He invested in 684 AI startups—& realized that quitters always win. | Jack Kuveke, Founder turned VC at Jabroni Capital

We break down the real startup playbook: fake users, fake traction, real secondaries. From starting a company with zero customers, to raising millions and launching a VC fund that's built to lose money, Jack shares the blueprint for getting rich (without working hard). 

Forget chasing product-market fit. 

Start chasing growth, money, and, most of all, hype.

Why You Should Listen

• Why you need to spend most of your time fundraising.
• Learn exactly how to fake traction, drive FOMO and raise millions-- even with a terrible product.
• Get Jack's ultimate playbook for quitting early and winning big (without working hard)
• How secondaries can make you rich BEFORE your startup fails.
• Why League of Legends is the key to startup success

Keywords

startup fundraising, pivot strategy, early stage VC, founder mistakes, product market fit, startup advice, venture capital, startup growth, entrepreneur mindset, founder stories

(00:00:00) Intro: Why Quitters Win and Fundraising Beats Traction

(00:02:54) Ex-Googlers Can’t Hack It as Founders

(00:03:12) Raising Money is Your Only Job

(00:10:49) How to Fake User Growth & Create FOMO

(00:14:18) Quit Fast, Pivot Faster

(00:15:28) Jabroni Capital: The World’s Worst VC Fund

(00:26:26) Hiring Hacks: How to Convince People to Join Your Startup

(00:28:27) Adam Neumann: Hero or Villain?

(00:38:16) The Real Jack Kuveke: Satire, Startups, and Why VC is Broken

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro: Why Quitters Win and Fundraising Beats Traction
• 2:50 Ex-Googlers Can’t Hack It as Founders
• 3:12 Raising Money is Your Only Job
• 10:45 How to Fake User Growth & Create FOMO
• 14:14 Quit Fast, Pivot Faster
• 15:24 Jabroni Capital: The World’s Worst VC Fund
• 26:22 Hiring Hacks: How to Convince People to Join Your Startup
• 28:27 Adam Neumann: Hero or Villain?
• 37:58 The Real Jack Kuveke: Satire, Startups, and Why VC is Broken

Transcript

Jack Kuveke (00:00:00):
If I see another 21-year-old trying to disrupt the real estate industry, I'm going to crawl into a drain pipe and wait for a flood. No, most of your time as a founder is really spent fundraising. And then you hire other people to do things for you. And if they don't execute, you just fire them really fast. Hence the advice, fire fast. So if you're doing something and it doesn't work, stop doing it. Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to change. It's time to pivot and change course. I mean, I've quit everything that I've ever done in my entire life. I believe quitters get the farthest in life.

Previous Guests (00:00:33):
That's product market fit. Product market fit. Product market fit. I called it the product market fit question. Product market fit. Product market fit. Product market fit. Product market fit. I mean, the name of the show is product market fit.

Pablo Srugo (00:00:45):
Do you think the product market fit show has product market fit? Because if you do, then there's something you just have to do. You have to take out your phone. You have to leave the show five stars. It lets us reach more founders and it lets us get better guests. Thank you. Jack, welcome to the show, man.

Jack Kuveke (00:01:01):
Thanks for having me.

Pablo Srugo (00:01:01):
Dude, well, it's a pleasure to have you here. I mean, I think I actually have found you on LinkedIn. I find quite a few guests on LinkedIn these days because they, you know, when I find something, someone has like an interesting take, something interesting to say, you know, I tend to reach out. And so I think the post I saw, I'm just looking at it here, was like this information, the information put out this news article, like ex-Googlers discover that startups are hard, which is funny on its own. And then you're like building a start-up hard when you've been paid half a million dollars a year to play office ping pong and write code six hours a week. What like what's your take on why so many like because everybody wants to back that ex-Google ex whatever founder. Why do you think it doesn't maybe work out that way often?

Jack Kuveke (00:01:46):
Well, Pablo, it's very simple. They don't do anything. They don't work. And by the way, I think that's good. I think people that work are suckers for the most part. If you don't have to do things like the whole matrix for success in life. And this is something my grandfather told me when I was very young is the more money you make while working as little as possible. It's really the work to money ratio. So if you're a billionaire, you inherit a ton of money and you live on a beach, but your interest generates millions of dollars every month, you're crushing it. That's as successful as you can be. So Google is really good for people who don't have rich families and are part of like the bottom class of society. You can make a lot of money while not doing a lot, which is why I think that's great. But then why when people go to startups and they actually have to do things, they sometimes struggle if they come from an environment like Google where they don't have to do anything other than complain.That's like 40 to 60 percent of like all Google meetings these days is like DEI requirements, which is it's like tough to transition to that to building a company.

Pablo Srugo (00:02:54):
I mean, I've heard that like, you know, the Google culture is not maybe the most hardworking culture, but I'm surprised to hear you say so many good things about it because like, I mean, you started a company and now you're a VC, right? Like, so you must have, I mean, as a founder, you kind of have to be kind of all in working, I don't know, what, 70, 80 hours a week?

