Overview of 20VC with Paul Erlanger, CEO of FOMO
Harry Stebbings sits down with Paul Erlanger, co-founder and CEO of FOMO, to unpack how the company built an unusually lean, high-ownership team, raised from top-tier investors like Benchmark, USV, and Index, and grew into a fast-moving trading app with a strong social layer. The conversation covers FOMO’s distribution strategy, why Paul thinks “super apps” are often too unfocused, how AI is changing team structure and product velocity, and why momentum, equity ownership, and hard conversations matter more than perfection.
What FOMO Is
- FOMO is a mobile trading app focused today on:
- On-chain assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto-native markets
- Soon: global access to equities and perpetuals outside the U.S.
- The product is also social:
- Users can see what friends are holding in real time
- Follow traders and discover high-conviction ideas
- Share trades publicly to drive conversation and attention
Fundraising and Investor Strategy
Why the company started with angels
- FOMO’s first round was all angels, with around 140 angel investors and no institutions.
- The goal was to solve the cold start / distribution problem for a consumer product.
- Paul believes early users should have ownership so they’re motivated to help the product grow.
Key investor lessons
- Aaron Harris was highlighted as the most helpful angel:
- Strong understanding of financing
- Helped the founders navigate the complexities of terms and structure
- Benchmark came in during the Series A and “got it” immediately.
- For the Series B, Index Ventures and USV led a $75M round at a $550M post-money valuation.
- Index invested $55M
- USV invested $15M
Founder fundraising advice
- Wait to announce your previous round if you plan to raise again soon — it creates momentum and avoids unnecessary inbound.
- Don’t assume every VC meeting means they want to lead your round.
- Choose investors based on trust and fit, not just the highest price.
- For founders: don’t let fundraising distract from building.
Team, Culture, and Ownership
Extreme ownership model
- For the first eight months, no one on the core team took salary.
- FOMO gave early team members equity at a level Paul believes is closer to what founders usually get.
- The goal is to create an extended founder team, where top performers feel true ownership.
Operating model
- FOMO is intentionally small and horizontal:
- Only 17 team members
- No internal hierarchy
- No one-on-ones
- Paul expects some of this to change as the company scales, but for now it supports speed and accountability.
Hiring philosophy
- Best hires come from long relationship-building, not recruiters or one-off intros.
- Hiring too fast is a major risk.
- AI may reduce the need for mid-tier labor, which increases the value of truly exceptional people.
Product Philosophy and Market Views
Why FOMO rejects the “super app” idea
- Paul is skeptical of bundling everything into one app just because it’s convenient.
- He believes products should have clear intentionality and a strong underlying glue.
- For FOMO, the glue is the social graph and the ability to express conviction across markets.
On Robinhood and Revolut
- He doesn’t think Robinhood was wrong to go broad, but notes:
- It helped them grow in the U.S.
- It may have limited global expansion
- He thinks global-first products like Revolut and on-chain assets have structural advantages.
- He sees tokenized equities and on-chain markets as a path to global retail access.
On “casinoization” of public markets
- Paul doesn’t view speculation as inherently bad.
- He argues many assets, from gold to diamonds to stocks, are already speculative.
- He sees retail coordination as empowering, especially compared with institutions controlling price discovery alone.
How FOMO Builds Growth
Organic feedback loops
- A major growth lever is shareable trade cards:
- Users can publicly share positions and results
- Big wins or painful missed upside become social content
- This creates a loop:
- People see trades on social platforms
- They come to FOMO to view the original context
- More attention drives more users and more trades
Creator and media strategy
- FOMO is building a large media arm.
- The company manages 30–40 creators in-house, constantly pruning underperformers and doubling down on winners.
- Paul emphasized:
- Don’t stop at “what worked once”
- Replicate and refine the winning format
- Performance should be judged by metrics like impressions, conversions, CAC, and LTV
Brand marketing
- He stressed the value of immortal assets:
- Podcast sponsorships that live forever
- Sports jerseys or other media that remain visible over time
- Brand is hard to measure, but powerful when built correctly.
AI, Engineering, and Team Structure
AI makes great people more valuable
- Paul believes AI increases the leverage of top talent.
- Engineers still matter, but AI lets them move faster and handle more.
- FOMO’s team uses:
- Cloud Code
- Codex
- They have an internal policy to ensure only enterprise tools are used for security reasons.
The future of teams
- Paul expects smaller teams and more horizontal structures.
- He thinks design becomes more important as AI automates more low-level engineering work.
- FOMO currently has one designer, but Paul expects design to matter more, not less.
AI productivity view
- He strongly believes AI speeds up:
- Coding
- Learning
- Reviewing code
- The company built a major web product in about one month, and another product in three weeks, which he sees as evidence of faster product velocity.
Founder Advice and Personal Reflections
Product-market fit advice
- Stay humble and protect momentum.
- Don’t dilute the product trying to please everyone.
- Ship for a specific user first, then expand from there.
Biggest mistakes founders make
- Waiting too long to launch
- Chasing perfection instead of shipping
- Making the message so broad it means nothing
- Avoiding hard conversations
What Paul would tell his younger self
- Have hard conversations sooner
- Confrontation feels worse than it usually is
- Once you get used to it, it becomes easier to tackle hard things
Notable Takeaways
- Momentum is everything: once you lose it, rebuilding is much harder.
- Ownership drives commitment: giving employees meaningful equity can create founder-level urgency.
- AI is a force multiplier: not just for output, but for speed of learning and iteration.
- Social is core to trading: FOMO is trying to make markets more transparent, more viral, and more collaborative.
- Great products are still about taste: AI helps, but human judgment and product intuition remain central.
Final Thought
The episode paints FOMO as a company built on unusual discipline: tiny team, high ownership, fast shipping, and a deeply social approach to trading. Paul’s core thesis is that the best companies won’t be the biggest or the broadest — they’ll be the ones with the clearest product, the strongest momentum, and the most committed people.