How a YouTube Channel Became a $50M VC Fund | Gabriel Jarrosson, Lobster Capital

0:00Exciting for me is just doubling down on everything that works. So we're doubling down on investing in the best YC companies and we're doubling down from creating content and becoming big and bigger media and just, you know, showcasing YC founders, telling stories. Yeah, that's it. Welcome to the Odd Start VC podcast, the show where we break down how celebrities and creators build billion dollar brands. In today's episode, I'm joined by Gabriel Jerison, a French engineer turned YouTuber turned investor who built one of Europe's largest angel syndicates and now runs Lobster Capital, a VC fund that exclusively invests in YCombinators startups.

0:31After launching his YouTube channel in 2017 to share his investing journey, Gabriel grew a loyal audience and built a community of over 900 investors who collectively deployed$36 million into nearly 100 startups. We'll talk about what inspired him to start creating content, how it helped him build one of Europe's largest investment groups, and why building distribution has become one of the biggest competitive advantage in venture. So without further ado, let's get into the conversation. Gabriel, I'm excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here. Scott, I love it. Thanks for having me and let's dive in.

1:02Perfect. So before investing in startups and also creating content on YouTube, can you tell me more about your background and what you were doing before that? Yeah, I studied computer science engineering. Didn't like that so much. So even before studying when I was a young kid, I was already an entrepreneur or more actually wanting to be an entrepreneur. I'm not the kid that set up the lemonade stand or whatever, but I was sort of dreaming about building a business. I learned to code pretty young. And so, yeah, then I did the regular school and went to engineering school and then started businesses while I was studying.

1:35Engineering was not really my cup of tea, but started businesses. Then I graduated and did, you know, kept doing businesses and businesses and businesses. Lots of failures, lots of learnings. I was probably not a great entrepreneur, or at least I was very young and inexperienced and I was doing several businesses at a time, which is a perfect recipe for failure. But that allowed me to learn a lot of stuff about startups and building companies and what works and what doesn't. And that's what ultimately led me to investing. I thought, hey, after failing so many times, I still sold three companies, not massive exits, but that gave me two things.

2:09One gave me cash to start Angel Invest, but also gave me credibility towards other founders. So I thought, yeah, you know, I've done all the wrong things myself. I recognize patterns in other startups. Sometimes I think they're going to fail just like me. That's the way you learn. But sometimes I would see people, much better entrepreneurs than me, navigating better and not doing the same mistakes. And I thought, OK, those people are on to something. I want to invest. So that's what I was doing before, you know, what I'm doing today. Yeah, I love investors who have been founders themselves because they can really resonate with the founders.

2:39So I think it's a big edge. So, yeah, you sold your company and you started angel investing. And then in 2017, you started creating content on YouTube. What inspired that? It's so funny. You know, I was living in Shanghai just for fun and starting my next business after. So when I sold my first business, I moved to Shanghai just for fun. I was young, you know, I was single. It was fun. And I was, I contemplated starting another business in China, but I didn't speak Chinese. It's a new, you have to relearn everything. My first business relied on SEO a lot. And so there's no Google in China. So I was like, okay, I'm going to start a business in France.

3:13I should have said the US, but I was going to start a business in France. And one day, so I'm running the business from China. And one day I was angel investing on the side and I find a Facebook ad for ClickFunnels and the book Expert Secrets and the webinar. And basically what Expert Secrets, the webinar and the book say that I buy, I buy the book and I read it. It says, you have an expertise, you're an expert in something and you can make a business out of that. And I'm thinking, OK, what am I an expert in? And I've been doing more and more and more and more investing at the time. I was like, okay, maybe I can start a business in investing.

3:46And I started this investment group, investment club, but I don't start the creating content right away. But I look at everyone who's doing what's called at the time infopreneurs. So, you know, you have a knowledge and you're trying to monetize it. Do you find clients? And I actually find a lot of people having success on YouTube. And so one day, so I started this first business, which makes me explore how would you create an infopreneur business? And then one day I find a webinar on how to start your business in 2017 with YouTube. I'm like, okay, you know, I'm going to register. It's a free webinar.