Jack Kuveke (00:03:12):
No, most of your time as a founder is really spent fundraising. And then you hire other people to do things for you. And if they don't execute, you just fire them really fast. Hence the advice, fire fast. So, you know, as a founder, I'd say like most of my job was like I wrote, you know, raising money is very challenging. So, you know, I spent many months talking to family members, getting introductions from them, from the rich friends, getting angel checks from them. And then ultimately, you know, using my nepotism to get a lead investor check. And that process is quite time consuming. It takes, you know, probably 20 to 30 hours a week. But then once you close the money and we raised right around two and a half million dollars for that company, most of the effort after that is on hiring people and making sure that they work as hard as possible while I, you know, continue to write investor updates.

Pablo Srugo (00:03:56):
I mean, I feel like you're being ironic about just the fundraising piece. I mean, what would you say, especially now that you're on the VC side, like what would you say to somebody that, you know, doesn't have that network on the family and friends side, you know, just in terms of getting a successful raise off the ground?

Jack Kuveke (00:04:08):
Yeah. My first question is normally, what are you thinking? If you don't have a network, you didn't go to Stanford, you know, your dad doesn't work at like, you know, as an executive at JP Morgan or like at least, you know, has his own practice, like the law firm or something. It's going to be really challenging because no one's going to take you seriously because you just don't like you don't have the familial credibility. I don't see like that lineage of success. So my primary like feedback is like try and get adopted. You know, I've had a couple founders who they put in the work, they, you know, left their family, they found like a rich oligarch overseas to adopt them. And they were able to successfully raise money without a problem. So my first piece of feedback, my first question is always like, who do you think you are? You know?

Pablo Srugo (00:04:54):
But isn't that what start-ups is all about? People who necessarily have nothing and then build something from the ground up?

Jack Kuveke (00:05:02):
No. Every successful company starts with your parents giving you money. Amazon, parents gave them money. Facebook, parents gave them money. I mean, Elon Musk, parents gave him money. I mean, these people, they have a very, Steve Jobs worked out of his parents' garage. I mean, listen, the story goes on and on. And so I really I just I don't I can't really think of a single case where someone started from nothing. Spotify, Shopify, parents gave them money. I mean, what more examples do you need from it?

Pablo Srugo (00:05:33):
So it's kind of you're saying like the game is 100 percent rigged.

Jack Kuveke (00:05:36):
Well, I mean, I don't I wouldn't say rigged. I think that that's just how it's supposed to be. I mean, it's very, very cynical of you to say that that's rigged. I mean.

Pablo Srugo (00:05:44):
Well, it seems like, you know, basically like the haves have it and the have nots are just out of the game.

Jack Kuveke (00:05:48):
And that's good.

Pablo Srugo (00:05:49):
How so?

Jack Kuveke (00:05:49):
Well, you work at a VC, don't you?

Pablo Srugo (00:05:51):
I do.

Jack Kuveke (00:05:52):
So you broke out. I mean, that's amazing. So now you're part of the haves. So you're on my side.

Pablo Srugo (00:05:58):
So I got to support this kind of thinking about just excluding 95% of the world.

Jack Kuveke (00:06:04):
Yes, exactly.

Pablo Srugo (00:06:07):
Let's back up a little bit. Tell me your story. You were talking about that first raise. What was the startup you had?

Jack Kuveke (00:06:14):
It was a company called Huddle. So it was at the time where everyone was sad and alone, living in their homes during COVID. They weren't able to go out in public. So we started doing video call software for businesses to be able to engage their customers. And we sold almost no one. We got like literally no customers. We got like one big estee Lauder company to agree. And it totally fell through after we raised money. But again, you go get people to agree to do things and it doesn't have to work out. We got traction and then it completely fell through and blew up in our face. But it was enough for us to get money so that when it ultimately inevitably failed, we already had millions of dollars in the bank. So it didn't matter anymore. But we worked really, really hard to get that traction in the door so that ultimately we had the right leverage when we were speaking to successful people to be like, look, we have these great potential customers that are coming on. They're signing LOIs. They're doing pilots with us. They're paying us some money. And then inevitably, of course, it didn't work out. And so it didn't matter anymore. But we were building video software to engage people's customers. Which was principally seemed like a good idea. And then it turned out to be a horrible idea because then the world went back to meeting in person and no one wanted to be on Zoom calls all day. So it turns out like once, you know, there was no longer social distancing and you could leave your house, that was a bad business. But at the time, it seemed great and people were really excited about it. And that's it's like Clubhouse, right? Like everyone's really excited about it. And everyone's like, hey, you know, when people can actually talk to their friends, go out to bars or whatever, aren't they no longer going to join these audio rooms? No, no, no. Clubhouse raised a billion dollars at a $4 billion valuation. Everyone was super hype on that, even though logically it didn't make sense long-term. That doesn't matter though, because those founders are rich, so they succeeded.

Pablo Srugo (00:07:59):
Well, that was going to be my next question, because you can raise a lot of money and make $0 as a founder. How do you structure it so that if whatever happens, like at least you kind of do okay.

