Eoin Matthews On Building A $1.1 Billion Equity Fund For Homeowners

In the vast landscape of entrepreneurial stories, Eoin Matthews’ journey stands out as a compelling narrative of resilience, adaptation, and insightful problem-solving. From growing up on a dairy farm in rural Ireland to co-founding successful startups in Silicon Valley, Eoin shares the lessons he learned along the way.

His venture, Point, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Redwood Trust, Ribbit Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Growing up on a dairy farm in rural Ireland, Eoin Matthews learned the value of hard work, the dichotomy of choices, and the impact of monopolies in the agricultural supply chain.
• Opting for education over farming, Eoin studied mechanical engineering in Ireland, later discovering his interest in software engineering and making a strategic transition into the tech industry.
• Eoin highlighted the advantages of his immigrant experience, including sponsored entry, a European education, and English proficiency, offering unique opportunities for success in the U.S.
• Drawing from experiences at SendGrid and Rakuten, Eoin emphasized the importance of recognizing seismic shifts in the industry, illustrating the transformative impact on businesses and entrepreneurial opportunities.
• Eoin stressed the significance of understanding where value accretes to founders, especially in businesses where expertise is not necessarily advantageous, emphasizing the power of distribution.
• Point’s business model aims to make residential home equity as fluid as debt, introducing third-party equity to the homeowner capital stack and revolutionizing the way homeowners access and utilize their wealth.
• Eoin’s journey underscores the importance of collaborating with hardworking, smart, and humble individuals, recognizing the evolving needs of customers, and adapting to the ever-changing entrepreneurial landscape.

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About Eoin Matthews:

Eoin Matthews is the current CBO and Co-founder at Point. Eoin has also previously worked with VietHope Inc., VigLink, SendGrid, Buy.com, Rakuten, Popt.com, and Metails.

Eoin has been working in the business development field for over 15 years. Eoin has experience in rapidly building publisher and merchant teams and personally works on large partnerships.

Eoin has overseen the doubling of revenue for two consecutive years at VigLink and also helped increase revenue at SendGrid. Additionally, they have successfully founded and co-founded multiple companies, including Popt.com and Metails.

Eoin’s work with VietHope Inc. has resulted in approximately 5000 student scholarships being funded to date. Eoin is committed to ensuring that the money is well spent and has implemented a best-in-class monitoring and evaluation program.

Eoin’s dedication to this cause has helped make a difference in the lives of many underprivileged students in VietNam.

Their manager is Eddie Lim, CEO and co-founder. Eoin Matthews works with Jim Kekobad – Partner Management, Raghu Gupta – Head of Sales and Partnerships, and Josh Shaw – Partner Management.

Some direct reports include Matt Windsor – Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance, and Eric Groonwald – Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance.

Connect with Eoin Matthews:

• Crunchbase
• F6S
• LinkedIn
• TheOrg

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Already hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today we have a really amazing guest. You know I guess that he’s done it multiple times and right now he’s on an absolute rocket ship. He is going to be telling us about when to walk away from ideas raising money some of the childhood experiences that he.

Alejandro Cremades: Ah, you know, got you know from growing in a in a farm in the rural ireland and then also you know what was like you know the pros and cons of coming here to the Us. So a lot of good stuff that we’re going to be covering you know again, you know I’m building scaling and financing and also you know I guess that has asked me you know also to be.

Alejandro Cremades: Question you know by him and obviously he has my approval and green light to do so so it’s gonna be both ways today and I’m sure that you’re all gonna really enjoy this episode so without farther. Do let’s welcome our guests today Owe and Matthews welcome to the show.

Eoin Matthews: Our hundred Thanks for having me on. You don’t know my questions are yet so they may get edited out. You have all the power in this relationship.

