SPAC

“I think a lot of public, a lot of companies went public during that SPAC time because they were just crap companies and they couldn't raise capital privately. So their only option was to be a public company.”

“The SPAC phase I torched, like, four or five billion dollars.”

“So we did go public via SPAC. So we were kind of in the public markets, maybe over our skis a little bit, not fully ready to be there, whether that's from a KPI standpoint, growth standpoint, or just fundamentals standpoint.”

“And this was the right avenue for us for sure.”

“Well, I think one that's going to be fun is, like, that we're going to see more SPACs next year. I think, yeah, I think we had Rachel Jones, my colleague, had a good story on how, you know, some of these, like, critical minerals companies are doing SPACs, and …”

“Only a five billion dollar drawdown for me between those memories.”

“I still, I'm skeptical it'll be an amazing replacement to IPOs, but it definitely is less egregious and less misaligned than the last time.”

“The SEC has really tight laws about what you can say about an IPO. Really, really tight, and you can't make any future leading statements at all. But bizarrely enough, SPACs are exempt from that, so you're allowed, because it's a merger, so you're allowed from…”

“Now, the investor comes in at 10. Until the stock gets to 15, the sponsor gets nothing, but once it gets to 15, they get a 30% promote, so it's not cheap, but it's a little better than before.”

“I think the Raptor three will look like where somebody, a sponsor like me, Rolls everything up into one thing so that it's already pre-wired from the beginning where I'll just speak to a 1,000,000,002 1,000,000,003 billion, whatever it is, flexible capital tha…”

“And what my honest advice is avoid Maybe not all SPACs, but definitely my SPAC, just avoid it.”

“The fact that the structure is back is indicative of a bubbly time.”

“Why, why not do something more meaningful with the world rather than do something like a SPAC, which is at the edge of grift?”

“So I don't know if I'm gonna do it, but I'm, Heavily leaning towards doing it.”

“I'd argue SPACs also kind of screwed things up because basically the private markets handed the public markets all their trash, right? And the public markets are like, screw you guys. You give, give us Stripe. Why are you giving us all these terrible companies…”

“Honestly, I don't regret going out via SPAC.”

“SPACs have come and gone multiple times in their history, so I would never bet against the return of the SPAC. It might take a while. I think, you know, it's like, maybe even like every 15 or 20 years or whatever, but I am confident that in my lifetime, there …”

“So in, in June of 2020. A few months after the pandemic started, they went public at around 20, 20, twenty billion dollars. Twenty billion. They didn't go public. They didn't SPAC. So they SPAC.”

“I bet you there will be a bunch, not a bunch, but at least a handful of Chamath specs where if you buy them now, there'll be like a 50 bagger.”

“And SPACs will not be the next innovative solution. They were just far too maligned from the last cycle, but it is a potential exit route for certain companies.”

“SPACs coming back in a big way.”

“There's like, yeah, 350 that are actively searching right now in all sorts of different fields.”

“I fully anticipate SPACs will be back for certain companies pretty soon.”

“It went through, it went IPO through a SPAC, I guess it was probably two years or so ago at a two billion dollar valuation. Today it's worth sub hundred million, like anywhere between fifteen million was the lowest I saw it to maybe like 50, sixty million, you…”

“And I'm sure it'll be back.”

“It basically was a last resort for most companies where if you couldn't really go public and you couldn't access private capital, that was the best. Route. And then also like, which had a huge adverse selection problem.”

“We almost SPAC the company about two and a half years ago. And kind of in the last moment, I decided that we're far away from being a public company ready, and I pulled the plug and said no to a very large financing, and I needed to do some significant riffs.”

“This is like the world's most insane pump and dump of all time, like.”

“I think the SPAC market especially, I think a lot of companies that use that you know, that pathway to IPO-ing, they really had massive growth stories, and that wasn't underpinned by actual performance or by the technology curve and where they were on it.”

“It cut in half, so we tracked 50% less exits in twenty-twenty-three, and this was really driven by SPACs finally fizzing out. I think we started to see that happen towards the beginning of twenty-twenty-two but the count of SPACs were, climate tech SPACs were …”

“I tracked at some point, I don't remember exactly what the number was, but like close to 40 companies that I would call climate tech companies that, that successfully merged with SPACs and de-SPACs became public companies. Most of them were pre-revenue and had…”

“So I think there's, this is like a bigger idea around there's opportunities to buy some of these distressed assets in the public markets from all the specs and stuff like that. And then basically modernize the products and also build them with a more profitabl…”

“At the time, I said SPACs were gonna, I made the comment, like, I was like, 85, 90% of these SPACs are gonna be a disaster. And it turns out I was wrong. I was too generous.”