Jack Kuveke (00:08:12):
Secondaries. Secondaries are your friend. If a VC doesn't allow you to take out secondaries in your company, run for the hills. That's a predatory VC. I mean, you also are being, you're basically a predator as well because you're trying to just, you know, build a fake business in order to sell secondaries. But, this is the game. So you want to make sure that whoever gives you money is okay with you selling secondaries to other like more suckery investors. So the game is you want to like raise from the best. A16Z, Sequoia, you want to raise a large enough round. So when you get follow on investors, they're desperate to get in. They want to be alongside A16Z and you say, you know what? We don't have room in our round officially. But what if I sell you some of my shares? So then you sell your shares to those second tier, third tier investors who are desperate to invest alongside your lead. And then you get the liquidity you need to buy a house, invest in Dogecoin, Pepe, et cetera. And then ultimately, you've won. You don't have to do anything ever again. You just hire people, hope it works out. And if it doesn't, you're rich still. So win-win.

Pablo Srugo (00:09:13):
So, okay. I mean, look, it's a sales strategy, but then how do you get A16Z in the first place?

Jack Kuveke (00:09:18):
Well, you've got to get really good at League of Legends. As SPF showed us, you know, the better you are at video games and slightly distracting, you don't care about them. When you're on a call with a VC, and this works with me, by the way, it's very similar to dating. Have you ever been around a bar and you're talking to someone and they're like, they're flirty, but they're not that interested in you. Like their eyes kind of go away. They're like, oh my God, Jessica, how are you? You're interested even more. So when you're on these VC calls, you want to be the hot girl or guy at a party. But you don't want to be too interested in them. The more interest you seem like you seem like a great fit for us. No, no, no, no. Never say that. You're like, well, I don't know. Maybe you're a good fit. But what are you to do for me? You know, like I've got I've just got so many options on the table right now. I had 70 meetings this week. How do I look? What's your advantage? You got to make them work for it and act like you don't even care about their money. That makes them want you more. And then ultimately, if you're distracted, maybe you're playing like League of Legends, you're playing Counter-Strike, whatever. And you're like, sorry, I'm busy. I got something going on. Even better if you share your screen, they see that you're not paying attention to them at all. And they're like, my God, this guy's a wunderkind. He can do everything at once. Then they're going to give you money.

Pablo Srugo (00:10:24):
Well, I mean, there's I mean, there is something I'll admit to just like getting putting yourself in a position where, you know, they're on their back heels as a VC and like they're kind of maybe begging for your attention, not the other way around. So, I mean, I kind of get what you're saying, a little extreme, but like tell me more than tell me more about driving. I mean, you seem to be really good at the fundraising side, like tell me more about just sort of things you've seen that work when it comes to, you know, driving FOMO.

Jack Kuveke (00:10:49):
So, a lot of companies I've worked with in the past and seen, they really struggle to get that big user growth, the inflection of tons of users coming to use your product.

Pablo Srugo (00:10:58):
Sorry, did you say fake? You said fake user growth?

Jack Kuveke (00:11:01):
Well, we're getting there, Pablo. Don't talk over me.

Pablo Srugo (00:11:03):
I don't know, man. I just heard something I had to double click on.

Jack Kuveke (00:11:09):
So you don't have customers, and that's a problem. So what you can do is there's a lot of user farms out there now for like 100 grand. So say you raise some angel money, you want to get a spike of users. Pay people in Southeast Asia to use your product and get a spike of user growth. You can also charge payments to your own credit card to just funnel up revenue. I mean, it's going directly to you, so you're going to have to pay some stripe fees on that. But your investors will see huge user growth, huge revenue growth. And yeah, you're paying for it and they're fake users. But again, the name of the game here is to just show a spike, show the growth. Remember when FTX, FTX, everyone was like, it's the biggest crypto exchange in the world. Everyone used to tell me it's the biggest crypto exchange in the world. And I would go, well, that doesn't really make sense because they make way less money and have far fewer transactions than Coinbase. I mean, nope, they have lots of users, Jack. It's the biggest crypto exchange in the world. I'm like, something doesn't add up here. But I invested. I threw in almost $50 to $100 million.

Pablo Srugo (00:12:04):
Why would you do that if you didn't believe?

Jack Kuveke (00:12:07):
Well, because everyone else would say it's the biggest fucking exchange in the world. I was I got into the hype. They got me. They suckered me in. They succeeded. So, you know, again, hype, fake users drive those numbers up. Then everyone has the you get a billboard by the name your company, like by your arena and name your company after it. And then all of a sudden, people will be like, this is a successful company. This is a next Unicorn. It doesn't matter if it doesn't have any of the numbers to back it up. They can't even, they're not going to do due diligence. It's a hot route, you know? They're going to be like, wow, we got to get in here before Sequoia dies. They give you money, bam, off to the races.

Pablo Srugo (00:12:41):
I mean, you're talking about taking investor money, let's say, from your rich family and friends, using it to buy revenue, using that revenue to get more money.

Jack Kuveke (00:12:48):
For sure.

Pablo Srugo (00:12:48):
I mean, is that legal? Can you do that?

Jack Kuveke (00:12:51):
Well, I mean, listen, legal schmeagle. Listen, there's a lot of people out there. I mean, the end of the day here is, are we going to die poor or are we going to try and shoot for the moon? I'd rather make $100 million, live on a boat for a couple of years and go to jail for five or 10 than be poor the entire time. That just sounds way worse. And at the end of the day, if you funnel money into Swiss bank accounts, you get some offshore, you maybe pay a couple of North Koreans to have their money for you. You can preserve your wealth so that when you get out of jail, you still have something to fall back onto. But if you think about it, people work their entire lives to make like two, three million dollars in total. If you take a couple of years in jail, but you walk away with $10, $50, $100 million dollars at the end of it. I mean, that's just like the same as working any old job and collecting revenue and banking it.