Alejandro Cremades: Oh absolutely not. You know it’s always super authentic and transparent in that regard so give us a walk through memory lane owen how was life growing up there in Rural Ireland

Eoin Matthews: Yes, Sam I grew up on a dairy farm and so I think if you grow up on on a farm. You’re a labor of a unit of labor as much as you are a kid and and so I think one of 1 of their early lessons was that you either want to be a farm or you don’t. And manual labor can be extremely hard work. So education seemed an awful lot easier and I was the deal in our household grown up is you could go to school or you can go on the farm and I was one of 6 kids and interestingly none of us chose to be farmers and and this is a multi-generational farm. So everybody walked away from the land. And said there are easier ways to make a living and hopefully time will prove us right? but it was ah it’s an interesting introduction into the world because you do contribute to the the household economics from very early on in your life and you realize that it’s ah it’s a team effort to pay to builds every month and and so with the education opportunity open up I am ultimately studied mechanical engineering in Ireland and that wasn’t true. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: And that that that’s quite that’s quite a switch though Owen I guess even even before you get into that you know what did you learn from like economics and business formation. You know during during your childhood days.

Eoin Matthews: What there is some stuff and I can’t tell if this was stuff that I fully understood at the time or it’s all hindsight looking back. 1 thing was interesting is that the price was always set for farmers and. And other words other people were telling you how much they’d pay you and you were going to produce it and then you find out almost afterwards how much your gallon of milk or how much your pan of meat is worth and there was no market so there were very strong monopolies that own the supply chain and often very very big businesses. That dictated the terms to their suppliers and it was very clear that being on the supply end of the stick was a pretty poor outcome to be in. You had no control over your destiny. You thought you did but you didn’t the other thing you could observe from I’d say the entrepreneurial farmers and farmers tend to be entrepreneur by nature. It’s ah it’s tough. But and there were farmers who realized that they could make the similar scale of capital investments not necessarily in tractors but in the added value services. So a simple example would be somebody could make a lot of money then being a potato chip manufacturer instead of a potato so potato supplier. That seems really dumb and obvious but just seeing the difference in outcomes over a relatively short period of time where people decided to make the capital investments. So did they put it into new tractors and labor on the tractors or did they put it into added value services and and they just have materially different outcomes. They’re different businesses.

Eoin Matthews: And so these are choice people choices people make and and the other part of getting back to the price but thing we sort of saw it on the farm where local people would buy produce from us and you would Mark it up differently. So my first little enterprise was selling some of our milk to a local woman who made brand bread like. Soda bread to sell in the supermarkets and she was very entrepreneurial but we could charge her more for the milk than we would say so that we would sell it for to someone like Bailey’s like our milk went towards Bailey’s irish cream and so Bailey’s dictate the price to you. But the local woman making the bread who wants your creamy milk. You can have a negotiation and you can figure out a good price point. It was a good but early price discovery and it was good early business discovery and you you realize a lot about I had the economics of the relationships and matter to either side and how aggregation of power.

Alejandro Cremades: And what eventually caught your attention about problem solving and and getting into engineering because it sounds a little bit distant from ah you know what you were used to in the in the farm.

Eoin Matthews: Can really dictate a whole economy for a group of people like and that that was certainly the case and probably still is the case for the meat industry in large parts of the world tends to be very big and industrial grade companies dictate terms in agriculture to the suppliers.

Eoin Matthews: And that’s a that’s a great question I don’t think I was a prototypical and or stereotypical mechanical engineer in that I didn’t have a huge interest in the cars and airplanes but I liked the mathematical piece of it. And it was like going into pure mat just didn’t make sense like from a career perspective in Ireland at that time like being a Matt professor wasn’t something that seemed like an obvious Pat. So being an engineer was generally where people who are interested in numbers went and so that’s why I went into it and and. I knew quite quickly. Actually it was a university in the west of Ireland that had really strong internships and in particular was a a supplier of talent into the medical device or in d world and I knew from my internships that I definitely didn’t want to be an engineer I was like ah.

Alejandro Cremades: So.

