Happy Wednesday.

Welcome back to Dry Powder, and thanks as always for following our work here at Puck. In today’s email, a closer look at Animal Capital, a newfangled venture capital firm that relies on its investors’ social media prowess to improve the fortunes of the early-stage companies in which the firm invests. Is it the next step in the democratization of capital, or does it presage another sea change for the intersection of finance and celebrity?

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Bill

To that end, we also spoke about his recent decision to invest in Animal Capital, a newfangled venture capital firm that relies on its investors’ social media prowess to improve the fortunes of the early-stage companies in which the firm invests. As a gifted professional athlete, Suh was an instant believer—and investor, alongside the likes of Anthony Scaramucci and The Winklevii, the noted investor Paris Hilton, and Christina Aguilera, joining a group that knows it can improve the fortunes of a company with a well-timed Tweet or TikTok video. “This is kind of the tip of the iceberg, to say the least,” Suh told me.

I became fascinated about a year ago by the growing phenomenon of how celebrities and social media influencers of all stripes were suddenly joining the venture capitalist ranks. That’s when I first met Marshall Sandman, an ex-Goldman Sachs investment-banking analyst and a former director of strategy at WarnerMedia, who had teamed up with a group of young social-media celebrities such as Josh Richards, Griffin Johnson and Bryce Hall to start Animal Capital...