Pablo Srugo (00:13:33):
I mean, it's hard to argue with numbers, but let me ask you this.  Why not just take all that effort and try to create real value for customers?

Jack Kuveke (00:13:42):
Have you tried doing that?

Pablo Srugo (00:13:44):
I did. Actually, I failed. It was tough.

Jack Kuveke (00:13:47):
Exactly, Pablo. Went to VC instead, just like me, by the way. That's why we're winners. We realize it's hard. Pivot. If you're doing something and it doesn't work, stop doing it. Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to change. It's time to pivot and change course.

Pablo Srugo (00:14:03):
Well, how do you know, that's a good question. Good topic, which is always this like, when do you keep going? And when do you pivot? When do you give up? You know what I mean? Because like, I mean, starting to start was hard. And everybody talks about like perseverance, relentlessness, but at some point, you know, you got to pull the plug. Like, what's your thinking on that?

Jack Kuveke (00:14:18):
I mean, I've quit everything that I've ever done in my entire life. I believe quitters get the farthest in life. So I think the bumping user growth doesn't get out. You got to run for the hills, probably change your name, flee to a different country, maybe start a Thai massage parlour. I don't know. Point is, pivot, change. I mean, if you're not getting the numbers you need to grow this thing, I mean, I would get out in the first couple of months. I mean, as we see, like good things don't take that long. Nothing good that's ever been built has taken more than a couple weeks, maybe three months, you know? So if you don't get that initial traction momentum, move on early. I'm talking eight weeks.

Pablo Srugo (00:14:59):
So give it a couple months. If you're not on that zero to one trajectory like ASAP, just go back to your job.

Jack Kuveke (00:15:05):
Yeah. Go back to your job immediately. I mean, again, go work at Google. Make six hundred thousand dollars playing ping pong and writing six hours of code. That's a great that's a great option if you can't successfully scam investors out of their money.

Pablo Srugo (00:15:16):
And so tell me.

Jack Kuveke (00:15:19):
I know, you're speechless because I'm dropping so many facts.

Pablo Srugo (00:15:23):
I am speechless, not gonna lie. Tell me a bit about your fund. What's the name of your fund?

Jack Kuveke (00:15:28):
Jabroni Capital. So Jabroni Capital, it started three or four years ago. After I exited my company, by exiting, I mean, my co-founder bought me out. After I exited my company, you know, I was twiddling my thumbs. I got a couple of job offers, but, you know, I was going to get paid nothing, a couple hundred grand. It was just, it was like loser behavior. I didn't want to do that. So. I set out, I had this great idea for a fund that would invest in profitable companies. I quickly trashed that idea because I couldn't find a single profitable company to invest in. And so instead I decided to invest in hyper growth companies that inevitably failed. So I started Jabroni Capital on this thesis, and I thought to myself, where am I getting the money that people are willing to just ride to zero? Who's going to invest in a fund that literally is going to just make no money, invest in no companies that ever make profit?

Pablo Srugo (00:16:23):
I know you don't want me to interrupt you, but why not have a little bit of optimism that maybe it'll work out? You know what I mean? Maybe it'll make some money.

Jack Kuveke (00:16:32):
Well, listen, I mean, foolish optimism doesn't get us anywhere. I don't want to be delusional here. So, you know, having all of my friends at VC funds, you know, quite frankly, their trajectory, their hit rates are really low. And, you know, they're not exactly investing in the best of the best these days. And quite frankly, you know, tech stocks are so overvalued. The markets are tumbling right now. So I didn't want to set unrealistic expectations where I was actually going to find a company that would be successful since all the other companies that I've ever, you know, angel invested on the side have inevitably never worked out. So.

Pablo Srugo (00:17:04):
You're high integrity, high integrity kind of guy.

Jack Kuveke (00:17:06):
Yeah, exactly. So getting back to it again, excuse you for interrupting, but getting back to it, so I set out to start this fund. I needed to find the right investors. And I struggled for a bit because I went to the classics you would go to. I went to family offices in New York. I traveled out to SF to invest in fund to funds. And they did not like this thesis. They wanted me to at least have the illusion of investing in profitable companies like the rest of their portfolio, their investments, the rest of the funds they give money to. And so that's why I went out east. So I found some Russian oligarchs, some Saudis that were looking for tax write-offs and money laundering schemes. And so they were fully aware and they bought into the vision entirely. They're like, this is great. It's the same thing when they bought like a $250 million painting that's really worth like a million. It's just a write-off. They donate to a museum. They're able to say, we lost $250 million. We donated $250 million. So I found these Russian oil guards and these Saudis through a connection from my uncle who works in private equity. And I raised an initial $150 million fund and we made a couple investments. Literally a third of our fund went into FTX, which they were really happy about because that was a huge write-off for them right immediately. I was like, I shot them an email three months later, guys, off to a great start. We already lost 50% of the money, which means you guys can re-up. Nine months later, we raised an additional $600 million fund on top of that. We have over $7 billion under management, which is $7 billion of write-offs for some of the worst Peruvian liquor dealers. One of my LPs is just a Russian oligarch who made all this money selling endangered species to buyers around the world. You know, endangered species, people who mine like, you know, cobalt and lithium in the Congo with like questionable quote unquote employees. And so there's a lot of really, you know, interesting people out there who have a lot of money that they need to funnel into illegitimate but legal scams like Jabroni Capital. So it's been a great success so far. I have over, you know, 143 unpaid interns that work for me and two paid employees. And so the management fees are quite astounding.