Eoin Matthews: And I like software engineering and you get a lot of exposure to software engineering doing any type of engineering like so mechanical we did we. We’re coding in basic and forran and then all individual basic. So got a lot of coding exposure and I like the coding an awful lot more than I like the engineering design work. So you you get an if you’re if you’re lucky in university. You get to understand your own professional preferences and that was the case. So I knew I actually had to do really well in engineering to not professionally go into engineering because if you only do okay in college. And you’re sort of stuck in that domain. It’s hard to transition. But if you do really well in any domain in college. It’s easy to transition onto something else. It’s a platform so I knew by the end of my college career that I needed to get ah like a first class honors and so. So I worked hard at the end to make sure that was casewide optionality and and that’s how I caught the eye of 1 of my college professors who had a software company and that he made the leap away from academia the year I graduated and he he asked me to come and join his company and so that was very exciting. That was my first startup experience and so. So different from anything else I’ve done before.

Alejandro Cremades: You know, kidding and obviously you ended up coming to the Us too. So you know coming to this country is not easy. You know as an immigrant. So I guess over some of the pros and cons you know when you came here and enter the venture world in in such a different you know region.

Eoin Matthews: Well honestly I I probably am the luckiest person the world in terms of immigrant experience I was sponsored to come here I came here with a European education which which is really which was really good and I came here with no student dad and I speak English. So Honestly I would say my set of immigrant Circumstances. You could not be luckier. No doubt somebody giving you a job and bringing you over speak the language and I feel incredibly fortunate and then you look at the odds of other immigrants coming in. It’s you realize how challenging it can be and so. People have to fight many many battles to be successful and and many natives have to fight very very hard battles to be successful. But I actually think my immigrant experience give me so much advantages that are not the typical immigrant experience coming in where it’s just in practical terms. Do you have a debt load like being an entrepreneur with a debt load is hard. You have to pay Student Bills. You have pay Mor Whatever it is Debt is not the friend of an entrepreneur especially when you’re in Discovery phase trying to find product Market Fit. So I come in with no nooses around my neck I think the other part is when you leave Home. You don’t have the same ties to friends that you had growing up so it’s. Oftentimes if you grow up in the same place and stay there. Your social connections are really strong and in a sense you sacrifice that by moving and there’s pros and cons to that and but it means you have time to do other stuff. That’s probably what it comes down to.

Eoin Matthews: So you’re not going to spend as much time with family. My family were three thousand miles away most of my friends were three thousand miles away so you get to redesign your life afresh which is and which is pretty rare in some respects.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah know I hear you definitely not easy and also it helps you with dealing with the uncertainty you know which I’m sure that they has served you really nicely as an entrepreneur as well.

Eoin Matthews: As a spaniard in New York you’ve done it too is like your there’s pros and cons to this where you’re there’s tradeoffs on the personal front and we’re lucky we live in a sort of world where it’s more much more communication available to us now. But in the 1990 s and early 2000 s

Alejandro Cremades: Oh yeah.

Eoin Matthews: Folks weren’t on me email my dad just got an ipad two months ago. So you you just give up on that connectivity that you might have been very accustomed to.

Alejandro Cremades: And on your case you know, eventually you ended up going at it on your own. You know you were part of the whole social network craze and back then you know you you were in Boston and that company actually eventually ended up getting acquired and it got acquired by.

Alejandro Cremades: Ah, buy.com now 1 thing that is say really interesting. You know as part of that the transaction which was a metails I like to ask you like what what kind of disability would you say that gave you into the full cycle of of a company from start to finish.

Eoin Matthews: And I think it gave me a lot I think details was incredibly short, lived like in ah in effect it was less than a year one thing that was beneficial there that I think entrepreneurs can often overlook and even if I look at the headlines for your podcast. It’s often ah has historically been about how much people is raised. There’s an awful lot to be said for not raising money. Equity capital is extraordinarily expensive like and it should be like in other words, if you’re going to make the investors a lot of money if you’re going to make the fund the effect of I r on that capital is probably going to be 100% plus you know that’s just that’s just how the economics work. Now if you can hold on a company and I know lots of entrepreneurs have gone this path if you manage to hold on to the line share of the equity even without raising any external capital you own your destiny and you can take different checks and it be a big win a lifech changing win. So in the case of details. The first thing I would say is we were. We tried to raise venture and we weren’t successful. Because there were so many social networks at that time and so I think what it gave us as an advantage is we were. It was much easier to do a deal with us. We didn’t have other equity owners who had bigger multiple prerogatives and just different outlook we were 3 people who could do a transaction pretty quickly. The other interesting part is we went to the acquiring company by dotcom and by dot com had been a.comboom and bus story and then had survived afterwards and was finding its place in the world where at surface level its competition was Amazon.