4:18And it's a French entrepreneur. And in the webinar, he says, you know, 2017 is kind of late to start the YouTube game. It's really funny when you say this in 2025. But, oh, 2017 is really late to starting the YouTube game. But I guarantee you, if you publish one video per day for a year, your channel will explode. And I believed in YouTube already a lot. I had done content before in my business that I was managing. I was teaching courses online. So it was very easy for me to do this, you know, pull up a recording on my screen and just record myself. I said, OK, I'm going to try it. I'm going to make a video, a video per day for a year.

4:50And it was in French. That's a mistake. Then I, you know, I do it now in English, obviously. But it went so well that after a year, my channel did or had exploded indeed. Then I said, OK, I'm going to go at it for a second year. So I did for two years in a row, one video per day. Short videos, you know, five, 10, 15 minutes. Not a lot of editing, just me taking the mic and telling a story or not telling a story, like talking about one specific thing. And yeah, that's, you know, the rest is history. I love that. And what type of content exactly was it? Like what were you talking about? So again, I was trying to, I was exploring, honestly, at the beginning and trying to monetize my expertise as an investor, mostly as a startup investor.

5:27So I was talking about startups, what I see, what I do, how I look at a startup. Sometimes I would just take a pitch deck and record myself reading through it and be like, oh, you know, I like this. I don't like that. This is a question I want to ask, stuff like that. Then people started asking me those platforms of crowd equity, of startups that raise money online. So, you know, in the US, we have WeFunder and Republic and stuff like that. People are like, hey, what do you think of those? So I would make videos on those. I would record my screen and be like, OK, I'm on the website. They're raising.

5:53Here's the red flags. Here's why yes or no, etc. And then I monetize that by saying, hey, if you want to know which ones I invest into, which ones I don't and why, and I can recommend the ones that I invest in and why, etc. You could come into my private club. It was a paid membership, you know, mainly like that. But I was exploring. I was also doing videos on crypto because 2017 to 2020, crypto was very hot. And so it was very always when I did videos on crypto, it would get lots of views. I did videos on stock, on the stock market. Sometimes I would just take a stock and be like, hey, you know, should you buy Coca-Cola today and just do a 10 minute analysis of Coca-Cola?

6:28Again, exploring after a few years, the videos that got the most views were the crypto ones. But where I really wanted to focus my time, my energy, my business was the startup world where it was really unique. There's a lot of people doing stocks and crypto. There's not a lot of people doing startups. So I just focused on startups and then only did videos about startups. Yeah. And talk about that investment group. Like, how were you able to monetize that? So one of the first ideas was this. So I was doing those videos and then people were asking me, so are you investing or not? I was like, hey, you know, the answer is for the private members.

6:56I, you know, pay a yearly membership and I'll just be the filter for you. I'll go through all the websites, look at all the companies and just pick the ones that I think are good, you know, that I trust. Because I already had the background as an angel investor myself and did quite well. Then I had the credibility and people are like, OK, you know what you're doing. You've been doing it for years. You're doing it well. I'll follow your advice. That's the first thing. But of course, I wanted to do my own deals. So as an angel, because my three exits were not massive, I didn't have a lot of cash.

7:23So many times the startup would say, hey, Gabriel, you know, you're great. We love you. You're an entrepreneur. You have experience. You have you're creating content. We're happy to have you. But the minimum is 100K because we're raising 5 million or the minimum is 8K. I was writing much smaller checks, like 5K sometimes. So that was a problem for me. I would miss out on some deals. But then some people were like, hey, you know, you have some private deals that are on other platforms. Maybe you could share them with us. And so that's when the idea for what became the private club and the angel syndicate was born was, hey, what if I had people join this club where I would share deal flow that's mine, proprietary, that doesn't come from the platform, deals that I actually source myself.

8:01And at the time, it was mostly European with my network. I was still living in France. And I started to say, hey, you know, the first, I don't know, 10 or 15 people were free. It was friends, acquaintances, family members. But then I was like, hey, you know, I tried. I say it's a paid membership. You want to see my deals? you're going to pay. I started at 500 euros per year. Very cheap, but you pay up front 500 euros. And then for 10 months, you're going to see all my deals. And then that's what I started to, again, I experimented with a lot of things on YouTube, but that's what I started to advertise on YouTube.

8:31And now I started in October, 2017. So one video per day for two years, you make it to October, 2019. Just before COVID, I have 700 plus videos on the channel. The audience is growing and I have this club now and I start to advertise it more and more and more and more. And actually people are starting to join and I start to increase my price. So it's 500 per year. Then it's 1000 per year. And then people keep buying. And then I make it 2000 per year. And then people keep buying. And then COVID happens and everyone goes to YouTube and people have money and they don't know where to invest it. So people join, join, join.

