Editor’s note: The original March 2023 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the sources cited below. The original version put Matt Higgins’s net worth at $150 million; we found no credible outlet that has published a figure, so it has been removed. It also described him as the current chief executive of Omnichannel Acquisition Corp. That company had already announced, in May 2022, that it would not complete a merger in time and would redeem its public shares as of June 1, 2022.
Matt Higgins has spent the last decade investing in restaurants, media companies and startups, and last month he published a book. What he is worth, though, is not on the public record. We found no estimate from Forbes, Bloomberg or another outlet that reports on personal fortunes, and Higgins has not disclosed one.
Here is what the public record shows.
Queens, a GED and City Hall
Higgins grew up poor in Bayside, Queens, and was raised by his mother after his parents divorced, according to a Queens College alumni profile. He dropped out of high school to help support her, earned a GED and enrolled in college at 16, CNBC reported.
He graduated from Queens College with a political science degree and, while still a student, wrote a column for the Queens Tribune, the college’s alumni profile says. Sports Business Journal reported that the column caught the notice of Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s administration and that in 2000, at 26, he became the youngest person to hold the job of the mayor’s press secretary, while attending Fordham Law School at night. His mother died the same day he started.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, he left the mayor’s office to help run the redevelopment of lower Manhattan at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., where he became chief operating officer in 2004, according to the same Sports Business Journal profile. He joined the New York Jets that year and was later promoted to executive vice president for business operations; CNBC put his time in that role at eight years.
RSE Ventures and the deals
Higgins co-founded RSE Ventures in 2012; its 2020 filings describe it as an incubator and investment firm focused on sports, media, entertainment, food and technology, and name him as its chief executive. A 2020 prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission says he spent 15 years affiliated with the NFL, overseeing business operations for two franchises. Its description of him is the company’s own, not an independent assessment.
The same filing lists companies RSE backed or helped start, including:
- Resy, a restaurant reservation service that the filing says American Express acquired in 2019
- Drone Racing League and the International Champions Cup soccer tournament
- Food concepts including David Chang’s Momofuku, Fuku, Milk Bar, &pizza and Bluestone Lane, which RSE began focusing on in 2016
- A significant ownership stake in Gary Vaynerchuk’s marketing agency, VaynerMedia, which the filing calls a partnership
The filing does not say what those stakes are worth, which is one reason any single net worth figure for Higgins is guesswork.
A SPAC that didn’t close a deal
Omnichannel Acquisition Corp., a blank-check company that Higgins led as chairman and chief executive, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in November 2020. It sold units at $10 each, and offering and over-allotment sales together generated $206.5 million in gross proceeds, its 2021 annual report shows.
Omnichannel agreed in July 2021 to merge with Kin Insurance, but the two companies signed an agreement to mutually terminate the deal, effective Jan. 26, 2022, a filing shows. On May 18, 2022, Omnichannel said it would not complete a business combination within the time its charter allowed and would redeem all of its public shares as of the close of business on June 1, according to another filing.
Shark Tank, Harvard and a new book
The 2020 prospectus says Higgins had been a guest shark on ABC’s “Shark Tank” in seasons 10 and 11, and described him as an executive fellow at Harvard Business School, where he co-teaches a course on emerging consumer trends.
His book, “Burn the Boats,” came out in February 2023, CNBC reported; the prospectus had said HarperCollins’ William Morrow imprint would publish it. CNBC describes its core argument as getting rid of your backup plan, because considering a Plan B takes energy away from Plan A. Higgins told CNBC Make It that “extraordinary things require extraordinary effort.”
