Means, Not the Target

Welcome back to the Meaning of Money podcast. I'm excited to have Danny Cohen with me today. Danny, welcome. Great to be here. The meaning of money, the meaning of life — so we need to talk about all these things. Danny is the founder of a very interesting venture capital firm called Sticker Ventures, investing in what people love, exclusively in early-stage, Israeli-founded consumer companies. So I'm looking forward to diving into that as well. Danny, you've been investing in people and businesses over many years, and you've seen — obviously there are some that don't work out, but you've no doubt worked with people who have made it, who have ended up making a lot of money, and you've seen that transformation from their kind of pre-money lives to now they have a bunch. What have you seen that money does, in a positive way — how it most helps people in a real, practical way? And what things, if any, have you seen that money doesn't solve for those people? They finally get the dreams, they finally hit it big, they finally get that big exit, get all this money — and what's not solved by money? But let's start with the first: where have you seen it work really well, and where has it made a big difference for people? We live in a society where a lot of good things cost money, and it opens up for people certain dreams and certain opportunities that should not be taken lightly. You can travel in a luxurious way, you can buy the house that you always dreamed about — you can unlock that. And associated with that, for some people it unlocks freedom: the freedom to do things, to take maybe risk, or to just spend time on the things you love, versus the force of needing to care for money at this point. These are all positive things. By the way, on that list, the thing that really jumps out at me is time — the freedom to spend your time the way you want to, to work on the projects you want, or just how you spend your time, because you can't buy that. That's one thing you can't buy. So that's a big luxury, I think. Among all those, I definitely agree with that.

You Have to Find That Reason

But money is complicated also. When you're young, and for most people they don't have money and they don't understand the risks of life — I'll call them stupid. They're not really stupid, but they just don't know what they don't know. And that, of course, could be a huge asset. One, you have a driver to give it all you've got, because you have no other choice, and you're willing to face things that are really tough. But you face them — one, because you don't know otherwise, and two, because you're willing to give it all you've got. When you make a lot of money, you lose part of that. I've seen people who started a company, did really well, started another company — and the only thing that's guaranteed when you start another company, or start any company, is that you're going to face hard times. That's a given. Guaranteed. 100%, not 99% — 100%. When that happens, there are some people who go, you know what, why am I doing this? And the reason they initially had made a lot of sense — you want to make it in life — but now you made it, and what is that reason? You need to find that reason. And that reason doesn't have to be money at all, but you have to have that reason. And if that reason does not exist, that's a problem. Is that answer ever money? If you were investing in somebody and they said, the reason I keep working hard is just money, and they already had money, would you buy that? Look, I think money never really is a good reason, and never is. For me, and for some people still to this day, I wait so much for some money that will arrive — I say, oh, that money arrives — and then, always, when it arrives, it's like, oh, whatever. Because the effect is not as strong. It's not as strong as things like fulfilling a dream, or achieving something that is really meaningful for yourself, things of that nature. There are people who all they care about is money, all the way to the end. I think there are some famous people who are like that. But for most of humanity, I think money is a means to something. It's not the target itself. Yeah. I would say, even — I have not yet actually met somebody for whom money truly was the end answer. I have met people, like you're talking about, Danny, who on the surface of it seemed like that, because that's how they measure their success. But I would argue what was really driving them was a hole somewhere inside that they're trying to fill — because if they can just get that extra amount, that extra deal, that extra status, that extra amount of money that they're denominating in money, they'll somehow feel complete. They never do, though, because that doesn't solve that hole. So, yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Money as the Score of the Game

