Seeing Your Products/Companies Success In The Wild...The Best Thing About Being A Seed Investor

Good morning…

The business of being a seed investor is not as easy and glamorous as it seems. Social Leverage has had the good fortune of being seed investors in many companies that have gone on to reach billion dollar market capitalizations - and offer liquidity which matters most. That said, The best at this job will tell you that 50 percent of their seed investments go to ZERO. It is thrilling and messy, but I love waking up every morning with the opportunity and privilege to do it as my job.

Yesterday I took our cousin Matt visiting from New York to grab a coffee at Trident on Orange Street (Coronado). It was packed and though we don’t have anything to do with the day to day running of the business, it felt great because we are personal investors. I know their struggles, so I get excited when I see their success. Trident now has three stores in San Diego and are best known for their cold coffee. As you can tell by the name and logo, founder Eric Johnson is an ex-military man and so is his co-founder and brother and most of the employees. Coronado is mostly a navy base and home to the Navy seals.

Same thing with Manscaped (fund 3). We were seed investors. Paul the founder and CEO is a product and marketing genius. Post the e-commerce crash and tariff stupidity, he is now an operating genius. Eight years later feel a great sense of pride when I hear an ad or see the product in the stores or have someone tell me they use manscaped.

Last week Robinhood reported their numbers (fund 1 and 2). This AUC (assets under custody) chart is amazing:

When we invested back in 2014, it was not because we were thinking about what the ‘assets under custody’ should be in 2025. We invested because we liked the team, the customer acquisition cost arbitrage opportunity to get the first 100,000 customers and that the product would be loved and possibly disrupt traditional brokerages. We helped get this started, so we will always be connected.

One last one for today is more recent which is Beehiiv (fund 4) The ‘Information’ has a cover story out - ‘Is Beehiiv the Next Billion-Dollar Newsletter Starup? (use archive.ph and drop the link in) ’ The founder Tyler Denk is obviously proud about the piece and shared:

It is even more satisfying to see the users of the product share the excitement for the company and product because they love it too:

One more…

Have a great Sunday.