9:04I get from 10 people to 50 people to 100 people to 400 people in the club. And so at the peak, there were around 400 people and the price was up to$4 ,000. Now, not everyone was paying me$4 ,000 because everyone was grandfathered. So if you came in at$1 ,000, you kept your price at$1 ,000. But, you know, it was a good business. But also, because, you know, I was making money on the membership. But what's really interesting to me, like the membership fees, I didn't really care, was the number of people who wanted to invest. And so the firepower we had was becoming enormous. When you had 400 people, the minimum investment, I think, was€2 ,000, euros or two thousand dollars because we're investing in the us by then in yc and then that's you know if everyone invests 400 people times it's like 800k so you go and see a startup you're like hey you know i can raise 800k for you sometimes we did more we did a few checks over a million and the biggest one i think was 1.7 million just from a youtube channel scott can you can you believe it it's crazy uh so that was just insane i was having so much fun and yeah i transitioned from investing in france and europe to investing in silicon valley and more specifically yc which is what I specialize in now.

10:13And then, of course, end of 22, early 23, it all exploded. I mean, by exploiting, it's still, you know, the syndicate and the club survived, but pretty much everyone left. There's a big interest rate. Sorry, we're going really, really high. People were not investing in tech at all. Silicon Valley Bank went under and that, you know, created a lot of problems for a lot of people, including problem of trust and faith. So that was a big, big, big slowdown for the Angel Syndicate. That's one of the reasons why I said to myself in 23, hey, I want something that's more predictable over time. That's when I started the fund Lobster Capital.

10:49Yeah, very interesting story. And like, whenever you started content creation, was it already like quite clear early on that like the investment group that was going to be the monetization model? Or like how far in your journey did that become clear? No, it was not clear. To be honest, I was experimenting with a lot of things. I was experimenting so i did i was because when you do a video per day that's really the cool thing is you'll try anything because sometimes it's like you know i don't know or pm and you're like i don't have a video for today so i literally have one two hours if i don't want to spend my entire night doing a video because i was taking it seriously so you'll do like okay give me an idea whatever any idea i just want to do something so you'll experiment with things and so for example the crypto videos did really well as i mentioned and so then i try to have a product in the crypto world.

11:35Sort of same thing, a group of signals of what to buy, what to sell. I'm not really into trading or not at all into trading. I actually don't like it because it's kind of I think it's kind of a waste of time. So I just experimented because I didn't believe in it too much. I think it didn't go far. But yeah, I tried a bunch of things, including in the videos and in the monetization. But to answer your question, when I started, I had almost no idea that this would be Or, I mean, the club existed from before the YouTube, if you recall. So I knew it was there. It was a possibility. Just I was experimenting in case I find something better, something bigger, something, you know.

12:11I was looking at a lot of stuff. And then after a long time, probably two, three years, maybe in 2020, I guess 2020 probably, I was like, okay, let me focus on startups. Startups is what I do well. It's what I like. I like startups so much better than crypto or stocks. I mean, I invest in stocks and I invest a little bit of crypto, especially at the time in 2017, 18. So I like it. It's interesting. You know, crypto blockchain is a very interesting technology. But then startups, I enjoyed it more. I was unique in Europe to have that access to Silicon Valley. So then I was like, OK. And the business proved to be pretty great because the price went from 500 to 4K a year and people just kept paying because it was unique.

12:51So it was a great business model. So yeah, it came, I had it from the beginning, but decided to just focus on that much later. Yeah, and I think that's the right approach. Like so many times nowadays, I'm talking to content creators and already on day one, they want to start monetizing and making money. And I'm like, no, you first have to find your content market fit. And if you start to monetize too early, you kind of lose the trust of your audience. Me, for example, I've been creating content for more than four years on LinkedIn and I've been offered brand deals. Sometimes I was with like a little bit shady companies, but they wanted to pay me like$10 ,000 for like a post.

13:21and I was like well okay I can do that but like what is that gonna do with my reputation and my engagement and that type of stuff so only like four years later we started to run like ads so I think it's really important to first find that content market fit before you start monetizing I mean in a sense I hear what you're saying and agree but on the other side I've seen a lot of people who did just free content free content free content and then the audience I'm talking about YouTube specifically you have your experience on LinkedIn which you know is different but on YouTube, if you just do free content for years and then you start selling something after three, four years, sadly, oftentimes I think the audience react badly like, oh, you know, this was free.