Eoin Matthews: But that really wasn’t the case anymore like the tide had changed so drastically by 2004 about who was going to win I think it gave me an upfront view on a few different businesses that have become huge that were the competition and you and you understand why they became huge in hindsight. 1 thing I think that’s overlooked for example in Amazon as a third party as observer and why things went to Amazon’s way and I think is this huge one that gets way overlooked. It’s actually in the marketing and’s very simple is that Amazon started off with an affiliate program and they did the affiliate program inhouse. They just decided not to use any of the major affiliate services and why that ended up being so consequential is that Google then dominated search and Google pagerank favored inter like natural links back to the source and because Amazon was running their affiliate program in-house. All of their affiliate links. Look like natural links and so Google essentially gave Amazon ecommerce like it handed it ecommerce on a place now Amazon had to do a great service and everything else, but it’s hard to underscore how much of an advantage that gave Amazon in broad scale ecommerce and probably saved their business. Like there’s little There’s little things and we could see that in 2004 then the Seo game had played out in the e-commerce and Google was changing its algorithm over the subsequent years to not favor that but it was a done deal Amazon had then gone multi-billion and they were just lucky and there was lots of stuff on amazon they weren’t lucky about but most businesses need that.

Eoin Matthews: Facebook would be another one that’s interesting is like I don’t think if you were on Facebook now you would appreciate that back then there were hundreds of social networks and there had been 2 or 3 that got to scale but didn’t get to mega scale. They got to 20 or 30000000 and then they typically run into actually technology problems. But everybody starting a social network then had the widest doors open as possible and what Facebook came in was a very narrow door for a very small community which was harvard like you couldn’t register and this stuff that was so and like that was so instrumental to their success early on is narrow relevant today. And you don’t get that same company without the narrow door to start the virality that is so critical at the very start is not the same growth that’s later on. So maybe 1 of the big learnings. There is just how much companies change like some of the features that are critical at day one to getting critical mass are not important a year later they’re they’re actually hindrances when you’re going to a different mode of scale like when you’re trying to get the students on board and itt be the site where people people can poke each other that was a feature on Facebook early on that’s not the feature just going to be important four years later when you’re trying to get mom and dad on the site.

Alejandro Cremades: I hear you now obviously after this experience on your end. You did a few years you know one you know a stint you know on on on this company that ended up being becoming centgrid you know which was saying about ten months you know that you dedicated there.

Alejandro Cremades: You left right? before you know they? um they they went through the accelerator program and all of that stuff. But but ultimately you did a few years in the attic you know also experience rakut 10 So I think that that gave you a good visibility to into like a larger corporation on how you know those say it typically operate and that was ultimately you know what ended up becoming.

Eoin Matthews: Um.

Alejandro Cremades: 1 of the immediate steps before you activating the switch with point which is probably the biggest you know is success late that you feel that you’ve been able to to be a part of us. Ah as a co-founder so walk us through the sequence of events that needed to happen for you to bring point to life as well.

Eoin Matthews: Sure and I think what you need for point to come to life is silicon valley itself where where Silicon Valley invests in founders and so we could raise money on sandhill road in particular Eddie you know my cofounder Ceo. Just sold the company to visa and so sandhill road will trust you again to try something and it doesn’t really matter what it is and I think what was interesting for us very early in point is wall street doesn’t operate the same way and our business involve needs wall street capital and with the wall street people they were like oh you need to start again, you need to prove yourself to us and that’s a completely different regime and and some of that was the structure of our product. But I think at that stage of our life myself and idy in getting together to start the business. We’d started details together with Jared Morgan Stern and Eddie and I came together to do point and I think it was the life stage the type of problems you want to solve at that life stage and we’re in our mid 30 s and so housing is just something you’re thinking a lot about and we’d each you know either bought houses or help friends buy houses and we had these experience that we sort of went as a big asset people keep on talking about it as.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah.

