VC Parties at Art Basel

Welcome to the 110 Jabroni’s who became LPs since the last issue. If you haven’t subscribed yet, I’ll blackmail your parents with AI generated photos.

VC Parties at Art Basel

Good morning LPs,

Due to an alcohol and drug fueled bender during Art Basel last week I missed a newsletter. I’m sorry about that (not really), thankfully I was able conduct a ton of valuable business. Let me run you through the things I still remember from last week.

First up I went to the art exhibits: these were some of the best works of art I’ve seen. They made the Sistine Chapel look like childs play, just look at this masterpiece:

This beauty sold for $1.65M (my bid of $690k sadly lost). I told my unpaid intern Jeff to bid up to $1.42 but he was too coked from the night before and fell asleep in his chair. The question I’ll leave you with is this: why would you waste money on a 3 bedroom in Turks and Caicos when you can hang this in your Miami loft.

Now many of you poor losers may not see the bigger picture here. But there’s a reason why Art Basel happens at the end of the year. It’s the same reason that rich folks like me helped make Christmas a holiday about spending. The answer my friends is simple: tax write offs.

Let me paint you a picture. This last year Jabroni Capital has seen tremendous gains - and my personal tax liabilities are to put simply, staggering. Now most broke poor minded folks might just “pay” their taxes. But that’s incredibly short sighted. Instead, like a goose, I flock with my pack of rich friends to bountiful southern Florida and purchase obscene works of art that can be donated for MASSIVE tax write offs.

Unfortunately, because of my unpaid intern Jeff’s snoozing, I missed out on the purchase of the above art. That sent me into a FRANTIC spending spree on the streets of South Beach & Brickle. Instead of buying dumb art at convenient prices, I had to buy numerous cheaper things and donate them in the Jabroni Capital name.

Here’s the list of items I donated:

• One Lamborghini Urus Masonry - to the Children of West Africa - $350k

• 1 Patek Phillipe Grand Complications - to St. Judes - $218k

• 50 Pairs of Louis Vuitton Loafers - to the Wounded Warriors Project - $250k

• 1 Sanke Koi Fish - to NYC food shelters - $342k

• 1 150 million year old Dinosaur Skeleton - to the Make A Wish foundation - $500k

That brings us to about $1.65million, just enough to cover the remainder of this years gains. Anyone who says being rich isn’t easy, hasn’t ever frantically tried to spend $1.7M in the name of a good cause.

Join My Fundraising Bootcamp

Shameless plug time before more fun.

Aside from making VCs cry on LinkedIn, my full time gig is helping early stage startup founders raise money.

This winter I’m running a 2-week fundraising bootcamp to help pre-seed/seed startup founders raise money. I’ve run dozens of bootcamps & helped early stage founders raise $65M+ in the last two years.

Pitch Deck Roast

Last week 25 lunatics submitted their pitch decks to be roasted by Jabroni Capital. There was a lot to choose from, unfortunately many of your decks were actually really good so we wouldn’t have had as much fun.

So today we’re roasting the MyArteLab deck. I’m still piecing together what it is, but I think it’s a social media platform. Buckle up buckaroos.

My mom told me she would empower my creative journey, until she saw my crayon drawings and told me to get a real job.

Oooo all-inclusive, is this like the sandals resort in the Bahamas my parents got divorced at?

It’s slide 4 and I’m scared. When people say all-in-one I immediately start violently shaking in my boots. Why does everything need to be all-in-one? What are we making all-in-one? Who are we connecting with? Other creators? Is this a platform ONLY for creators?

WHAT is fragmented??? Social media platforms make ENORMOUS amounts of money and literally control people’s brains aged 2-102.

I’ll say it again, WHAT DOES ALL-IN-ONE MEAN. If you survey 100 people and ask them if they want a million dollars, 99.9% of them will say they do. But that’s a leading question and it means very little.

Try to say that 10 times fast. It looks like they googled creator economy and slammed together every buzzword possible into one sentence. But thankfully they ended with powered by AI, so Jabroni Capital is still interested in the opportunity.

I know you probably can’t read the font, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll boil it down for you. It’s basically twitter + a marketplace to get sponsorships + the ability to build branded communities as a creator.

The reason most startups start as one small thing, is because it’s REALLY hard to sell investors on your grand vision of 3 different product lines before you even launch. Investors also know, that 99.999999% of the time, your idea of where your product is going is wrong. So start small, and build up. Facebook started as swiping on hot faces for a reason. It wasn’t a demon mega corp on day 1.

This means nothing when you don’t have a product in the market. Every app tries to be these things, and most of them fail. Saying it’s designed to be this way adds little to the deck and probably won’t be true anyway once you launch.

Wait, if this is a platform for creators then why is your total addressable market the 4.2B active social media users? Shouldn’t your TAM be the 200M users?

My confusion peaks in this slide. At this point you’ve told me your product is for content creators who want to connect with other creators and monetize. Why the fuck would the other 4B on social media want to use this product???

Ethical data monetization? We’ll see about that. Last time someone told me they were going to ethically use my data, the Chinese government stole my SSN and created anti-US propaganda with my likeness.

Wait??? This isn’t a tool for creator monetization, it’s LITERALLY competing with every major social platform in the world???

Social media platforms aren’t made for content creators for a reason. They’re made to entertain and addict the average person. Creators exploit the platform and the user to draw attention and generate revenue (if they’re business minded enough).

You go on TikTok to watch dogs and cats cuddle, not to help some creator buy a Lamborghini. That’s a consequence of an addictive social media platform.

I don’t even know where to begin. Is TikTok not inclusive because it’s video focused and doesn’t have text? I’ve seen people on TikTok talk about how they identify as a bird, that seems pretty inclusive to me.

Well thank god you have a passionate team, for a second there I was worried there wasn’t enough passion.

What you’re telling me is that you have next to nothing. You have an idea, an unspecified # of people signed up to a list (is it 5 people?), and a prototype that is probably just a wireframe.

Unfortunately, this isn’t 2021 when VCs would literally throw money at the most insane idea of all time with no product and a team of 23 year old Jabroni’s. It’s nearly impossible to raise significant money for a social media company without GREAT early user retention and growth. Which it doesn’t seem like you have.

You’re starting off with market domination? I take back everything I’ve said so far, this sort of blazen confidence is that winners are made of.

Free of charge, I redesigned this slide for you:

To be clear, that was the last slide. So I don’t know how much they’re trying to raise, but I imagine it’s anywhere between $200k and $80 million dollars.

Any takers?

Note to team: I think there’s A LOT of room to help creators monetize and love seeing huge ambition. But I think it’s easier to sell that vision in steps and focus on a small part of your product that delivers immediate value to a clear set of users. I wish you well on the raise and hope build the biggest social platform in the world and ban me from it.

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I’d love your feedback on what sort of content you’d like to see or how you think I could improve :)

That’s all for this week folks,

Jack Kuveke (J.K.) | GP @ Jabroni Capital