13:59What are you selling? I actually think if it's good from day one to say, hey, I'll be providing, I'll be doing content, but this is a business for me as well. Like I'm not doing this, you know, for fun. I'm a businessman. I'm doing this for business. You know, if you want the free videos, that's fine. But if you do want something more, then you can pay for my service. You don't have to. It's a funnel, right? There's like 98 % of people who will never pay and that's okay. So I've seen it kind of a backlash sometimes. But that being said, it has to be a product that really solves a problem, a real product.

14:32It shouldn't be a promoted piece on LinkedIn of a company that's shady. That's, of course, the wrong idea. Whether at the beginning or after four years, regardless, a shady company, you should never advertise. I know you know that. Yeah. And I think what's interesting also about your story is that you kind of proved that you can also, as a content creator, build different types of companies than another CPG company or whatsoever. Like so many content creators, they start their own content, they build their audience, they now launch a supplement brand or even a liquor brand. You see a lot of them behind me.

15:02But you actually have launched an investment fund on the back of YouTube, you know. So it's also interesting that there's an evolution in the type of businesses that are coming from content creation. Well, if you think, I mean, yeah, and thank you for that. And yeah, there was an article on TechCrunch that said this, like, oh, this fund was started by, or this YouTuber started a fund or whatever, because it really is from YouTube. Just to give a sense for the audience, the angel syndicate, and then, you know, the video per day for two years, etc. That allowed me to invest with 900 investors in total who found me through YouTube.

15:33And we've deployed in total 35 or 36, between 35 and$36 million in startups. So it's, you know, substantial. It's not like, okay, like just from YouTube. And then this first fund that I raised, I was not all thanks to YouTube, but it's a 12 million fund. And now I'm raising a 50 million fund number two. And again, thanks to the online media that we're building. So it is real business. I think with time, we'll see people build any kind of businesses with online presence or with online media. I'm always reminded of Ryan Serhunt, for example, who built a real estate empire just on Contest. It's not a tequila brand.

16:12But also, I always, always, always want to mention, it's very weird, in a sense, almost my inspiration for this is weird, is Donald Trump. Whatever, you know, setting aside everything political, but like everyone knows, Donald Trump would never have been president if he was not on TV. And that's so interesting. At the time, I think it was the 80s. There's no YouTube, obviously. And so you have to be casted. You have to make it on TV and we can think about all the luck that he had to be in this TV show, The Apprentice, and where he'd let him, he would never have been president without The Apprentice.

16:46Today, in 2025, you don't need anyone's permission. You can have your own TV show. It's called YouTube. And of course, it's also meritocracy. If your content is really good, then you'll have the views and you'll build everything. So just to say, again, whatever you think of Donald Trump, he's not extremely popular in many places of the world, including California. but content leads to anything including president including billion dollar businesses like ryan so yes the most typical thing is you know the guys will start a tequila and the girl will take a start a makeup brand or whatever the women but but of course there's much much much more like look at mr b started a chocolate brand that's pretty original and it's going to become even more and more and more diverse yeah no i love those examples i think sharon recently raised like a$45 million round for his financing real estate platform.

17:36So yeah, I love that example. You already talked about a couple numbers. So let's dive into that. So from 2017 to 2025, or early 2025, you created over 1 ,100 videos. You build an audience of over 42 ,000 subscribers, and you grew that community of 900 investors who collectively invested$35,$36 million in over 90 startups. Yet you kind of decided to leave that all behind and start with a new, fresh YouTube channel. So can you elaborate on that and what sparked that decision? I know I'm crazy. I mean, I've decided to move on from that amazing business for a number of reasons, but the main or only reason is I've found something more appealing to me with more potential.

18:21It's still in the very same space. I just built an actual fund. instead of doing deal by deal in SPVs. Where I invest, which is the top 2 % of YC startups. So YC is already very competitive. I specialize in the top 2 % of YC startups. Extremely competitive rounds. Those rounds move so quickly, you can't really get in with an SPV because an SPV takes time to set up. It's 24 hours. It's pretty quick or sometimes 12 hours. But then everyone needs to wire in. Everyone needs to commit and wire in and sign. And then you have dozens, sometimes 100 plus people. And of course, if you have one wire missing, from one person.