Eoin Matthews: Savings The most important savings vehicle for most Americans but it’s savings that are really hard to access and and so it was just this gradual awareness about it and then trying to problem solve it as tech entrepreneurs and the piece that we probably didn’t underestimate it or didn’t fully understand is.

Alejandro Cremades: So before you actually pull the trigger here with point you know obviously you had the entrepreneur in you brewing for quite a while since you got going you know, initially there with details but what I’m sure that you also did ah some ideas before point in.

Eoin Matthews: Capital markets infrastructure. You need to build an asset class because it truly is an asset class now but that wasn’t the case in 2015 and and convincing wall street to do that and de-risking it for them is it is a huge process.

Alejandro Cremades: What did you learn Also from walking away from them before you stumbled across point.

Eoin Matthews: And it’s a it’s a great question. So I even would go back to sangrid and there’s a few lessons you learn along the way. So the first one would be when isaac and I were working before it became sangrid we were trying to do a music site for concerts and we’re trying to do so. Basically tickets for concerts that haven’t been scheduled so basically trying to create the market for concert tickets and we got some traction but very little traction but 1 of the things we figured out along the way was and haven’t just send emails. It. It sounds like such boring thing. But in particular. Was how to send the emails just confirming people’s accounts and all that stuff when we were pivoted once or twice we’re trying to figure something out and isaac was the one who said hey we should just apply for tech stars and the original idea was actually much more so much more aggregator oriented in other words aggregate data from. Twitter and everything else and have one console for sending all types of messages and tech stars at that time. The textars team had made their money selling an email business to Google and when they saw somebody coming in talking about email. They were like hey there’s an opportunity that we left on the table and they knew it. Like they knew exactly what sangrid should be so we came in with one thing and they were able to curate it to a whole new class of email which was paying a premium for transactional emails before that marketing emails and transactional emails. They’re all grouped together and these guys really realized that there was a class of email.

Eoin Matthews: Really needed to be delivered and therefore should be paid premium and deliverability was everything and this coincided with a couple of things that made sangrid a real business in hindsight one was developers as customers and that was largely driven by the iphone. So you know people were now building apps. And they needed to be able to deliver email or or deliver texts and they needed to be able to quickly register their customers and and they didn’t market to the customers on an ongoing basis. The marketing happened through the app and true notifications. So it was really that one first registration email that mattered a lot and and many subsequent password changes. So there’s a whole new type of customer that would buy the product with a credit card and you didn’t do the traditional sales of email services which was enterprise sell for sales. So this was just a massive shift and that I think in hindsight the observation there is you’re young entrepreneurs so people starting business in their twenty s and you know they. Areas where they’re going to pursue that they will pursue that will become huge businesses tend to be at times and in places where there have been seismic shifts like something is changing so that if you have experience. It’s actually not an advantage have experience because I talked we talked to tons of people from email world before we went into sangrid and they all said. This is commoditized. You guys are crazy. Don’t touch it and these were very established companies and they were like this is so hard to sell email services since then you look at a company like mailchimp sangrid Twilio like a whole bunch of services were built and but they’re largely built because the customers were completely different. They weren’t enterprise customers.

Eoin Matthews: So the the entrepreneurs were able to accrete a lot of value. So after and sanrid some subsequent opportunities I would say you learn quickly about where customers can come from and that customers might not be valuable the customer you taught is valuable. So give some example one of the iterative ideas we iterated on was a marketplace and it was a derivative of the email opportunity where we thought was a great and opportunity for people to market email together. In other words, your email list Alejandro might be 5000 people my email list might be 10000 people. You need a safe space for you to market in my email and un market in your email and for us to be hitting the same audiences. We tried a service like that and it turned out. You just get the trashy emails. Everybody who’s got valuable email customers won’t come on to a shared service and that might have been a sales problem. But breaking through at that time wasn’t going to happen so read a quick learning there the other opportunity that we were pursuing was actually a messaging app very similar to Whatsapp with disappearing messages and then or actually snapchat was the first despairing message app and it was ah it was actually probably a precursor to snapchat but are. Application got really big in East Asia like it was. It was really big in Pakistan like we we were a quarter of million users and that was just server cost and there was no way we could venture arrays off the back of 250000 users in Pakistan.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, yeah.