And that's a really funny balance, right? Because there is absolute truth that money is fabulously helpful for the things that money can buy. And when you don't have a lot of it, man, getting some is just a blessing. But at a certain point, you realize that, to your point, it doesn't have the same drive. And if you don't redefine that, your life can be a void — because when you're in that hunt, that chase of I have to make this company work, I have to find a way to grow, you're on a mission, and you benefit, like you said, from that singular focus, that passion, that drive of 'I have to.' And one of the beautiful things that money does is it gives you options, so now you no longer have to. And that raises, for many people, a new challenge — and I would even go so far as to say an existential challenge — because people don't often have immediate, good, tangible answers to 'why am I doing this?' Like you said: why am I doing this, what do I want to do and why, and why don't I feel passionate, and what's next? I want to say something. In my life, it's confusing a little bit, because in the world of investing, the money is also the way you keep score. So the interesting thing about it is that you invest to make money — so you're definitely in the business of making money, and you want that money — but that money, beyond the fact that it's money, is also really the score of the game. You made ten times your money, you basically made ten times points in this game. And that's a little bit confusing, because I'm really hungry to win in this game right now, but I really sometimes think about it more as points, and not just like a dream will come true and I'll finally have that whatever thing that I want. Yeah, it's an interesting paradox.

Finding a Secondary True North

I would say — not so much on the venture capital side, but on the wealth management side — it is essential to find a secondary true north, other than just 'more is better.' The reason I say that is: if your true north is 'more is better,' because that's how we measure it, you're apt to take more and more risk, and that can often have unintended negative consequences, and not bring the fulfillment. For example, at a certain age, even if people have millions and millions of dollars, sometimes people wake up one day and they're like, you know what? I loved the thrill of the hunt and the roller coaster when I was 30, but at 65 I'm not looking for that as much. Now I want to just enjoy the luxury of total security, and knowing I don't have to worry, I don't have to do anything, I'm going to be okay. And if that's your goal, then more is not always better. Sometimes the satisfaction comes from saying, hey, my goal is to have freedom in my life, to be free from stress, so I can enjoy my grandkids, or enjoy my wife, I can travel, I can read books, without the stress of worrying what the heck the markets are doing. And so if I achieve that goal, and that was my goal, then I can be happy with what I have, and not have to keep making more. If people don't do that, they can really get into trouble. They can have a lot and never feel satisfied, because they don't have a secondary true north. And like you said, when you are in the hunt to win — if you're professionally investing, of course you want to win. And it's interesting, as a professional investor, where I find the biggest challenge that a lot of us face is in time. If you think about one of the most successful investors of all time, Warren Buffett — he's a master of patience. The market could be down 50, 60, 70%, and if he has invested in companies he believes in, he's fine. His psyche, his energy — he's not panicking in the way that the retail investor is. In fact, he's thinking about the opposite: oh, there are probably some great opportunities here, where are they? Patience is a big one. And what you're doing in venture capital — you're not instantly successful. 99.9% of the time, you're not instantly successful. It takes a very long time. It takes years.

The Joy Is in the Journey

But I think the great thing about being a VC is that you enjoy not only the end result, but also the process on the way, because you work with the company. Tell me about that — about the process along the way. Because that's something where I've met a lot of people who wake up and say, hey, I want to be in venture capital, be in private equity, make a bunch of money, it's really cool — and they get it set up, but I don't always get the sense that they really love the journey. I think it's a hard journey. Tell me more about that joy along the way. How do you find that joy along the way? So, I think I have the best job in the world. I work with entrepreneurs, with young people that are very, very hungry, very capable. We have, I don't know, 10 or 12 portfolio companies, and they're all different. Your day is spent with different ideas, different topics, because you don't work on the same thing every day, all day. And as long as you understand that they run the show — I'm a supporting actor, I'm not the main actor of their journey, but I'm an actor, I'm part of it — I've been part of different companies that got to substantial results. And there were hardships along the way, and failures, but they were just great journeys. When I left my first fund, Gemini, to join a different fund, I joked that I didn't leave one job, I left 11 jobs, because I had 10 boards and one — but I was really, at the same time, in 11 companies. So it's the people, the topics — and again, every little thing that you do, sometimes, you make a difference. You add those up, and I made a lot of impact to a lot of people in the world.

