Raising capital looks easy from the outside. In reality, it is one of the most misunderstood parts of building a startup.

In this episode, Mehmet sits down with Daniel Nikic, a global investment researcher who has analyzed over 15,000 companies across the US, Europe, and the Middle East. Together, they unpack the hard truths founders need to understand about fundraising, investor psychology, market geography, and why most rounds fail long before the first term sheet.

This is a grounded, no-hype conversation about what actually drives investment decisions in 2025 and why “easy money” is often the biggest illusion founders believe.

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About the Guest

Daniel Nikic is the founder of Coherent Research and a global investment research professional with deep experience across North America, Europe, and emerging markets. Originally from Canada and now based in Croatia, Daniel has worked with investors, family offices, and founders worldwide, helping evaluate companies across stages, industries, and geographies.

His work focuses on due diligence, market opportunity analysis, and understanding the human and cultural factors behind investment decisions.

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Key Topics Discussed

• Why most fundraising fails before it even starts

• The biggest misconceptions founders have about “easy capital”

• How geography actually impacts investment decisions

• Why the Middle East is not fast money despite capital availability

• Founder psychology, stress, and emotional control as investment signals

• What investors look for beyond pitch decks and valuations

• The difference between angels, VCs, family offices, and accelerators

• Why urgency and FOMO often kill deals instead of closing them

• How AI is changing investment behavior and decision-making

• Realistic timelines for closing funding rounds in emerging markets

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Key Takeaways

• Capital is not free money. Investors expect returns, discipline, and execution.

• Geography still matters, but trust and relevance matter more.

• Founders who rush fundraising often lose credibility.

• Investors back people they trust, not just ideas or decks.

• Being organized and prepared beats hype every time.

• Fundraising is a relationship-building process, not a transaction.

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What You Will Learn

• How to target the right investors at the right stage

• Why mixing angels, VCs, and family offices too early backfires

• How investors think about risk, timing, and founder maturity

• What “smart money” really means beyond capital

• How long fundraising realistically takes and why patience matters

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Episode Highlights & Timestamps

(You can fine-tune timestamps once audio is finalized)

• 00:00 – Introduction and Daniel’s global background

• 04:00 – Patterns from analyzing 15,000+ companies

• 07:30 – Geography vs psychology in startup success

• 10:45 – The Middle East investment misconception

• 15:20 – Why capital follows trust, not hype

• 18:30 – Choosing the right investor type early on

• 22:40 – Check sizes, valuations, and regional differences

• 27:00 – AI, FOMO, and modern investment behavior

• 32:00 – Why urgency kills fundraising deals

• 36:30 – Realistic timelines to close a round

• 41:00 – Final advice for founders raising capital

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Resources & Links

• Daniel Nikic on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-nikic/

• Website: https://www.danielnikic.com/

In this episode, Gabriel Jarrosson, founder and managing partner at Lobster Capital, breaks down what truly drives breakout startups inside the world’s most competitive ecosystem.

Before becoming a YC-focused investor, Gabriel built seven startups, failed four, and bootstrapped one to one million ARR alone — no co-founder, no employees, no AI.

Today he invests exclusively in YC companies and shares how he evaluates founders, why early traction beats everything, how YC creates unstoppable momentum, and how AI is reshaping the next generation of builders.

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About Gabriel Jarrosson

Gabriel Jarrosson is a serial founder turned YC-specialized investor and managing partner at Lobster Capital. He has built seven companies, exited three, and invested in more than 100 YC startups. Gabriel also hosts The Lobster Talks and has grown a fast-rising media presence supporting early-stage founders.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrieljarrosson/

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Key Takeaways

• Why solo founders can still win big when they embrace urgency, automation, and creative resourcefulness

• The mindset required to scale without waiting for funding or a co-founder

• YC founder patterns: technical teams, relentless execution, and high velocity

• Why YC attracts the world’s strongest builders and why it’s nearly impossible to replicate