Eoin Matthews: Because nobody thought that was a valuable audience even if it was exploding and we couldn’t get traction the same traction in audiences in the us. So instead for an entrepreneur This was literally just hundreds of dollars every day in server costs and there wasn’t going to be business that was when we had to walk away on the virality is hard to get. I Have to get virality around among the right customers. So It was another early lesson and then and I think the last one is a generalized observation and I’ve hidden it a few times but it’s it’s learning where the value accretes to founders and sometimes you’ll go to businesses and you’ be fine splitting it and a point would be a good example where. There’s the technical value and I would say that’s the fintech value which is largely about distribution and efficiency. But then you have the capital value and you do have capital in the fintech business competing for the wealth with the technology and the. Power moves between the 2 so in a high interest rate environment Capital wants more capital expects more just more demand for Capital and so the ability of the technology to demand its terms is reduced. These power dynamics play out over time and I think the entrepreneurs who end up making the most money early in their career tends to be finding that seismic shift where Expertise is not helpful and where owning it at the start of getting in and owning it. They have an unfair balance because they’ve really got distribution power.

Alejandro Cremades: So I mean obviously you know even able to have that level of um of of impact too. Even if it’s early and and it was starting and there was a people there I mean sangrit. You know it ended up going public two point five billion valuation I mean.

Eoin Matthews: Um, ah.

Alejandro Cremades: Incredible to be. You know to have the opportunity of at least seeing the founding of of companies like that now I guess with point for the people that are listening to really get it. What ended up being the business model of point. How do you guys make money.

Eoin Matthews: Sure? Well it’s it’s very simple fundamentally as a product today home equity residential home equity has cash from the homeowner and debt mortgage debt. So there’s no third party equity if you think about the founding of a company. There’s there may be. Borrowed money or ventured debts There may be equity injected by the founders in termss of cash but there’s usually thirdparty equity to that expensive Third -party equity that comes from sand hillll road or investors wherever they are in the homeowner capital stack that doesn’t exist. There’s no there’s no space for thirdpart equity. And that would be very valuable to homeowners both existing homeowners who have a lot of money and the trapped in the home and to new home buyers who maybe don’t have the generational wealth that some of other first-time home buyers have and who need third -party equity to help them come in on buy the home. So point’s business model is to really make equity for residential homeship home ownership thing. Third party equity and our starting point was existing homeowners and we’ve funded about one point one billion in home equity investments but the market opportunity for that and the speed it’s building now as it gets institutional is is the one where it’s like tens of billions per year of originations and and ideally getting the point where it’s hundreds of billions a year because that is needed in the economy. It’s it’s just so much trapped wealth but also just from ah, how do I become a homeowner perspective.

Eoin Matthews: It’s reached a point where and it’s untenable without third -party equity

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing I Guess hey too I mean we see you guys have raised quite a bit of money. How much capital have you guys raised too late for the company.

Eoin Matthews: Am in total about a hundred and eighty million in equity capital.

Alejandro Cremades: And obviously you know like with the money and with investors you know, like there is a you got to have a vision you know also for the type of business that you guys have built is remarkable So when we’re thinking about vision Imagine knowing that you were to go to sleep tonight. And you wake up in a world where the vision of point is fully realized what does that world look like.

Eoin Matthews: Well I think ah in some respects I’ve just added where it’s It’s one where equity and home ownership is almost ass fluid as debt and there’s efficiency in the corporate world and commercial real estate word and and sort of the movement between debt and equity. But I think that has yet to happen in home ownership. Maybe if I were to say what the ultimate benefit would be I would say that very very few homeowners and go delinquent on their mortgage because they don’t need to because they’ve got equity. That’s that’s the simple if I to wake up tomorrow and say what problem have you solved I would say it’s all of the pain. That homeowners feel when there’s financial stress. They don’t need to feel that pain because they’ve got a lot of wealth trapped in the equity in the home and they should be able to use it when they need it.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about the past now you know I just want to bring you back in time. Let’s put you into a time machine and I bring you back all the way back to 2003 you know, let’s say you were able to have a chat with that younger cell that is landing in Boston and you’re able to stop.

