Steph Mui
2.6K posts
@stephmui
on a mission to create more founders/angels as founder of @getpinxyz and sharing what i learn // past: VC at NEA, Stanford GSB, UChicago
I created a list of my favorite cafes to work at in NYC. Coffee shops > offices. I started my company inside a coffee shop. Beautiful spaces. Good energy. Surrounded by people locking in. And you randomly meet the most interesting people. My list includes the cafe name, neighborhood, and a proprietary, confidential scoring system based on: - Work space (tables, outlets, WiFi, design) - Food (quality, options, price) - Music (playlist, can you take calls) - People (do interesting people go here) - Coffee (does it hit) - Vibes (overall energy) I'd love to share this list with you + add new spots. Comment "CAFE" and I'll DM you the list.
I'm beyond excited to announce that I’m joining @Lightspeed as a Partner on the early-stage investing team and helping to build everything they're doing in new media. I've spent the last six years investing in early-stage companies, and the last year building a media platform in parallel. What started as a side quest has reached 350,000+ followers and millions of viewers a month. For me, investing and storytelling have always been two halves of the same job. This work has put me in rooms with incredible founders, researchers, and operators - many of whom have become close friends, collaborators, and early stage bets. There's so much happening at the frontier right now, and the media platform has given me a way to be in those conversations early (and to bring the people I admire most into a wider audience). When Lightspeed reached out, we saw the same opportunity. Venture and media are converging, and the next generation of great firms will need to show up differently: reaching founders and builders before they've even started a company, and being the place where people first get excited about what's happening in tech. With more than $50 billion in AUM, Lightspeed has been building alongside founders at the frontier of technology for decades. It's a firm I've admired for years since I started investing - for its intellectual rigor, its long-term conviction, and the way it approaches company building. I’m excited to join a team that brings real depth and substance to its work, and I hope to bring that same ethos to everything I put out. Thank you to @ravi_lsvp, @bsomaia , and @Machiz for believing in this vision and trusting me to help build it. I’m so excited to see what we do together. If you're an early-stage founder, building or thinking about starting something, or just curious about this ecosystem - please reach out. My DMs are open and I’d love to chat!
Most fintech companies started in the world's biggest markets and expanded outward. Most were built in Silicon Valley, with Silicon Valley assumptions. We started on the other side of the world, in a Melbourne coffee shop. Outsiders, by every measure. So we went deeper than anyone wanted to. Reimagining correspondent banking from first principles, not abstracting away the old system but replacing it. Years of obtaining licenses, building infrastructure, and shipping every financial product a growing business needs including intelligent finance. Bank accounts in 70+ countries. Treasury across 25+ currencies. Cards, spend management, bill pay, multi-entity, all on one platform. Built so the whole world feels like your home market. Now AI means the builders are everywhere. Global financial infrastructure has always been the hard part. Ours took eleven years to build, and it's ready for you on day one. Build the Future ↓