Pablo Srugo (00:19:16):
Well, I was going to ask, do you just do a 2 and 20? I mean, the 20% of profits, no profits expected.

Jack Kuveke (00:19:20):
So that's- Yeah, we do 4 and 40. So we didn't think we, again, 2 and 20 seemed, I didn't want it to seem like another loser. Like if I was just doing what everyone else was doing, I just, I wouldn't undersell myself. So I just, I put the fees way higher knowing that I'll never be able to get carried interest on any of these investments. So naturally I felt like I should be able to demand a higher premium on the management fees.

Pablo Srugo (00:19:45):
I mean, that's hard to argue with that strategy. And so at this point, how many startups have you invested in?

Jack Kuveke (00:19:52):
683 startups.

Pablo Srugo (00:19:54):
That's a lot.

Jack Kuveke (00:19:55):
All in the AI space. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's this year alone. We've invested in over 489 companies.

Pablo Srugo (00:20:01):
Do you say no to anybody?

Jack Kuveke (00:20:03):
No, no. If you went to Stanford and you are dropped out of an Ivy League and you're building an AI, Jabroni Capital will give you money right now. Like we have, we have a form on our website where people just submit and there's actually like an automated agent that will just, we built this. This is actually some really advanced technology. We're thinking about spitting this off from a secondary company to sell to other VCs where founders can just apply on our website. And we'll just, if we, they meet our criteria, which is like, again, there's three or four things, dropout, Ivy league, AI, we just wire the money right away.

Pablo Srugo (00:20:35):
Would you rather they have gone to Stanford or dropped out of Stanford?

Jack Kuveke (00:20:39):
If you stay in Stanford, you're a loser. At this point, I mean, again, let's go through Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs.

Pablo Srugo (00:20:48):
The numbers, man.

Jack Kuveke (00:20:48):
None of them stayed in college. College is a scam. So if you leave that, by the way, increased evaluation, shows gumption, courage, discipline, you know, commitment, self-belief.

Pablo Srugo (00:21:00):
What if you just never go? You're just like self-made. Is that better or worse?

Jack Kuveke (00:21:03):
I would recommend going just to drop out. You know, it's a small investment, you know, $75,000 a year of tuition to be able to say that you dropped out of a good school. That's great. So, you know, or at the very least lie, you can get like fake diplomas, buy a sweatshirt, buy a hat. I don't really care what you have to do, like have the merchandise to be able to say, I never went, you'll never find another records. Cause again, I dropped out quote unquote, but you should at least tell people that even if, even if it doesn't actually happen.

Pablo Srugo (00:21:29):
That shows what, like hustle to you?

Jack Kuveke (00:21:31):
Oh, yeah.

Pablo Srugo (00:21:32):
Is that a key? What do you look for in founders?

Jack Kuveke (00:21:34):
What do I look for is ability to talk on end. So like what I'm doing here, I can just gab and gab and gab. You want to be able to talk forever. You want to say as little as possible with as many words as possible. So when people are in there, they're like, we're democratizing the revolutionary pinnacle of peer-to-peer B2B financing for SME companies in Latin America. I'm like, great. No idea what that means, but it sounds amazing. Other VCs are going to love it. You're gonna be able to great follow on capital, I would love to lead you around. It's all about being able to talk. And that's what a lot of these founders that we've seen over the past, Charlie Chavez, who's currently on trial for getting JP Morgan to buy our company for $175 million, lying about our users. Another portfolio company of ours, we're really proud of her. Sorry to see her in trouble. We're actually funding her legal battle right now. But she was able to talk on end and make things up and just gap. And VCs, they ate that up. And JP Morgan ate it up too. He sold their company. So that's another exit for Jabroni Capital's portfolio. So, I mean, at the end of the day, it's really just all about, you know, the gift of gap, be able to talk it, sell it. I don't care if you have anything, just tell people you do. And if you can sell it hard enough and confuse them with double speak, like a politician would, it's awesome.

Pablo Srugo (00:22:51):
Would you rather like a company that has real traction or one where the lead is, you know, A16Z, Sequoia or some other kind of like tier one investor?

Jack Kuveke (00:22:59):
Oh, tier one. I mean, if you have traction, you don't have VCs. What even are you? Money? $10 million a year? Nothing. How are you going to personally get $10 million a year? How are you going to be worth $50 million in the next 12 months? You're not going to do that without paper valuations, secondaries. I mean, at the end of the day, would you rather have a million dollars in the bank or be worth $150 million on paper with no liquidity chance?

Pablo Srugo (00:23:26):
But don't you think as a founder, you should build, you know, build a real business, try to get the profitability like versus just chase, you know, these markups?

