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Rho
Neal Mintz (Wischoff Ventures)
👋 Hi, Breakfast Club Members!
Thank you to Rho for sponsoring today’s newsletter. Extend your runway, keep spend controlled, and automate finance busywork with Rho.
Q4 was insane - lots of interesting M&A activity and some massive financings on my end. If I owe you a reply to something, now is the time to remind me. I promise you it wasn’t personal!
Time to get on the breakfast grind. First stop is NYC. El Segundo and SF will follow.
If you’ve never met Neal Mintz, a VC at Wischoff Ventures and my cohost for January’s Tech Breakfast Club, you’re missing out. Check out my interview with Neal below. I have a ton of respect for how hard Neal and Wischoff hustle.
Resources:
-Clerky offers a $100 discount for TBC Members on their formation packet. Reply to the newsletter and I’ll send you an invite
-Fixing the YC SAFE: Reply to the newsletter and I’ll send you a redline for the YC Postmoney SAFE that can save founders millions in dilution
Tech Breakfast Club Events
NYC Tech Breakfast Club (Thursday, Jan 29th)
Investors and founders gather for the most important meal of the day in the most important city
NYC AI/ML Leaders Tech Breakfast Club (Wednesday, Feb 4th)
Teaming up with Hathora to entertain the best AI/ML engineers and CTO’s
Thinking back on 2025 and some highlights - I met a lot of incredible founders. Some early Tech Breakfast Club adopters had some big wins. Valar Atomics split the atom. Lots of meaningful acquisitions. VC friends got promoted. But one of the highlights was meeting you and seeing how Wischoff operates. You’ve been a great addition to the crew in NYC. First off, you bring great energy. But then learning more about how you hacked your way into venture, I think it’s a great story.
Thanks Morgan, I appreciate it and thanks for including me in Tech Breakfast Club. I’ve really enjoyed meeting all the people involved. It’s just a great way to start the day.
I knew since college that I wanted to get into venture, but there’s not really a good roadmap. Most funds do not hire out of college. I spent two years in digital strategy consulting before joining Fractal
I know Fractal. It was like an incubator but even more hands on. They had a bunch of ideas, connections, capital and would identify talented people - basically giving two cofounders a b2b SaaS company to start
Yeah, it was a great opportunity to build a foundation in venture and a good way to bridge from consulting to investing. After Fractal, I joined Ground Up Ventures and had a more traditional investing experience.
How did you end up meeting Nichole Wischoff?
She posted about an investing role on X. We had a lot of mutual friends so I started reaching out to them to put in a good word
But there were so many applicants - I remember her posting about the process and how overwhelming the response was.
So, I guess my advice is (and a lot of people say this, but it’s true) you have to do the job to get the job. I sent a dozen deals tailored to our thesis. And these were all deals where I could introduce her to the founders and get allocation. I walked her through the due diligence process to prove to her that not only could I source, but I could also analyze.
I also felt like you did a good job figuring out pain points for Nichole running an emerging fund. You came to her with several operational solutions that made her life a lot easier.
I think I already had a foot in the door, but showing Nicole what I could do around revamping her CRM and establishing processes that would scale with the fund showed I’d do whatever it takes to help us win.
I really love this story. And I think it’s a joy to collaborate with you because you just execute.
I appreciate that. Crazy to think this all happened 18 months ago. So much has happened since then.
Yeah - so Wischoff Ventures - I see Nichole Wischoff all over twitter. I love her curiosity and sense of humor. It’s not easy to get a new VC firm off the ground but everytime I check in it seems like she’s crushing a new milestone -
Nichole has a past as an elite operator. She’s a pro at scaling companies. One company went public. Another was a near half billion dollar acquisition. A third is now a unicorn.
If you can go 3 for 3 as an early employee then I think you can become a great VC
Exactly. She was also angel investing and getting lots of markups so the next step seemed like raising a small fund. Then fund two was more institutional. Now we’re on fund three and we have over 50 portfolio companies.
You and Nichole have had to be very disciplined. I think at this point you’re seeing a majority of the most important deals out there, but you’re not saying yes to everything.
We stay disciplined around the themes we like because we think they’ll outperform but also because those are the areas where we can add the most value. Our sweet spot is B2B legacy industries. Ideally, we back technical founders with operating experience at companies that hyper-scaled.
What does a Wischoff deal look like?
Pre-seed or seed. Ideally 10% ownership with a $1m to $2m check
I think there’s a similar personality with most of the Wischoff portfolio company founders - how would describe that common element?
Urgency. When you’re getting a company off the ground, to get lift, you have to go fast.
That’s funny because I feel like you have such a sense of urgency in everything you do. Sometimes I’ll shoot you an email late at night west coast time and before I even go to bed I have a response
If I’m looking for founders with urgency, then they probably want the same thing in their investors. I always ask myself, “why can’t this get done now?” Most of the time, there is no good excuse.
There’s a couple companies in your portfolio that I love. Namely Rebolt and Atomic Canyon - what’s the latest on them?
Both seed stage companies are absolutely crushing it. I think 2026 will be big for both.
Rebolt is continuing to sell best in class marketing technology to home services contractors and expanding their customer base rapidly.
Atomic Canyon is updating how nuclear energy facilities operate. Before, so much of the institutional knowledge was spread among a bunch of different systems. Some crucial processes were even paper based. Nuclear before AI was pretty sleepy and by no means a growth area. Now many are looking to it as the only possible solution to our future energy needs. They’ve made some huge partnerships and the progress is staggering.
What’s the plan for 2026? Every time we chat, it feels like your responsibilities have doubled.
HUGE year. We’re expanding the team. We are looking for talented investors, ops, media people, and a couple interns. We’re deploying fund 3.
My responsibilities have definitely grown. I’ve earned a lot of trust and I’m grateful Nichole allows me to run with projects and deals. The last 18 months at Wischoff have opened my eyes to how damn hard it is to build a venture fund and how much more there is to it than just deploying capital.
About Morgan Barrett:
Morgan is the creator of Tech Breakfast Club. He hosts breakfast meetups in NYC, LA, SF, (and occasionally Austin, Miami, Boston) that bring together the best founders and investors.
Morgan is also a Startup Lawyer at Optimal, an elite lean boutique startup law firm repping clients funded by a16z, Sequoia, Kleiner, Accel, and countless other VCs. He works with clients from formation to exit, in collaboration with Optimal’s partners.