I work for an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in startups and creators, and given that my tenure in the VC business is largely tied to my ability to find sick people to invest in, I'm using my "about" page as a bat signal for just those people. Please hit "see more" to keep reading.

I'm interested, broadly speaking, in meeting with three types of people:

1) Moderately unhinged founders who are hell-bent on building something big and cool and want to use our money to do it.

2) Moderately unhinged founders who are hell-bent on building something big that the rest of the world finds lame, but, for some reason, they are obsessed with, and wants to use our money to do it.

3) Influential creators who have realized that they'd rather use their platforms to build their own businesses instead of living on brand deals forever. (I used to run ads on my blog, not the highest leverage way to monetize an audience! That's why I'm a VC now).

If this describes you, hit me up. Of course, in the name of transparency, I should probably tell you a bit about myself so you'll know if you even want to meet with me in the first place. (Business, like love, is a two-way street, after all).

A few things about me: I've been blogging on Substack since 2021, writing about everything from personal finance to travel shenanigans when I was 24, and 65,000 people subscribe to my blog now. I even landed a book deal with Penguin from that blog. The topic is life advice for 20-somethings, basically. It comes out in 2026.

I wrote most of that book in a 2-week period (50,000 words in 14 days while locked in a hotel room in the CitizenM in the Bowery). I'm pretty happy with it; the best thing I've ever written. If you're reading this, you should subscribe to my blog. And read my book.

Other prior experiences include working for Robinhood's media startup Sherwood News, managing a newsletter for finance meme page Litquidity, working in corporate finance for UPS, and spending a year living out of a backpack abroad and blogging about the whole thing (never staying in a hostel again, but it was fun).

Anyway now I work for Slow Ventures and want to give money to those of you who are building killer businesses. So, if that's you, let's chat? Shoot me a note at jack@slow.co.

(Also, Linkedin added a "write with AI" button to the about section. There's no way I'd ever write my bio with AI. I have too much hubris).

Jack Raines

Many people have asked me, "Jack, how is a venture capital associate supposed to have differentiated sourcing in 2026 when everyone is using the same AI tracking tools?"

My answer? Find My Friends.

Any time I meet someone who I assign a >1% chance of starting a company (I have a robust mental model trained on the hundreds of pitches I've seen over the last year), I say, "Hahaha, you know what would be funny? If we added each other on Find My Friends so if we're in the same neighborhood, we can grab beers."

But actually, this allows me to track which of these serendipitous contacts are the most "locked in," and, importantly, who seems to be pitching VCs. See, I have overlaid my Find My Friends interface with popular nightlife neighborhoods in NYC and SF, every VC office location in both San Francisco and New York, and the coffee shops most-regularly populated by VCs near Jackson Square.

Any contact that averages more than 3 evenings out in a popular nightlife area (west village, marina district, etc) per month is assigned a red flag (not locked in!), and anyone who appears in the vicinity of VC offices or the South Park Blue Bottle more than 4x in one week receives an automated text from my AI co-pilot that says, "What's up ____, hope all is well! Coffee soon?"

Haters call it an "invasion of privacy." Me? I say I'm just monitoring the situation.

Forward Deployed Personality Hire @ Slow Ventures

Air France = fantastic flight + lounge experience. Easily the best national airline amongst the developing economies.

Similar to Thiel investing in Tolkien names, I'd love to see a trend of companies named after Star Wars references, but using the stupidest names possible.

"Yeah, we're raising $20m to democratize access to energy with my new venture, Jar-Jar Binks."

New blog to kick off 2026: Brief ski trip recap + I'm pretty convinced that self-driving will be so pervasive in 20 years that my kids won't have to drive. What comes next?

Open article: Happy 2026, Let's Get This Bread by youngmoney.co

Justin Dale Young, CFP®, EA

Alpha Wealth Management, LLC

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