Jack Kuveke (00:23:34):
No.

Pablo Srugo (00:23:36):
Interesting take. You know, I haven't heard that yet on the show.

Jack Kuveke (00:23:39):
No, it's, you know, it's unique. And again, that's what you've got to be different. You know, everyone else is reading Andrew Chen's blog and repeating what he says. I'm out here reading Bernie Madoff's old notebook and coming up with some straight bangers for you.

Pablo Srugo (00:23:53):
What was his smartest move? What did you learn from someone like him? 

Jack Kuveke (00:23:59):
You got to work with family. Family is key because they have a lot of built-in trust in relation. It's hard to find people who are going to keep your ponzi scheme alive and not rat on you. Elizabeth Holmes made a key mistake where she brought in a lot of people close to her who she wasn't literally related to and had blood ties. So those people are the first to crack. I mean, even she was sleeping with her co-founder to try and get him to stay. But the second the going gets tough, they're ratting you out to reduce prison time. But your siblings, your children, your family, those people that are closest to you, they're the ride or dies. And so the people that you keep closest to you, it's got to be nepotism because they've seen you as a child. Maybe they watched you beat a baby bird to death with a wiffle ball bat when you were a kid, so they fear you a little bit. And those people really know the kind of danger and problems you can cause them. So they're the much more likely to keep the dream alive with you and hold on to the end before you go to jail.

Pablo Srugo (00:24:56):
Well, maybe then on that note, like when you think about like teams and co-founders, like do you care if it's a solo founder or there's two or three? And like in general, what do you look for, like for how the co-founders are kind of like connected to each other?

Jack Kuveke (00:25:09):
I, you know, I, you know, there's a lot of there's a bad rap in Silicon Valley right now for solo founders. And I think it's unfair, you know. So if you're a solo founder, you can totally build a great company as long as you have a legion of unpaid interns that you're using or abusing to supplement for the co-founders you don't have working at your company. So but personally, if I'm looking for like an ideal mix, it's like eight to 10 co-founders where one person owns 90% of the company and the rest have to share scraps. I want there to be a clear leader who's able to convince other people that they're quote unquote co-founders, even though they have next to nothing in the company and have devoted all of their life to working for free. So I think like if you can, it's like a cult, right? At the end of the day, you know, building a company is like building a cult. And if you can get people to commit their lives to something with really no material gain whatsoever, you're, you have the greatest chance of long-term success possible.

Pablo Srugo (00:26:04):
Well, I mean, that is one of the things we started with the Google thing. Right, but it's like, how do you get somebody who's like at Google or whatever, making half a million dollars a year? If you just think about it, 10 years later, they make five million bucks to leave and join you at your startup, you know, like as a co-founder. You know, some people do it, but I always struggle with like a real formula you can use to kind of make it happen.

Jack Kuveke (00:26:26):
Yeah. So let's role play right now. So you're a Google employee. I'm trying to hire you and I'm coming to interview. So my first sentence to you is Pablo. Do you want to be a loser forever?

Jack Kuveke (00:26:35):
I don't. I don't

Jack Kuveke (00:26:38):
No, no one wants to be a loser. And then here's what you do. So then you start talking about like. So the dot.com era, the 2005 to 2012 era startups, that's gone. Those tech stocks were worth $150 billion. They had 50x revenue multiples. I mean, we're in a recession right now. The stocks are plummeting. Everyone's going to lose all their money. That era of tech is over, however. When you're trying to convince a co-founder or a Google engineer, you want to tell them that it's just begun. Wave two is here. There's going to be 50, $20 trillion companies made over the next 10 or 20 years. I mean, they thought Google was good getting to like a trillion dollars market cap. Just wait till my company gets to $80 trillion market cap. NVIDIA has more to grow. Tesla, trillion dollars on like $50 billion in revenue. Are you kidding me? We're going to be seeing companies with like $100 billion in revenue with quadrillion valuation. So you got to just lie to them to buy them into the stories of those companies that will never happen again. Those companies that are already crumbling on the public markets right now. Tell them that we're going to be the next Google except 50 times more valuable because we've got AI. They did that without AI. Imagine what we can do with AI. Now, none of that really makes sense. You're kind of confused. You're worrying right now. But I started off by asking if you want to be a loser. And the answer is no, you don't. You want to get laid. You want to be cool. You want to be SVF and polyamorous sex goal parties. And you're not going to do that at Google. It's never going to happen. So would you rather take a chance and work with a guy like me who's got cool hair, who can talk to your ear off, who's going to kind of have a little bit of an abusive relationship, who's going to make you feel really good and then nag you sometimes so you want to win his affection over? That, at the end of the day, is going to be way more valuable than working with your technical project manager, Kwan Lee, at Google. He's nice, he's cordial. But it's not fun. It doesn't give you an exciting feel. You're dead inside right now. You want to be alive. Be alive with me.

Pablo Srugo (00:28:27):
I like that. I mean, you know what? When you're talking and you talk about your hair, it actually reminds me of kind of the Adam Neumann look and feel. I don't know if that's something you're going for.