18:57And, you know, I have investors from all over the world. Many are from Europe, but, you know, from Asia and whatever. It's international transfers. It's not on chain. It's not stable coins, sadly, maybe in 10 years. So if you have one wire that's late, you can't close. Because then if you want to close, you have to change the document with a lower amount. Then the money still arrives the next day. You have to refund. Like, it's a mess. With a fund, you have the money, you sign, you wire, boom. Okay. And so when I was doing this SPV business, this club, I was missing out on some amazing deals because I would say, hey, you know, I can get you the money in a week to 10 days.

19:29The best deals are like, sorry, we're closing like tomorrow. And it's not fake. Like they're really closing tomorrow. So that's, you know, probably one of the biggest reasons that I decided to leave it all behind. I decided. But also competition for those deals is very hard. Everyone wants to get into those deals. The fact that, again, like when you create content, whatever it is, whether it's me or, you know, Ryan Serhunt or Donald Trump or whoever, you can't even think of the externalities that it brings. Like it's beyond what you can even imagine. People just know you. It's so crazy. People I haven't seen in 10 years and they watch my videos and they know me and they know what I've been up to.

20:01And I have no idea what they do. I almost forgot about them. But they're like, oh, I know. Now you're doing lobster capital in English. And we're like, yeah. So the power of content is insane. But because my content was all in French, no one in Silicon Valley knew who I am, knew who I was. That's a big problem. Like the center of my world for investing is Silicon Valley. It's not France at all. Turns out I'm French. I started in France. Okay, cool. And of course, you have the sunk cost fallacy because the channel in French is doing so well and you've made so many videos and blah, blah, blah. You just you keep adding and adding and adding.

20:33And I had started an English channel years ago. But, you know, being on YouTube takes a lot of time and effort if you want to be consistent. And so I published a few videos and then I just I couldn't. It was taking too much time. So finally, probably much too late, I decided to completely abandon the French channel and switch to English. And I've created two channels in English. One is just the YouTube channel, but there's also the podcast that has its YouTube channel for the video part of the podcast. It's also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc. So it's crazy because I'm very happy about it. Of course, there's many more people in the world that speak English than speak French.

21:08So the audience is bigger. It's hopefully a channel that's going to grow much faster and bigger. And I also keep thinking, and you know, it's a fun thought. Like, oh, what if I started in English from 2017? what if this thousand plus videos that i had published in english at the time like can you imagine where i would be and of course you know there is no point in rewriting the past it is what it is i'm coming back with a lot of experience so this time is going to go much faster and at least i did the switch i could be stuck in french for the next 10 years so yeah new business and new content strategy but i couldn't be more excited and yes it is going so much faster the second time around because i'm bringing all my experience i'm just having so much fun man Yeah, I love it.

21:46You could have been the Harry Stabbings 2.0 potentially. But yeah, I think our stories really resonate and align because I actually started content creation four years ago in Dutch as well. And soon I figured like, hey, the Dutch market is so small. And if I ever go to France or to Germany, they speak a completely different language. So it doesn't like make sense to build an audience and distribution that you can't leverage if you want to scale. So I also started switching to creating content in English. And I remember like in 2020, 2021, I started creating like short form video content. And a lot of people were like, and like, I don't hear a lot with you, but like normally French and Dutch people, they have a very strong accent.

22:26So a lot of people were like, why don't you just create content in Dutch because you have a very strong accent and maybe it's like better and easier to listen to as like a native speaker or whatsoever. And I'm like, I completely understand that, but that's not contributing to my business and where my target audience is. And also regarding like the angel syndicate, I also started an angel syndicate to deploy in companies founded by celebrities and creators. But these celebrity founded brands, they're sometimes the hottest deals in the market. So they close within days, not weeks. So I didn't have time to get like$5 ,000 tickets and put them all into an SPV and someone is on holiday and someone is like not replying or whatsoever.

23:02So that's also one of the reasons why I launched the fund. So yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Big similarities. I just want to say as well that I think Dutch speak English globally so much better than French people. And so probably for you, you're less cutting yourself from the Dutch audience. Hopefully they can still understand. For me, there's a majority, like probably 80%, I would guess, of my French investors who just don't get it. And now, you know, sorry, now we have new technology, like we have subtitles on YouTube automatically. There's even dubbing that's coming to YouTube. But it's not the same.