Mat Sherman

I'm the founder of MatCap, a venture advisory firm. Most investors back 10 to 30 companies and hope a few win. We believe a better approach is to support hundreds of companies, take direct equity from almost day one, and stay involved as a partner throughout the company's life. We think that leads to stronger outcomes.

I'm also the author of The Access Game, launching in early 2027 — a playbook for any outsider who wants to raise venture capital. I wrote it for a selfish reason: many founders want to work with me but don't have the context on how this world works. Now I can hand them the book, and they're set. If millions more read it and benefit from knowing this stuff, all the better.

Since 2020, I've interviewed nearly 1,000 founders on my podcast, Forward Thinking Founders — including the founders of Mercury, Deel, Turing, Alpaca, Cognition, Varda, Rainmaker, and many more, often at the pre-seed stage. I still update it occasionally, but I'm not very active with it right now. All those conversations are what let me pattern match at MatCap — nearly 1,000 interviews worth of training data to tell whether someone has the potential to be great.

I mostly think by writing. Many of the posts I wrote between 2020 and 2023 became ideas in The Access Game. When I write, it's usually for my own thinking, not your entertainment. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

A theme running through my career and interests is access, and how it transfers. Most of my professional work feels like I'm an academic trying to better codify access, because I believe coordination is the answer to most of the world's problems in a life after the price of intelligence goes to zero.

I live in Phoenix with my wife and kids. We'll probably move at some point, though.

Projects