“The way the SPAC works, you build a company for as long as it takes you to build a company, you get it to a position where you think it can maybe endure the public markets, and then in that critical moment, you give somebody else who doesn't know your company …”

“When you look at SPACs today, I think, like, 98% are trading abysmally below, you know, trading price originally.”

“I don't think that there's going to be a quick return to SPAC land anytime soon. In fact, I think it'll only filter out to businesses like what we're doing with Lavoro, profitable, scaled, growing, you know, kind of where you can measure it on its financial re…”

“Chamath made money off of a bunch of his shitty SPACs because he's the promoter, and these funds manage billions of dollars, and they'll make hundreds of millions in fees along the way as a reward even if they lose their investors' money.”

“If we did it, you know, in 2021, we would probably be able to raise that money which is really why we wanted to go after it. The significant amount of cash would have enabled us to go after the full business plan, but the macro changed.”

“18 months, you're going to see dead spat. Literally, they're going to disband and give the money back to investors. Maybe 90% of them.”

“They have forced more innovation, innovation in the traditional bank IPO. They have forced more innovation in the direct list market.”

“We chose not to go down and execute on the SPAC at the end, by the way, to be clear, but the, all the work that we did was huge.”

“There were like over 600 SPACs raised in twenty-twenty-one. It was, you know, a good chunk of them were climate tech related.”

“I think there will still obviously be new listings and direct listings and probably not as many SPACs. That's a different topic. I do think you'll still have some activity, but not like last year.”

“SPACs will consolidate around six or seven players and, you know, will do most of the business.”

“Chamath in reality had a bunch of really shitty SPACs where he made a bunch of money. And people who invested in his SPACs on the whole, like just got ripped to shreds this year.”

“You know, everyone says SPACs are expensive, but when your stock pops 50 to 70% in the IPO, that's way more expensive than a SPAC, and so it created this window.”

“I think it's a fair case to be made that SPACs have generated more upside for deep tech in climate tech and in other sectors than they have for any other Type of investment”

“The outcome of this will be as the two year anniversary of those SPACs births comes around, they would get desperate and they will start cutting their promotes 25, 50, 75%, just so they don't lose the sponsor equity capital they put up. So it's going to be a b…”

“That's really the role of the CEO and the board to choose wisely, but all of them have their merits and they're harmonizing a bit Where the differences are quite small at this point, and very nuanced.”

“He did SPAC A. Then he trademarked SPAC B, SPAC C, SPAC D, all the way through SPAC Z, trademarked 26 of these.”

“And even startups who can't really raise well or don't, aren't strong enough to go public, they can go public via a SPAC, and then all of a sudden, hey, we got liquid. Great. So, so there's definitely a lot of, like, lipstick on the pig going on.”

“You know, we're talking about doing a SPAC and putting extra money and buying up because I was very successful near the last year prior to exit of buying great engineering companies who couldn't market their way out of a wet paper bag.”

“By being in this market, we're not adding any work because we're already in these verticals. We're already talking to these companies. We're already interfacing with them. This is what we do. This adds value to our core business, and it makes us more informed …”

“The thing that I say to them always is it's a totally fine path to go down as long as it's not seen as a milestone and you're just ready to be a public company, you know, after you're done with it.”

“I think people are going to embrace them for some period of time, and then I think there's going to be some disappointments and potentially some regulatory changes, which we're starting to see the beginning of. Which I think are going to change the attractiven…”

“At some point in time, you'll probably see some announcement about Vista has embarked on a deal in one form or another involving a SPAC, but we look and they are an interesting way to participate in the public markets in a shorter period of time than a traditi…”

“And so could he go after some individuals? I wouldn't be surprised if he weren't, and I wouldn't be surprised if he even went after an Elon Musk. I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to go after some of the people some of the higher profile people involved in S…”

“I think that this sort of SPAC phenomenon we're seeing is probably going to be long-term actually a good thing for SPACs insofar as they're going to create more regulations and other policies and better practices around these things so that they're not effecti…”

“So if you're going to go public now SPACs do make it a little bit different, but I think you see a lot of companies that go public and we would look at it and say, Hey, you gotta be doing like two hundred million of revenue, you know, three hundred million of …”

“I think it'll go too far. You know, the SPAC Invasion of the SPACs. I think some of that will end badly. It's too much too quick, I believe, but in general, more public companies, more capital, more funds is good for us, and more importantly, for our companies…”