Brian Nichols is the co-founder of Angel Squad, a community where you’ll learn how to angel invest and get a chance to invest as little as $1k into Hustle Fund's top performing early-stage startups

Nasir Jones, known professionally as Nas, released Illmatic in 1994 and immediately established himself as one of the most technically gifted lyricists in hip-hop history. Twenty years later, he co-founded QueensBridge Venture Partners with business partner Anthony Saleh and started making venture bets that would have looked crazy to most people at the time. Coinbase before crypto was mainstream. Ring before smart home was a category. Robinhood before retail investing went mobile. Nas investments have generated returns that would make most professional VCs uncomfortable to discuss. And the playbook behind them is more instructive than people realize.

QueensBridge Venture Partners and What It Was Built to Do

QBVP launched in 2014, named after the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City where Nas grew up. The fund is co-managed by Nas, Anthony Saleh, and a team with backgrounds in technology, financial markets, entertainment, and talent management. The firm is sector-agnostic but has developed a clear preference for companies at the intersection of technology and consumer behavior, particularly in fintech, media, health tech, and consumer platforms.

By 2016, QBVP had invested in 116 companies, primarily at the seed stage. The portfolio has since seen four unicorns, seven IPOs, and 39 acquisitions according to Tracxn data. The most recent acquisition in the portfolio was Whistle, acquired by Tractive in July 2025. QBVP co-invested frequently alongside Andreessen Horowitz, Slow Ventures, and Founder Collective, which tells you something about the caliber of deal flow the firm was seeing.

The Exits That Built the Reputation

The Coinbase investment is the most talked-about. Nas joined a round alongside Kevin Durant, Ben Horowitz, and Union Square Ventures, investing somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000. When Coinbase went public in April 2021 at an $86 billion valuation, Nas is estimated to have generated between $41 million and $206 million on that position. On a check that size, the return multiple is almost difficult to comprehend.

Ring was another standout. Nas backed the smart doorbell company through QBVP before Amazon acquired it in 2018. The acquisition was widely reported as generating approximately $40 million for Nas. PillPack, the online pharmacy that Amazon also acquired in 2018, was another QBVP portfolio exit from the same year. Two significant exits in one acquisition cycle is not luck. It reflects a consistent ability to identify founder-market fit in categories that were just beginning to develop consumer demand.

The Robinhood investment came in 2014, part of a $13 million seed round alongside Snoop Dogg, Jared Leto, and Index Ventures. Robinhood's IPO in 2021 generated significant returns for early investors. Lyft, Dropbox, Pluto TV, SeatGeek, Genius, and ClassPass all appear in the QBVP portfolio at various stages, almost all entered before those companies became obvious bets.

Elizabeth Yin, Hustle Fund GP, has talked about how the most valuable skill in early-stage investing is the ability to evaluate companies before traction makes the answer clear. Nas has demonstrated that ability repeatedly across completely different sectors.

The Cultural Lens as an Investment Edge

What makes Nas unusual as an investor is the specific kind of pattern recognition he brings to consumer technology. Growing up in Queensbridge gave him an intuition about how products travel through communities that are often underserved by existing solutions. Robinhood made investing accessible to people who had previously been priced out of brokerage accounts. Ring addressed home security in a category where legacy solutions were expensive and complicated to install. These weren't random picks. They reflect an understanding of how products spread when they remove friction for users who genuinely need the solution.

Shiyan Koh, Hustle Fund managing partner, has pointed to authentic community insight as one of the most durable edges available to early-stage investors. Investors who genuinely understand underserved markets tend to find companies in those markets before the market consensus catches up.

Beyond QBVP, Nas co-founded Mass Appeal, a media and record label company, and expanded Sweet Chick, the soul food restaurant brand, to multiple cities including Los Angeles. These aren't just brand extensions. They're evidence of how Nas thinks about building at the intersection of culture and commerce, the same intersection where most of his best venture bets have been made.

Angel Squad and the Cultural Edge in Investing

Nas investments are a reminder that the most valuable investor insight often comes from places venture capital traditionally hasn't looked. Angel Squad brings together 2,500 investors across 50 countries, many of them operators-turned-angels with specific domain expertise and community knowledge that traditional VCs don't have. That's the edge. Members invest alongside Hustle Fund in early-stage companies and develop the judgment that comes from evaluating real deals with real frameworks. If Nas built a venture track record that rivals most professionals by betting on what he genuinely understood, the starting point for any investor is the same: what do you actually know that the market hasn't figured out yet? Angel Squad helps you develop and deploy that answer. Visit hustlefund.vc/squad to learn more.

The Takeaway

Nas investments have worked because he has always understood that cultural insight is a form of due diligence. The companies he backed earliest were often building products for users who looked like the communities Nas knew intimately. Robinhood for people who wanted to invest but didn't have brokerage access. Ring for homeowners who wanted security without enterprise pricing. Coinbase for people who saw alternative financial infrastructure as a necessity, not a novelty. The products were different. The underlying pattern, technology democratizing access in categories where legacy solutions had failed a large audience, was the same every time. That's a framework worth studying.