How I built a $200M VC fund at 35

[clears throat] All right. I'm Brandon and I'm the co-founder of Harlem [music] Capital, a $200 million venture capital fund focused on [music] investing in the founders of the next generational companies. The concept in banking is that you are literally a cog in a machine. My entire life's work was to [music] work on Wall Street. Within 6 weeks of training, I realized I was climbing the wrong ladder. Today we're going to focus on all the behaviors, activities, and the strategies [music] that help us find the founders building the next generation of companies. What we got going on today? Today, big day. We're at the office right now. We're fine-tuning a few things. Uh we're going to check out a few spots in Soho that I've been meaning to go to. Then we're going to head to the second office and I got an entire lineup of backtoback calls with founders helping them scale their business or think about fundraising, etc. And I also want to talk to you all about my newest deal. It's in the nuclear energy space. I've never done anything in nuclear or deep tech. The founder is someone I met at a demo day at Stanford a year ago. And in his background, he has also worked in hardware before. So he worked in EV drones that were working and selling to the military. He worked in EV boats. He sold $20 million EV tugboats to the Long Beach port out there in California. And while he was working on that, he said everything comes on a cargo ship. So I've been thinking too small around tugboats. I want to go after cargo ships. So, I want to build nuclear reactors for cargo ships. And so, now I'm doing uh sprint and blit scaling to understand everything about nuclear reactors. And we're going to see if we can get this past our investment committee, which is the big committee for us to decide if we're going to invest millions of dollars into a business. You >> kind of got to dress the part. Do you want to do multi-million dollar or billion dollar deals? First floor. >> You got to dress like you're going to do it. [music] >> Maybe we'll say hi to my boy real [music] quick. >> How are you? >> Good. >> Good. We're getting back into the content. >> Cool. Very cool. >> Uh it's been a while, eh? >> I know. It was right before Thanksgiving. >> Yes. Yes. That's right. Oh, nice to see you. We're going to be shooting a lot more content. So, I might be stopping by to just >> Yeah, please do. >> How did you decide VC investments is something that you wanted to pursue? What was it that drew you to the world of investing? >> I was premed when I went to college. I was really good at biology and then I took a chemistry class and just got smoked. And so, I got into healthcare administration, which was the business part of healthcare. And then that meant that I had to start taking different classes. So I took an economics class and I blew it out the water to pay my rent and to do things that I wanted to do in undergrad. I was also a eBay power seller. So I sold like polisher, abberi, my saxophone, Xboxes, iPhones, etc. So I understood supply, demand, elasticity, how to sell, product positioning, all those things I already understood mainly because I had to make a sale. It was a survival thing. >> It was a survival thing. So, basically, my roommate and I just went ham doing homework, trying to get better scores than us, and we did so well in these economics classes. Our university sent a letter home in the mail saying that we should major in [music] economics. >> We'll back channel with them. The great founders fund raise through others. >> Here's what we do. Here's why we do it. >> You send me the call notes that you had with the investor. I happen to be in San Francisco next week. That company just got announced [music] for $2 billion valuations. >> Wow. Let me know when you're ready. >> Yeah. Yeah. We're we're going. >> This is one of the hardest things about investing is you have what's called an anti-portfolio. An anti-pfolio is either a deal that you passed on where it says like, "Hey, ABC company said, I want to raise money." And you said, "We're not going to give it to you or it was a super competitive investment and you lost the ability to invest in a company like they didn't have room for you." In this scenario, this is the second scenario where I was a second or third choice. I probably if I wrote a smaller check, I could have invested, but I didn't. And what happens is, oh, so a company just 2 years and some change ago that I was going to invest in the early stage seed round is now worth $2 billion. The business is called RAIN. Rain is using crypto technology for crossber payments and amazing CTO um Charles not who I've been tracking for time and time again for years. I'm about to send him a congratulatory text. Dude, you are the best. You deserve this. This is so amazing. The lesson here is even when you miss out on big opportunities like this, you still should send a congratulations. You should still support these people because these things happen over and over again. This is all about building trust, building relationships, putting amazing people on your radar, and just genuinely being super proud of them, excited for them, and hopefully that earns you a way to be a part of their journey sometime in the future. >> Mentally, like what does it feel like to know that you could have, you almost did, and you didn't versus when you do get one. >> So, I said this earlier, there is no should have, would have. We have to remove those things from our vocabulary and our consciousness. Missing this deal, if you will, adds to my confidence that I am seeing some of the best companies being built in the world. The second thing I need to do is win those deals. And so, winning those deals is one of the reasons why I started this channel is that leveraging of media and storytelling and brand specifically when AI is around. The only thing that matters is agency. Everyone can start a brand now. Who will? Everyone can put out a YouTube video. Who will? Everyone can have a podcast. Who will do it? And then once you do it, can you compete at the top levels? The biggest struggle in finding these deals and then winning them is building trust. I think there's so many different things, so many different words and vocabulary that you can use, but what I'm using and what I'm pushing with our firm is trust. For example, Charles trusted that another firm can get him to a billion dollar valuation better than Harlem Capital. My job is to start to whittle down the concerns and build up the trust. Trust is doing things that like move the needle before you're on a cap table. And a cap table is the list of investors that give capital to companies. And we call it a cap table. And so that's the that's the journey we're on right now. Like that's why I want to document this journey. I want to document the hard loss. Someone being valued at a $2 billion valuation and me not being in a deal hurts so bad. But it gives me fuel to the fire that I'm getting really good shots on goal. And eventually one of those goals is going to go in. And guess what? We're going to do a flashback to this moment and see that Brandon was right. Brandon had a good attitude. He had a growth mindset. And he caught lightning in the bottle. And here's what happens. Here's the real takeaway. Once you capture lightning in a bottle one time, you're orders of magnitude more likely to capture lightning in a bottle in the future. Like winning gets more winning. A players only want to work with A players. Winners only want to work with winners. And so if we can continually show that we have the capability of winning, that will lead to better companies. That will lead to more investment in our fund. That'll be a flywheel effect. >> [music] [music]

In this episode, you'll see the day in the life of an 35 y/o entrepreneur in NYC who runs a $200m VC fund, doing calls with startup founders and his reaction to missing out on investing in a $2b company. Finally, you’ll see him share how to over come big losses in your career & how to use them as fuel for the future Stay tuned for next episodes where you'll see more entrepreneurial vlogs on investing in tech companies in search for my first billion dollar company 📖 Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:41 A Day in the Life at Harlem Capital 2:55 Why I Chose Venture Capital 4:35 The Anti-Portfolio & Missed $2B Deals 5:46 Building Trust, Relationships, and Long-Term Wins 6:36 Why Media, Storytelling, and Brand Matter in AI 7:14 Trust Over Capital: How to Win Competitive Deals 8:24 Outro WHO AM I: I’m Brandon Bryant. I am a co-founder and partner at Harlem Capital, an early-stage venture capital fund. My number mission is to invest in founders building the next generational companies. Follow along on the journey!