Matt Higgins Net Worth, Shark Tank, and the Burn the Boats Bet Behind RSE Ventures

TL;DR:

– Matt Higgins built his reputation by turning hard-edged operating experience into RSE Ventures, a founder-focused investment firm spread across sports, media, food, and tech

– His career origin story started when he left high school at 16, took his GED, and used early college as a tool to get his family out of poverty in Queens

– Appeared as guest shark in Seasons 10 and 11, where he made four on-air deals and committed $1.52 million

– Net worth is best read as at least low eight figures, built across RSE equity, NFL executive roles, media work, and a long run of consumer-company ownership

Contents

– [Early Life](#early-life)

– [The Business That Made Them](#the-business-that-made-them)

– [Investment Philosophy](#investment-philosophy)

– [On Shark Tank](#on-shark-tank)

– [Online Presence](#online-presence)

– [What People Are Saying](#what-people-are-saying)

– [Net Worth](#net-worth)

– [FAQ](#faq)

– [Final Take](#final-take)

Caption: Matt Higgins, the guest shark who tends to sound like a coach, a dealmaker, and a man still arguing with his own high school guidance office. Matt Higgins Headshot, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Matt Higgins did not arrive in business through the tidy front door. His real origin scene is rougher than that. He is 16 years old, walking out of Cardozo High School, handing back textbooks, hearing a teacher tell him he will wind up at McDonald’s, then deciding the fastest path out of poverty is not another year of school but a GED, a job, and college early. That is not a standard founder myth. It is more like a fire escape.

That edge matters when you watch him invest. Higgins is not a guest shark who treats risk like a mood board. He likes founders who have felt pressure in their lungs and kept moving anyway. He made his name long before ABC called, first in New York City government, then around the rebuilding of lower Manhattan after September 11, then with the New York Jets, the Miami Dolphins, and finally [RSE Ventures](https://rseventures.com/team-members/matt-higgins/), the firm he co-founded with Stephen M. Ross in 2012. By the time he sat in the Shark Tank chair, he was not auditioning to be rich on television. He was bringing a hard-earned operating instinct to a set that occasionally mistakes noise for judgment.

Early Life

Higgins was born on November 8, 1974, in Queens, New York, and grew up in Bayside and Springfield Boulevard apartments that he has described without romantic varnish. In his published [Queens College commencement address](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tacking-matt-higgins-queens-college-2019-commencement-matt-higgins), he said his mother, Linda Joy Higgins, was a single parent raising four boys while dealing with illness, poverty, and the unfinished business of her own education. She cleaned homes, rode buses to food pantries, and still kept going back to class.

That home life gave Higgins two habits that never really left him. One was urgency. The other was respect for education as a tool, not a decoration. [Queens College’s alumni profile](https://www.qc.cuny.edu/communications/alumni-profile-matt-higgins/) says he considered the school his path out of poverty, and that tracks with his own telling of the story.

“Some people live pay check to pay check; the Higgins family lived Pell Grant to Pell Grant.” Matt Higgins, Queens College commencement address

He sold flowers on street corners, worked at McDonald’s, worked overnight deli shifts, and started college early so he could qualify for better-paying work. He later earned a political science degree from Queens College and a J.D. from Fordham Law, according to both [RSE Ventures](https://rseventures.com/team-members/matt-higgins/) and [ABC’s cast bio](https://abc.com/cast/589b3b9d-d1f7-4462-96c7-77d4444b8fa1). He did not trade school for hustle. He used hustle to get back to school on different terms.

The Business That Made Them

The company most responsible for Higgins’s current profile is RSE Ventures. Before that, he built the kind of resume that usually belongs to three different people. RSE says he became New York City’s youngest mayoral press secretary at 26, managed the global media response to the September 11 attacks, then served as chief operating officer of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation as the rebuilding effort took shape. Later he spent 15 years in senior leadership roles with NFL teams, including the Jets and the Dolphins.