Jack Kuveke (00:28:38):
Oh, 100%. I'm getting leg extensions right now. I'm only 6'2". He was quite tall. He was like 6'5", 6'6". I'm getting leg extensions right now. I already have the hair. My eyebrows are pretty similar. I've got the jawline. I don't have the Israeli accent. I'm still working on that. So if you have any tips, tutor or something like that, coach, but I'm getting my, my legs will be broken in half next week in San Francisco. Oh yeah. I'm getting them extended because I'm not nearly tall enough to pull that off just yet. But you give me six months, 12 years, my hamstring stretch out. I'm there.

Pablo Srugo (00:29:08):
What do you think that he got wrong? Like he raised so much money and it just never worked out.

Jack Kuveke (00:29:12):
Wrong. He made a billion dollars. He crushed. A16Z gave him $300 million for his next company, even though there's documentaries of him losing $25 billion. Are you kidding me?

Pablo Srugo (00:29:21):
That was a shock, actually, when that happened. I couldn't believe it.

Jack Kuveke (00:29:24):
That was amazing. I saw that, and I just slow clapped in the back. I was like, he's the most famous fraud in the world, and people are still throwing the money right now to buy up all the homes. I don't know what that pitch was like. He must have been really good at League of Legends. But all I'm telling you right now, is that guy, hats off to him. He'll raise another $500 million if this doesn't work out.

Pablo Srugo (00:29:47):
Let's maybe shift gears a little bit. You're really good, I see, on LinkedIn, get a lot of traction. What are some of your most viral posts that have resonated the most, and what sort of things did you say to get that sort of traction?

Jack Kuveke (00:30:00):
Yeah. So a lot of the times I rant, as you can tell right now, one of my more popular posts was that if I see another 21-year-old trying to disrupt the real estate industry, I'm going to crawl into a drain pipe and wait for a flood. That did really well. Because you're just calling out things that everyone is really sick of, like people who've never paid rent building companies, who I would gladly invest in, by the way. Because the less experience you have with something, the better you are to disrupt it, as we all know. So that's a really good, obviously the Google posts, like calling out things in the tech industry that don't really make sense or calling out the obvious. I talk a lot about frauds. I, you know, I invested in a team of, uh, founders that were all in prison. And now people love that, you know, Jordan Belfort's our head of investor relations. Elizabeth Holmes is the CEO. She's still in jail. You know, the more people you can have on board of a company that, are in federal prison right now, that does quite well on social media. So I like to do a bunch of bait and switches where I start serious and then I just layer in with something absurd underneath. That does well. But the more we can talk about erroneous characters, fraudulent scenarios, yelling at employees in meetings, giving people 15 page case studies and 9 interviews only to offer them $52,000 a year for a senior level position.

Pablo Srugo (00:31:20):
Yeah. Actually, I read. What was that? What was that about? There's some story about you like interviewing someone they yelled at you after.

Jack Kuveke (00:31:27):
Yeah, I had this, I mean, it was pretty inappropriate on their part. So I was hiring for, you know, Senior Vice President at our firm. And part of the process, we have a very rigorous recruiting process where, you know, we obviously have the application. We've got, you know, seven to eight interviews with various members of our team, mostly me and other people. I just go in with disguises normally. I change it up with different voice. Hi, how are you? I'm Josh.

Pablo Srugo (00:31:54):
Just to see how they react.

Jack Kuveke (00:31:55):
Oh, yeah. And if they can't play it off, then they're not getting my money and they're not getting the job. But at the end of it, I make them do a 15-page case study. And people were kind of upset in this candidate in particular that I paid them $60,000 a year for a senior level position. Because I like to advertise, I'm going to pay you a lot more. But the job market's so bad and everyone's losing so much money, you can get a lot of suckers for way less. But that doesn't give them the right to be mean and yell at me. Just because they went through that whole process and ultimately they were getting slightly less than they were expecting. I told them 280 and pay them 60. But still, it's not very nice of them to be mean. I was cordial. I didn't raise my voice once. I'm very calm, as you can see.

Pablo Srugo (00:32:32):
You seem like a nice guy. You seem like a high integrity nice guy.

Jack Kuveke (00:32:35):
Oh, yeah. Jack Integrity Kuveke. That's what they call me.

Pablo Srugo (00:32:38):
Frankly, we see the same stories, you know, like focus on early small set of customers, you know, put an MVP, don't raise a lot of money if you don't need it. Like these are the sort of things that we hear about. But like, I'm curious what other kind of pieces of conventional wisdom you maybe have different takes on.

Jack Kuveke (00:32:52):
Yeah, AI is really popular these days. And I do recommend having an AI component, but open AI credits are expensive. So I'm a big fan of using DeepSeek because I'm not sure if you know this, but DeepSeek algorithm, they actually, when you ask DeepSeek a question, they don't actually use a multi-language or a large language model system like OpenAI. They just feed it to a team of children who are very smart and educated. And that reduces cost and cost of software dramatically. So I would say like, you know, rather than, you know, getting open AI to answer a question for a client. Say you ask open AI, like, hey, how do I do a table system in Excel? There's an 11-year-old in China who can answer that question almost as fast as AI for a fraction of the cost. So I'm all about using cheap labor instead of technology because technology gets expensive. You have to pay for that. American companies, Sam Altman, who wants him getting the money? There's a Chinese competitor that will do it with Kuan Li or Jin Liu, and they'll do it much faster. And they get a job, too. They can put that on their resume. So think about it. You're helping out children across the world, which I think is which is great.

