TO

Entrepreneur and operator

[TO @TO]

Big news: I’m joining Relief as VP of Strategy.

For the past several years at BTC Frontier Fund, I’ve focused on fintech and crypto, investing in the infrastructure behind the future of finance. Now, AI is opening up another way to transform financial services: disrupting the service businesses themselves. Rebuilding their cost structures around AI creates the opportunity to deliver an order of magnitude more value and a far better customer experience.

That’s what excites me about Relief. It’s tackling one of the biggest markets in finance: debt.

Borrowing is how millions of Americans pursue the American dream, from starting a business to buying a home. But when debt becomes unmanageable, it can set off a downward spiral that upends people’s lives. American households owe $18 trillion, yet getting help still means navigating call centers, collection agencies, and paperwork.

Robinhood made investing easy, Chime did the same for banking, and Lemonade for insurance. Relief is doing that for debt, with a bigger vision: becoming the place every American can turn to for a brighter financial future.

Relief is an AI-native services business in an industry built around human labor. Where legacy players grow by hiring more agents, Relief is built to scale through software, changing the economics of how many people we can help and how quickly we can reach them.

And it’s working. Relief has already attracted more than 200,000 users, helping people navigate billions of dollars in debt. This year, the team went from zero to millions in annual recurring revenue.

They’ve done the hard work of building the technology, creditor relationships, and customer trust to turn a big idea into a growing business. I’m joining to help accelerate that growth through expansion, new verticals, and investor relations.

I see a clear path from millions to nine figures in recurring revenue by helping more people regain control of their financial lives. That combination of business potential and human impact is why I’m excited to get to work.

If you work in consumer credit or debt, or invest in the space, I’d love to connect.

Follow @startrelief and help us bring a simpler way out of debt to more people.

[TO @TO]

@dens I still think about early foursquare days in 2010 NYC

[TO @TO]

@muneeb Stacks is in a great position for this

[TO @TO]

@t4t5 Can we get the poker client and the eBay style marketplace? Any archaeological digging we can do on that?

[TO @TO]

@RobertDaleSmith What 🤯

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@Rhynotic trevorbtc.eth

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@alexandr_wang thoughtcrime is great

[TO @TO]

@rodarmor embrace the slop

[TO @TO]

@eriktorenberg Wow what a list

[Jason Saltzman @SaltzmanJason]

Who is coming to Money 20/20? Would love to link up.

[TO @TO]

@jacobfranek Well said!

[TO @TO]

The logical gap is assuming that earning a follow-on guarantees access

An investor could be the company’s most helpful backer and still get squeezed out by the new lead

Pro rata rights protect against that disconnect between contribution and leverage

[Ali Partovi @apartovi]

@danprimack @maddierenbarger Answer: pro rata without the right.

@Neo ditched long-term pro rata rights last year, and we still do big follow-ons in our winners.

We just have to earn each allocation by being good partners rather than resting on an entitlement.

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar!

[TO @TO]

@ThankYouX

[TO @TO]

Pro rata is not just about economic upside, it's also about protecting early investors from dilution

I get the argument that it doesn't incentivize participation and support if the investors already have an allocation locked in

I just think it's wrong

Even the best investors, by and large, do not add much value and taking away pro rata isn't going to change that

Investor have the incentive to help their portfolio raise the next round, regardless

Taking away pro rata just makes the economics of investing early worse

When it's only going to get harder and harder to invest early and get returns

There's going to be 100x more founders and people who otherwise wouldn't have started companies 10 years ago in the game because there's no other jobs

Meaning we need to incentivize more vetting and investing early for the ecosystem to thrive

[TO @TO]

@rsg No worries, I'm using them interchangeably here

The main point is making it more beneficial to take risk early for capital

[TO @TO]

Now people want to get rid of Pro Rata? 🤦‍♂️

I think Silicon Valley is underestimating how many ppl are quitting Angel investing past few years because the returns are so abysmal

10 years ago it seemed like Angel investing was the easiest way to make money on earth

[TO @TO]

Talking about larger asset class, became far more mainstream in past 5 years

Pro rata always important

Peter Thiel famously lost over $1 billion not taking pro rata in 2nd round of Facebook

Make it harder for the earliest investors to get a good return, less people invest early

Make it harder for (small) new funds to be successful, you have less new funds

[TO @TO]

If you optimize for avoiding conflict in life you will never achieve anything of meaning in this world

[Ali Partovi @apartovi]

Long-term pro rata rights are on the wrong side of history, and can lead to conflict between startup founders and their earliest backers.

We at @Neo decided to ditch long-term pro rata rights: ��

[TO @TO]

@apartovi @neo A world without conflict over the things that matter is a world I don’t wanna live in

[TO @TO]

Here is an idea:

Let’s take away more and more benefits for the people who are earliest and take the biggest risk in believing in a founder and an idea when others don’t

I’m sure you can see where this is going

[connor ling @conconconling]

https://t.co/C4qSCsGV7F

[TO @TO]

@conconconling When there’s fewer and fewer benefits to being early in the company, you will see that fewer and fewer people take the risk of doing it at all