Then came RSE. The official [RSE bio](https://rseventures.com/team-members/matt-higgins/) and [ABC bio](https://abc.com/cast/589b3b9d-d1f7-4462-96c7-77d4444b8fa1) both describe the firm as part investor and part builder. The portfolio is broad but not random: Resy, which American Express acquired in 2019; Drone Racing League; Derris; VaynerMedia; Magnolia Bakery; Momofuku; Milk Bar; Bluestone Lane; and more recent defense and industrial bets. RSE’s own language says the portfolio is multi-billion-dollar in scale. That phrase gets tossed around a lot in finance, but here it carries real weight because several businesses in the portfolio are established brands with obvious customers, not science-fair sketches with venture captions.

Caption: RSE Ventures is the cleanest shorthand for Higgins’s business identity, because it turned him from a powerful operator into a repeat owner of brands people actually recognize. Image from RSE Ventures.

The business case for Higgins is not that he invented a single blockbuster product. It is that he learned to sit where capital, distribution, media, and credibility meet.

That shows up in the numbers around his on-air deals, too. Take Beyond Sushi, his biggest televised swing. The founders asked for $1.5 million for 15 percent, a $10 million valuation. Higgins and Lori Greiner agreed to $1.5 million for 45 percent, which implies a $3.33 million valuation. That is a brutal haircut if you read it emotionally. It is a sensible haircut if you remember what restaurant expansion eats for breakfast, cash, labor, rent, and your free time.

He can sound severe because he is pricing the pain, not just the product.

Investment Philosophy

Higgins’s investment philosophy is more personal than polished. In a public [LEADERS interview](https://www.leadersmag.com/issues/2023.1_jan/Purpose/LEADERS-Matt-Higgins-RSE.html), he said he does not want to sign up for a rescue mission. That line is pure Higgins. He wants his help to matter, not to become the whole operating system. It is a sharp way of saying he backs momentum, not dependency.

He also talks constantly about instinct, but not in the mystical Silicon Valley way where instinct means a billionaire liked your hoodie. In his [commencement address](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tacking-matt-higgins-queens-college-2019-commencement-matt-higgins), he told graduates never to outsource their judgment to another person. In the same speech, he described making himself indispensable at every job, however menial, because that habit compounds. Those are not slogan words. That is the worldview of a man who had to build leverage before he had money.

“I don’t want to sign up for a rescue mission. I want my effort to make a difference, not the difference.” Matt Higgins, LEADERS interview

He also looks for self-awareness, which sounds soft until you have watched enough founder meltdowns to know it is one of the hardest traits to fake. In a [Forbes interview about startup leadership](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2023/02/15/shark-tank-investor-4-leadership-roles-startups-must-fill-to-succeed/), Higgins argued that leaders need the courage to admit what they do not know. That is less glamorous than charisma and more valuable. A lot of founders can sell conviction. Far fewer can survive contact with reality.

His book title, Burn the Boats, fits the philosophy almost too well. He likes people who are all the way in. Not reckless, just fully committed.

On Shark Tank

Higgins appeared as a guest shark in Seasons 10 and 11. [ABC announced his debut on October 3, 2018](https://abc.com/news/837b6911-6659-4246-a264-95ca70aa02ca/category/706923), and [SharkTankDB’s Matt Higgins page](https://sharktankdb.com/shark/matt-higgins/) credits him with four on-air deals totaling $1.52 million. Those deals were Beyond Sushi in Season 10 Episode 3, Cup Board Pro in the same episode as part of the all-shark offer, Urban Float in Season 10 Episode 16, and Tailgate N Go in Season 11 Episode 5.

The list tells you what he likes. Beyond Sushi had traction. Urban Float had a real footprint. Tailgate N Go had obvious sports adjacency. Cup Board Pro was the softer case, driven by story and utility in equal measure. His average deal size on the show, $380,000, puts him in the serious-money tier of guest sharks rather than the cameo lane.

“The Tailgate N Go is the most elaborate outdoor kitchen and dry box you’ve ever dreamed that has all your tailgating and camping needs covered.” Matt Higgins, Tailgate N Go press release after Shark Tank

That Tailgate N Go deal is a good window into how Higgins thinks. The founders asked for $250,000 for 10 percent, a $2.5 million valuation. Higgins came back with $250,000 for 20 percent plus a $50 royalty per unit until the initial investment was repaid. In plain English, he wanted downside protection because the business was still early and manufacturing-heavy. That is not romantic. It is what discipline looks like when it has seen a few balance sheets.

