'Shark Tank' Guest Investor & Entrepreneur Matt Higgins on Startup Grit

Matt Higgins has made a career out of trusting his instincts and backing people others overlook.

The co-founder of RSE Ventures and a guest investor on Shark Tank, Higgins joins Culture & Capital, a new SoFi podcast produced by Cashmere, to share what he looks for in early-stage startups, how to evaluate founders under pressure, and why some of his best business decisions start with personal trauma.

→ Stream this episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Bet on the founder, not the pitch

For Higgins, founder psychology matters more than a polished deck. He's looking for people who are self-aware, gritty, and emotionally honest about what they don’t know. "You need to be able to course-correct," he says. "That's why I look for self-awareness over confidence. Confidence without correction can be dangerous."

He also watches how founders respond to tough questions. Are they defensive? Or do they treat every investor meeting as a learning opportunity? Seek out people who are obsessed with solving the problem and aren't just selling you the vision.

Founder dynamics matter more than you think

Higgins shared a simple but powerful framework for evaluating startup teams. Every successful company, he says, needs four roles covered: Visionary, Catalyst, Operator, and Communicator.

Sometimes those roles live in one person. More often, they’re split across a founding team. But if one of them is missing, the foundation can be unstable. "You can’'t scale a business on vision alone," he says. "You need people who can bring it to life and communicate that story clearly."

Team matters: not just in terms of skills, but in how they function together.

The investor update is a signal

If a founder sends regular, honest, actionable investor updates, Higgins sees that as a major positive. Not because the updates always contain good news, but because they show the founder is tracking the right metrics, managing stakeholder relationships, and being transparent about the journey. "I don’t care if it's bad news," he says. "Just don't go dark. Going dark is the red flag."

Passion is the only real moat

Higgins is skeptical of people who pick a startup idea because the addressable market looks good on paper. "If you didn't live this problem, you're more likely to bail when things get hard," he says. And they will get hard. That's why the founder's personal connection to the problem matters more than anything else.

His advice: Seek out founders who've lived the problem, not those who studied it from afar.

Defense and drones are the next frontier

Higgins suggests considering an area most VCs overlook: defense. As co-founder of Performance Drone Works, he's building drones that can compete with, and eventually replace, the Chinese-manufactured models dominating the U.S. market.

He sees national security, geopolitics, and the future of hardware as intersecting in a way that presents both enormous risk and opportunity. "There’s a huge hole in this market," he says. "And entrepreneurs are the ones who are going to fill it."

Higgins' journey—from dropping out of high school to launching companies, advising teams, writing bestsellers, and investing in tomorrow’s biggest ideas—is proof that strategy and instinct can coexist.

Listen to Culture & Capital on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen.  

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