Eoin Matthews: Or that’s right.

Alejandro Cremades: Younger owen and sit that sit down that younger owen hopefully you know when he’ listening and then and let’s say you’re able to give that younger owewin 1 piece of advice for launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Eoin Matthews: Am and it’s one piece of advice. Wow for that person me twenty years ago and it’s definitely the people Alejandro it’s and it’s a it’s work with really great people who who better you and try to try to get in room. You don’t think you’re the smartest person in the room. That’s probably the advice I’d have like it’s it’s I’ve always benefited from being around people who are very hardworking humble and and if I look at the founders I’ve seen be successful. They tend to be really hardworking really smart and really humble.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s absolutely right? So oh and obviously you know we got to make it a fair game here because you haven’t asked me any questions. So ah I’ll let you I’ll I’ll open it up for any question that you have for me owe and to make it fair.

Eoin Matthews: And and that’s the that’s the pattern recognition over time that I’ve built up and if you think about it even if it doesn’t go grace but you’re working with someone who’s hardworking smart and humble. You’re probably going to still enjoy it.

Alejandro Cremades: Okay I think it’s just like it’s just it’s just super. Um, it takes so much time you know so much time and and ultimately you know it’s something that I’m not giving up on.

Eoin Matthews: Yeah, there’s questions I want any question. Okay I’ve got some very tactical ones to start Youtube channel you stop posting two years ago what did you discover about Youtube.

Alejandro Cremades: I Think that they you know there’s tremendous value. You know that people I think are getting from some of those videos that I posted there around fundraising and Eman a and I hope to to get going again there but I it just took so much time and effort you know, but I really want to pick that back up because.

Alejandro Cremades: I can see and I still receive messages from people that is making a difference to them and and that really you know makes means a lot to me when I receive those messages so I need to pick it back up but unfortunately ticktok and and Youtube I haven’t been able to ah to push it as much as I wanted.

Eoin Matthews: I’ve been getting your emails I’d say over 10 years now like so you first got my inbox pretty 2014 and I think that’s representative of a moment in time when maybe a transition I’ve moved to the bay area and so it it was related to 1 vast cofounder dating. And and and you’ve been coming into my inbox ever since don’t know if you use sanrid. But if you do it’s deliverability has been very high. Okay, super. That’s great to hear this is symbiotic and I’m interested in what you’ve learned about bringing people together or start businesses. What’s possible. What’s not possible.

Alejandro Cremades: I’m a very very very very very happy customer of singrid.

Eoin Matthews: And what? what? what observations you really have about people getting in a room to try and start a business when they’re looking for a service to help them like find somebody.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, look I think that ultimately I remember on the last day company which was a cofounders lab you know running that I definitely you know we learned a ton I think we matched may there like 600000 teams so we were able to see the good the bad and the ugly. I think that the biggest lesson there was probably around alignment and expectations. You know when it comes to cofounders just making sure that that they’re both transparent or or whoever is part of that team with their agendas and that they aligned and also that the expectations are matching and then the other thing that. There is different backgrounds that could add to 1 another because when you have like similar backgrounds then there’s going to be friction and that friction could be very lethal so those are some of the things that really stood out for me I mean I could go on and on and on but probably those are the biggest ones I would say.

Eoin Matthews: And then in the arc of you you if I remember correctly I think you and your wife work together is that right.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s right? So I worked on the last company with Tania my wife and I think that the that the dynamics with cofounders when you’re married is very difficult because ultimately you need to have 2 levels of conversations.

Alejandro Cremades: Ah, one the one that you have at the office and then the one that you have in the house and and it’s not easy. You know I remember one of the um, a early meetings that we had was with a alfred lane from Sequoia and they without even you know, ah.

