Apparently, the app was participating in what's called cookie stuffing. Basically, they were claiming sales by which they had not organically generated. And just like putting yourself in the shoes of an investor, when we decide how much money we're going to invest in a deal, it is largely predicated on what we perceive the valuation of the business to be. The way that we arrive at our valuation of a business is largely based on the information that we receive from founders during what's called the due diligence process. Like, that's how deals are underwritten and underwriting is just a fancy way of saying like, that's how you justify it to the investment committee. So in this case, they effectively underwrote a deal based on data that was not properly presented. Obviously a huge error, which is why we're seeing so many people talk about it. But I think the real reason why we're seeing so many people talk about it is because just last month, Phia made this huge splash where they announced their entirely creator and celebrity-led cap table. From Khloe Kardashian to Hailey Bieber to Alix Earle to Ice Spice, like they had a lot of heavy hitters on that cap table. So with that, naturally, like this is going to get a lot of media attention. And I definitely have some thoughts, but this video, you guys know me, I'm not really here to rag on Phoebe or Sophia or even the investors who could have done better diligence because they absolutely should have. I'm here for the creators, because I feel like what we're seeing is this sort of huge emergence of venture capitalists and founders taking an interest in the creator space, which is awesome. It's amazing and it definitely needs to happen. But I think the flip side of that is there's a lot of creators who are being thrust into this new world of invested capital and they fundamentally don't understand how to evaluate these deals. And as somebody who's a creator and also an investor by trade, I have a heart for the creators that are just trying to navigate this space for the very first time. So, I say all that to say, this is the very first installment of #dueyourdiligence, a series where I'm going to be sharing my knowledge as an investor and really helping other creators develop better intuition for evaluating these deals because at the end of the day, these are real invested dollars that are at stake and I just want to see us win. So, if that sounds like you, make sure that you like and follow so that you never miss a video. Oh, also last thing, if you are a creator and you have been itching to get in front of live deals, I am in conversations with a few early-stage founders, so make sure to fill out the link in my bio and I'd love to get you connected.