Caption: Higgins rarely performs for the room. He usually sounds like he is trying to decide whether the founder can survive the next five ugly decisions. Image via ABC on YouTube.

The post-show outcomes are respectable. [Beyond Sushi](https://beyondsushi.com/locations/) still operates Manhattan locations. [Urban Float](https://www.urbanfloat.com/locations/) is still selling float therapy, sauna, and recovery memberships. Tailgate N Go has said publicly that the show opened licensing and growth doors, which is exactly the kind of leverage Higgins sells. If you compare him with our [Charles Barkley profile](https://thesharkmonitor.com/charles-barkley-net-worth-shark-tank-and-the-business-of-being-charles-barkley/), Higgins is less showman and more founder interrogator.

Online Presence

Higgins’s online footprint is smaller than his business reach, but it is focused. His public [LinkedIn profile](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-higgins-rse) showed roughly 205,000 followers in July 2026, which tells you where his audience lives: founders, operators, ambitious young professionals, and people who enjoy hearing that excuses are expensive.

This is not a lifestyle influencer crowd. It is a self-improvement and business crowd, with a little sports-world carryover. The tone is direct and usually built around risk tolerance, judgment, and personal discipline.

What People Are Saying

The people who work with Higgins tend to describe him less as a flashy investor and more as a useful one. That difference matters. Founders like useful more than flashy once payroll hits on Friday.

“Building a company that’s doing some damn good in this world requires the likes of Matt Higgins, Stephen Ross and the entire RSE family.” Michael Lastoria, founder of &pizza, via RSE Ventures

That quote from the [RSE Ventures about page](https://rseventures.com/about-us/) gets at his reputation. He is not famous because he invented one household product. He is trusted because he has spent years helping founders at the point where taste has to become infrastructure.

Net Worth

Here is the honest version. There is no clean, widely trusted public number for Matt Higgins’s personal net worth in the way there is for more celebrity-coded sharks.

My read, based on the sources above, is that Higgins is likely worth at least low eight figures. That is an inference, not a company-issued fact. The logic is straightforward: he co-founded and still leads an RSE portfolio the firm itself describes as multi-billion-dollar in scale, held senior roles with two NFL franchises, participated in ownership economics around brands such as VaynerMedia and restaurant ventures, and added book, speaking, and television income on top. A $10 million-plus estimate is conservative enough to avoid fantasy and realistic enough to respect the arc of the career.

The more useful takeaway is that Higgins’s wealth was not made in one giant lottery-ticket exit. It was built through equity, operating leverage, and repeated proximity to valuable companies at the moment they needed structure.

FAQ

Who is Matt Higgins on Shark Tank?

Matt Higgins is the co-founder and CEO of RSE Ventures and a recurring guest shark on ABC’s Shark Tank. Before that, he built a career in New York government, post-9/11 redevelopment, and NFL business operations.

What seasons was Matt Higgins on Shark Tank?

He appeared in Seasons 10 and 11. His first aired deals came in Season 10, and he returned in Season 11 for another round of founder questioning and a Tailgate N Go investment.

What companies did Matt Higgins invest in on Shark Tank?

His four aired deals were Beyond Sushi, Cup Board Pro, Urban Float, and Tailgate N Go. SharkTankDB credits him with $1.52 million in total on-air commitments across those deals.

How did Matt Higgins make his money?

He made his money through executive roles, equity ownership, and investment work rather than one signature startup exit. RSE Ventures is the center of that story, with additional income and ownership tied to sports, media, consumer brands, books, and television.

What is Matt Higgins’s net worth?

There is no single high-confidence public figure that deserves blind trust. A conservative source-based read puts him at $10 million-plus, built mostly through RSE and years of ownership in growth companies.

Final Take

Matt Higgins is one of the better guest sharks because he does not confuse polish with insight. He has the résumé of a man who has had to earn his way through several rooms that did not really expect him to be there, and that gives his questions weight.

My judgment is simple. Higgins is not the loudest guest shark, not the richest, and not the easiest source of feel-good television. He may be one of the most useful. If you are building a business that needs discipline, distribution, and honest feedback instead of flattery in a blazer, Matt Higgins is exactly the shark you want sitting across from you.

[Article last updated: July 2026. Deal terms and company status reflect publicly available information at time of publication.]

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