Pablo Srugo (00:34:03):
You know, you talking, gave me another idea, which is what about a startup that just pays the $20 a month subscription to OpenAI or maybe the $200 a month one. And then just a new UI, you ask it questions. It just asks OpenAI each question and gives you back the answer. And then OpenAI has to bear all the costs and all you're paying is $200 a month.

Jack Kuveke (00:34:23):
If you want to leave your VC right now and build that, I will give you $5 million.

Pablo Srugo (00:34:27):
Is that good?

Jack Kuveke (00:34:28):
That's great. That's good stuff. You're a natural. I know I can see you're a little hesitant to the beginning, but I'm starting to win you over.

Pablo Srugo (00:34:34):
I'm warming up to these ideas, man. I'm not going to lie.

Pablo Srugo (00:34:37):
I can tell. I like that.

Pablo Srugo (00:34:38):
It's the easy road. The easy road leads to riches, I think, is what they say.

Jack Kuveke (00:34:42):
I'm pretty sure that was Confucius.

Pablo Srugo (00:34:44):
If you couldn't tell, that was all satire. I thought we'd switch it up here on the PMF show for April Fool's. But that's clearly your bread and butter. You're very good at it. What is your real job? I mean, this is funny, but how do you make money from it?

Jack Kuveke (00:34:59):
Yeah, so I write satire about the tech industry, which Jabrovi Capital is just a satire newsletter. So we make money on advertisements, just like any other newsletter and media business. And then we have a consulting business that works with founders who are raising money. So I actually have built a bunch of companies. I have raised a bunch of money for my own companies, none of which were actually scams, although some of them, many of them did not work out. And a lot of truths were in that story you just heard. But now I work with startup founders to help them raise money. But most of my time is spent on this satire brand, writing funny newsletters. I build fake products now. I've launched a product called Is My CEO a Fraud?

Pablo Srugo (00:35:41):
Oh, yeah. What's that about?

Jack Kuveke (00:35:42):
So it's very simple. So all it does is you put in any LinkedIn account, and it'll tell you how likely someone is to commit a fraud from a scale of zero to 10 SPFs. And then we have a ranking. So I put that out as a joke, and I spend thousands of dollars on open AI credits in a single day. So if DeepSeek wants to do an endorsement with me for that, please. I am burning money left and right. We got tens of thousands of people to use that. I've helped us grow the newsletter a ton. We got 8,000 to 10,000 emails from that so far for the newsletter, which is hysterical. And so we're just trying to build like a really fun brand that builds funny products, writes crazy things about the tech industry. We'll also like poking fun at it. Like I'm obviously playing a character and saying a bunch of ridiculous things, but like this, the sad part is there's like a layer of truth to a lot of what I was going to ask.

Pablo Srugo (00:36:31):
Like, why do you think this resonates? And I think that's, that's part of it. Cause some things in tech and VC are just in startups are crazy.

Jack Kuveke (00:36:36):
Yeah. Like even the Google thing we started on today, like the amount of people at Google who like literally do nothing. Like I, I know engineers who have six staff software engineering jobs at like Series C and D companies. They're making one and a half, $2 million a year working for six or seven companies at a time. Because they're just able to do like they do the bare minimum. People ask them, hey, can you do this by Friday? And they laugh and go, oh, OK. Takes them like two hours and they just pick up a bunch of other jobs on the side because there has been like this overblown, like overblown reaction in tech where there's a lot of fake work. There is a lot of like inefficiency and there's a lot of like value that doesn't really make sense, like market caps that don't make sense for the underlying numbers. And I think that's why it resonates. And that isn't to say the tech industry isn't great and hasn't built a lot of value and made a lot of really great products that we all use. I think it just is that there's always an overreaction, overhype to every industry. The tech industry is the most susceptible now because that's the biggest industry in the world. Those are all the biggest companies in the world right now.

Pablo Srugo (00:37:43):
Perfect. Awesome, dude. And so do you actually invest in companies with your burning capital or is it just content?

Jack Kuveke (00:37:49):
No, it's literally just it's all a meme. Although ironically, I have had so much demand to start a real fund. I am confident I could raise a fund. I just don't really have any interest in being an actual investor.

Pablo Srugo (00:38:02):
Awesome, man. Well, listen, let's, let's end it there. I think we gave enough, enough content for an April Fool's episode. Hopefully nobody actually is going to take your advice, you know, just stop the podcast 20 minutes in and just run with it.

Jack Kuveke (00:38:16):
Like, I mean, frauds, everyone's quoting me in like a lawsuit.

Pablo Srugo (00:38:20):
Not a good place to be, man. Cool, well, dude, thanks so much for joining us on the show, man. It's been great.

Jack Kuveke (00:38:25):
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Pablo. This was a lot of fun.

Pablo Srugo (00:38:27):
Wow, what an episode. You're probably in awe. You're in absolute shock. You're like, that helped me so much. So guess what? Now it's your turn to help someone else. Share the episode in the WhatsApp group you have with founders. Share it on that Slack channel. Send it to your founder friends and help them out. Trust me, they will love you for it.