• Gabriel’s 2 percent rule for selecting the best companies in every YC batch

• Why early revenue and market pull matter more than ideas and hype

• How AI is changing the definition of what a “lean team” can achieve

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What You Will Learn

• How top investors evaluate teams, traction, and momentum

• How YC creates an environment that rewires founders to move faster

• Why some geographies struggle to reproduce Silicon Valley outcomes

• How to think about automation, support systems, and scaling with AI

• How founders outside the US can become YC-ready

• What Gabriel regrets missing as an angel investor — and what he learned from it

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Episode Highlights & Timestamps

00:00 — Introduction

01:30 — Seven startups, three exits, four failures

03:00 — Bootstrapping to 1M ARR as a solo founder

07:00 — The role of AI in scaling today

10:00 — Why YC is a category of its own

14:30 — What YC founders have in common

18:00 — Why “local incubators” fail to replicate YC

21:00 — How Gabriel selects winners

27:00 — Getting into competitive YC deals

33:00 — The media edge in venture

37:00 — Becoming YC-ready as a non-US founder

46:00 — Gabriel’s biggest miss

50:00 — Closing thoughts

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Resources Mentioned

• Lobster Capital: https://www.lobstercap.com/

• The Lobster Talks podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@lobster-talks

In this episode, Kingsley Maunder breaks down one of the most overlooked aspects of startup building: proper validation. With over two decades in the startup ecosystem, building products used by Disney, EA Sports, Snap, and more, Kingsley shares the hard-won lessons behind his framework, The SALT Test.

We explore how founders can turn raw ideas into validated products, avoid the assumption trap, distinguish noise from real traction, and leverage AI to accelerate product discovery. This conversation is a masterclass in thinking clearly, testing quickly, and building what people actually want.

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About the Guest — Kingsley Maunder

Kingsley is a veteran product builder, former startup operator, and the author of The SALT Test: How to Take an Innovative Product from Idea to Scale. Over the past 20 years, he has built and scaled products for some of the world’s biggest brands, taken two startups to exit, and helped another raise over $180M. Today, he teaches founders how to validate ideas, avoid costly assumptions, and build products that truly solve user problems.

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Key Takeaways

• Why assumptions are the biggest hidden risk in early-stage innovation

• The story behind the SALT Test and how Thomas Edison inspired it

• How to validate ideas in the right order

• The difference between noise traction and real traction

• Why customer discovery often leads founders astray

• How AI can compress weeks of product validation into hours

• Why you must test the problem before you test the solution

• When to pivot lightly vs when to pivot hard

• The importance of building something significantly better, not just slightly better

• How to distinguish between the user and the buyer in B2B products

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What You Will Learn

• A practical, repeatable process for validating any product idea

• How to talk to customers without falling into the polite feedback trap

• How to stress-test your assumptions before writing a single line of code

• How to set success and failure metrics before experimentation

• How to avoid “innovator bias” and ego-driven decision making

• How to use AI tools to accelerate discovery, research, and early validation

• How to map your idea through the Growth Map to find blind spots

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Episode Highlights

00:00 — Introduction

02:00 — Why the SALT Test?

04:00 — The Assumption Trap

06:00 — How to Stress-Test an Idea

08:00 — Noise Traction vs Real Traction

10:00 — The Right and Wrong Way to Do Customer Discovery

13:00 — Competing with Excel, WhatsApp, and the real world

15:00 — Behavior Change and “Significantly Better”

18:00 — Solution Selling for Founders

22:00 — How AI Compresses Validation Cycles

25:00 — B2B vs B2C Validation

27:00 — Pivoting: Light vs Hard

33:00 — Ego, fear, and founder psychology

36:00 — Lessons from Amazon and Successful Innovators

40:00 — Where Builders Should Focus Next

42:00 — Final Advice

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Resources Mentioned

• The SALT Test by Kingsley Maunder: https://www.kingsleymaunder.com/the-salt-test

• GrowthMap.org

• Kingsley’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kingsleymaunder/