Ethan Rotstein

@jsharkey 🫡

🇨🇦 O Canada, our home and native… payment processor Whop now routes Canadian cards through a local Canadian processor This yields lower fees (no more cross-border) and higher auth rates Powered by Whop payments orchestration

@HarryStebbings I like it. Do you markup the portfolio's TVPI/NAV based on a revenue multiple?

We do not measure the health of our portfolio with company uprounds. They do little to show true enterprise value. We count: Seed fund: how many companies have hit $10M ARR? Series A Fund: how many have hit $25M ARR? Much clearer sign of value.

@MartinGTobias @PeterJ_Walker That would be cool… let me see if my team has the data

@PeterJ_Walker here is data I would love to see. The top 5 companies in terms of valuation (over $1b, over $500m, etc) That raised the most and raised the least to get to those valuations. The ones that raised the least are most interesting to me.

@tbpn @emmzaoui @eladgil Turning into the ESPN of startups

BREAKING: @emmzaoui has moved to SF to work for @eladgil

@fahdananta How’s this looking?

Okay this sounds stupid but I’d like to propose building a directory, Bookface-like product for Canada Core pieces: - Startups - Freelancers and service providers - Investors - Forum - Metrics like rating, jobs created, etc We’ll call it Canadian Cracked List. Lmk if you wanna help build it with me.

@Delmo_dev If Zapier is valued at $5b this had to be worth at least $5m

update on my whop app: i'm now at 166 installs. yesterday and the day before were slow, with only 25 installs per day. about 50% of my installs are other app developers though lol, which is not good.

@jmj Well put. Unless you’re backing companies at the ideation stage, access gives the edge. Access is also a big part of the value LPs receive. Getting exposure to exceptional companies and opportunities to co-invest in them directly.

One of the most common questions you’ll get when fundraising for a venture fund is about sourcing. LPs are ultimately buying into your thesis and your access, so it makes sense that sourcing is one of the first questions. The question is hard to answer because sourcing usually comes from many different channels & almost every VC believes their approach is better than their peers’. I can’t even imagine how confusing it must be for an LP who covers venture as part of a broader portfolio to figure out what’s real and what’s not. They get pitched by hundreds of managers a year, all claiming the same “proprietary deal flow” story. So I figured I’d write a quick note on how I think about sourcing. I like to compare sourcing to multi-channel marketing. You have multiple inputs driving top of funnel, and ideally three or four strategies that create a sourcing flywheel. It sometimes feels like LPs are searching for a single channel they can bring to their IC and say, “Look, they have a better sourcing engine.” But relying on one channel is risky. The game changes & so do relationships and competition. Sourcing is never a magic bullet. Despite the debates, I don’t believe anyone has a true proprietary sourcing advantage beyond their reputation. Speaking of proprietary networks... I met with a well-known GP recently who is now investing in a small number of funds & he asked which proprietary networks we have access to. It was a fair question, but I pushed back bc there are no truly proprietary networks in venture anymore. Take YC. Founders could easily join other accelerators or raise the traditional way, but they choose YC because they trust it will get them further, faster. YC doesn’t have a proprietary network - it has a brand that founders want to be associated with. They trust YC to be the best Day 1 partner to help them build something valuable. What’s even more interesting is what happens after YC. Because it’s such an efficient marketplace, every venture firm has access to the same company list - it’s one of the most transparent markets in venture. We all know each batch will include a handful of outliers. None of that is proprietary sourcing. The real differentiation is in how firms underwrite conviction early and actually win those deals. Or look at the handful of firms that have built entire franchises by backing Elon again and again - SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, etc. The sourcing channel is no secret; the access is. And that access comes from relationships earned over decades. Everyone’s searching for a sourcing “hack.” The truth is, there isn’t one. The only real proprietary network in venture is your reputation. So when LPs ask about sourcing, I try to reframe the question. It’s not where we find companies but it’s why the best founders choose to work with us once they’re found. That’s the real edge, and it’s built over years, not through a single channel or campaign.

@ujustgotleid Or we find a way to replicate the YC culture for ourselves...

YC should make a Canadian branch

@czoob3 This was my entire Whop onboarding… never looked back

How to be successful in life: 1. Turn trackpad speed up to max speed 2. Turn key repeat rate to max speed 3. Turn key delay until repeat to max short

@hiiinternet This is so fire. Recruiting 🐐

Yapping in the video below but if you're hiring engineers or interested in engineering roles / who's hiring here's the tl;dr: This software solves 1/ Problem for employers: Too few applicants = not enough to hire Too many = no time to review Either way, great candidates get missed. Inbound becomes noise. Via semantic search + boolean screening at scale you can surface candidates that are a good fit at scale. Results are 10x better than alternatives that are just keyword matching, we consider context. 2/ Problem for candidates: Even if you're great, your application is one of thousands. Recruiters skim resumes in seconds. No signal = no response. Because we make search + surfacing best talent extremely easy for employers you get better access to the roles that make sense. 3/ What we’re building: Structured flows for every inbound applicant Signal detection across resumes, portfolios, social links, GitHub, etc Auto-prioritization based on quality, not keywords 4/ Why it works for hiring teams: It turns unstructured inbound into ranked, high-signal leads. Founders or recruiters only review the best. More signal, less noise, no wasted time = more interviews. 5/ Why it works for candidates: You're not lost in a pile Your work gets parsed, scored, and shown based on quality Distributed to high quality teams Using it now to hire engineers in NYC and SF. Will expand to more roles + teams soon. DM if you want early access for hiring. If you're interested in who's hiring check out the job postings below:

@ivesparrowai @marclou Agreed. I Built a tool that tracks in real time when an LLM crawls your site so you have a better idea of what they are pulling from your site. Lmk if you wanna check it out.

@erlightninggame @marclou Yeah,often gpt doesn't provide links, and I go directly. This traffic naturally won't be tracked. So you're right, the numbers should be even higher

ChatGPT is now sending significant traffic to my little startup. At $3.34 revenue per visitor, it's also one of the top converting marketing channels.

@ivesparrowai @marclou How often do you actually click links off GPT? Makes you think the results can be much higher, assuming most people take recommendations and then google the results

@marclou I no longer compare any services with Google. I ask GPT/Gemini to research, provide a comparison, and give a top 3 recommendation. With this top 3, I check the landing pages, and in 99% of cases, I choose the top 1 recommended by the LLM

@marclou Super cool. Wonder how much indirect traffic you’re getting too, people who see it on ChatGPT but Google it later instead of clicking.

@henry_kutrieb @KickBotApp probably nothing...

@ZAYYYTHEGOAT @whop 👀

@whop lmao I’m 100% with this

The new app infrastructure on Whop opens up endless opportunities for digital businesses 🌍 You can quite literally sell ANYTHING you want in minutes 🚀🚀

@Delmo_dev Game changer🚀 which platform are the insights driven from!? Discord?

An early v1 of this app will be available tonight (in a few hours) Everyone is welcome to test for free. If you're interested, shoot me a DM and I'll set you up today.

@SebCuadros This reminds me of the first day you walked into the office

Never seen a more u2.5 fight in my life

@jamiegraydesign Jamie you have to be careful posting this stuff on twitter. You're going to get the ladies too excited 🤤

the  App Store could never ...

@SebCuadros Suga!

Holy shit he did it