How Venture Capital Is Changing

How is venture capital changing? How is it different in '26 versus 2019? Well, one, I think the world is changing substantially, and AI is driving so many things. When I look at what AI does to us, there are two kind of very different points of view that I'll mention. One is a world where a very few companies take all the money they can, and people want to put all their money — so there are a lot of companies that want money, but everybody wants to invest in Anthropic. So it's kind of the very, very few, one or two percent; they suck up all the money, which is a challenge for some companies. On the other hand, we're seeing more and more companies that do so much with very little money and very few people. We have one company in our portfolio — talk about money — they are just two people. Really, just two. Not two and a contractor — just two people. And they are already selling in the tens of millions of dollars, and they're doing a phenomenal job, and they're not going to, or planning to, hire anybody else. That is crazy. That's something that was not possible at all 25 years ago — not even five years ago. No. It would have been beyond people's imagination ten years ago. Are they using agentic everything? One of them jokes that his partner even does not respond to him anymore — he put a bot that responds to his partner's email. So I think it reflects a little bit of agentic. Okay, I don't think that's the majority of companies, but it really reflects that we're in a world where so much can be achieved with very little. And that, I think, for small funds like ours, has a huge impact.

What to Build Is Still Hard

So what are the new skills that people need to be developing in a world where there's so much more that could be done without money? What does that unlock? What types of mindset, or values, or personal characteristics do you find are more important today as a result, that weren't as much 15 years ago? I think to build has become a commodity, so building is easy. That means it moved the bottleneck into two different areas. One is what to build. What to build is still not an easy answer. You can let the machine build whatever you tell it — you can even ask the machine what to build — but there are very few products in the world that have magic in them, and that magic is still created by humans. So what to build, I think, is a huge challenge, and there are very few people who kind of have that amazing capability in them. And the second thing is distribution. Distribution is becoming also the bottleneck. So if I know what to build, and I have an edge in how to sell it, I'll make a lot of money. It's not anymore about how smart my engineers are. So tell me about the magic part — I think that's an interesting question. Given that agentic capability today is off the charts and could do more than... it's just mind-blowing what it can do. You might agree with me that there are still some things, like, as you said, figuring out the right what to build. What are the two or three or four other things that you feel people still have an edge over AI on — that will still play an essential role, by virtue of us being humans and computers not being able to do that? I wish I had a great answer for it, because we don't know, and this is changing so fast. One thing I will say is that, as long as we're still humans, and as long as humans run the show, I think humans, by majority, still want to interact with other humans. I think we still need to, still live in a 3D world where we want physical experience. It's great — we're having now this conversation, recorded, and it's amazing; again, 20 years ago the idea that we'd do something like this was unthinkable. It's never replaced the fact that we'll have a beer together in a bar in Austin, Texas. So I think something about emotional, 3D stuff is still where there's a lot of place for humanity. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Building Amid War in Israel

Speaking of humanity — I know it's been a really tough couple of years in Israel, with everything going on in that part of the world. How has that affected, for better or for worse, or both, the venture community in Israel, and in Tel Aviv specifically? Look, one, since October 7th, these have been very tough years. War has been coming and going, and, as we speak, even today, we don't know what's going to happen next week. So that sucks, it really does. And I really hope that in one, two years, we'll see changes here, and changes on the other side, and that we'll start to see a brighter future. I will say that, for a lot of people — and to talk about where we started this conversation, about what drives them — a lot of people went to war and came back with a huge desire to build. The amount of startups, the amount of people that are like, I'm now going to build the company... it's just, I'm going to show the world that we can do something. The amount of people that have that mission in them is at an all-time high. And the crazy thing about it is that, with all the criticism that Israel gets — and it gets a lot on the news — appreciation for the Israeli tech economy and the VC scene is at an all-time high. So much money is flowing in here from investments; so many people want to touch on Israeli entrepreneurs. So there's kind of this weird balance between political Israel and tech-startup-scene Israel. And I hope they'll all come together to be all positive, but right now there's some gap there. Yeah. Well, certainly a story of human resilience. And like all entrepreneurs, as you said, you're faced with all kinds of challenges — and there, I think, is found one of the most beautiful parts of humanity: that resilience to create positive, and to create from nothing, or amidst hardship. So I really appreciate your perspective, both as a successful venture capitalist and from, you know, sitting in Tel Aviv. And I do hope we grab that beer together, whether it's in Tel Aviv or here in Austin. Danny, it's been great to connect with you, and I look forward to staying in touch. Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks a lot. That was great. Thank you.