Alejandro Cremades: Having any background right away after just like a couple of minutes you know talking he was like hey what is the relationship between the 2 of you guys and and we were like super shocked that he already knew without us saying anything so we told him that we were dating and we could see his eyebrow lifting up and. And he was like hey do you guys know that the relationship you know is is going to accelerate for the good or for the bad you know with you guys and we didn’t really understand what he meant with that but three years later I sent him a video to our proposal and you know he thought he was he was unbelievable. You know it was it was hilarious actually bad

Alejandro Cremades: But yeah I think that the the the dynamics you know are are not easy I think that you really need to understand one another I think that for us. Thank god it worked out and today we have 3 beautiful ah young girls and you know I think that that really helped us do in really getting to understand each other. But. But it’s not easy. You know when when you have any type of family attachment either husband wife or or siblings because you know you don’t want to be too tough. You know on your feedback. You don’t want to you know sometimes you can get into the ah field of hey I don’t want to hurt each other feelings. And ultimately by doing that you become ineffective. You know there’s a really good book called the founder’s dilemma that really touches on this. Ah but you know thank god you know for us we have always been very straightforward, very authentic and and honest with one another and and and it worked out even though obviously we had like.

Alejandro Cremades: Any other co-founders you know disagreements and stuff like that. But in the end it was not about who was right or who was wrong. It was about what was right for the business.

Eoin Matthews: Yeah, less incredibly brave because most founders when it asked about it that did the spouses who you turn to is your therapist in this and so when the spouse is is the other person is the other co-founder. That’s and that’s intense I have one last question for you which is.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, yeah.

Eoin Matthews: What’s the arc then on pantera and what’s the common team for you professionally like this feels like first of all, you’ve built a platform centered on founders and entrepreneurs and this has been your career. What’s that take what’s at the core of that for you personally.

Alejandro Cremades: Making a difference you know before I was a pushing paper behind a desk as a lawyer and I thought you know and for my frenzy madrid they they thought that I had you know, being able to accomplish something coming to New York and and being in a law firm and you know all of that stuff. but but I was not fulfilled. And I started getting involved with New York Tech meetup and going to events and and I so enjoyed you know the vibe and and and the the just like seeing people putting their ideas out there and and and being able to enroll others and and seeing them coming to live and and I said to myself hey I want to be part of this thing. But why not you know. Building stuff and doing stuff for them right? to really make an even bigger impact and I guess and that has been you know like my purpose and my path in the last you know company with 1 ne-based which was you know as we’ve talkeded talked about you know cofounders lap on all these stuff. You know it was more on the operational side helping people out. And now I think that the next calling in my journey is helping on the transactional side and that’s what I’m doing with Pantera which is basically helping you know, founders out on the m and a side or on the capital racing side because I saw that based on the data that I had access to that. There was an incredible ah lack of access to.

Alejandro Cremades: Ah, Capital and I mean lack of access and guidance when it came to really understanding the capital side or the mi side of things and then I have obviously the media side which is more for continuing on that path more on the educational side which is for example, the podcast or the books that I’ve done or the emails that they.

Alejandro Cremades: That you mentioned or or the even even the articles but but just continuing on that mission of of really helping people out.

Eoin Matthews: It’s impressive for someone who is that of 3 girls and yeah, that’s very impressive that you’re juggling so many and sort of big balls and I hope I’ve 1 request around this which is that you edit me down and and keep your answers intact I thought it was super interesting there.

Alejandro Cremades: Thank you owe and hey I promise you I was going to respond and we’re not going to edit anything. You know this was as it is and what you see is what you get you know from this conversation with the 2 of us. So I guess for the people that are listening oh and that would like to reach out and.

Eoin Matthews: But every every you Kiss Alejandro is super fun.

Alejandro Cremades: And say hi to you? What is the best way for them to do so.

Eoin Matthews: Oh and at point I’m I’m old school like that so e o I n at point and at point.com

Alejandro Cremades: Very straight forward. Thank you so much owe in and thank you for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an honor to have you with us.

Eoin Matthews: Thank you Alejandro my pleasure. My my honor thank you.

*****

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