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- 🚀 How I'm Investing into SpaceX, OpenAI, etc.
🚀 How I'm Investing into SpaceX, OpenAI, etc.
And how you can too...
Hi everyone,
Every so often I’m able to find truly special investment opportunities — and I’m always excited to share them with you, especially when they’re as rare as this one.
In this post, we’ll talk about:
What exactly Destiny is — including its founders
What’s inside the Destiny Tech100 fund
Why the Tech100 is revolutionary, and why I believe it will fundamentally change the way everyday people invest their money in the future
How to receive your free share valued at $8
⚡️ Introduction
As you all know, I enjoy investing into privately-held companies. Specifically, fast-growing tech companies that are disrupting their respective industries and are led by strong founders.
A few examples: Stan, Telly, NurseWallet, and Hadrius
As shared in this post in 2022, I’m a firm believer that generational wealth is built between the “Idea” and the “IPO” phases.
By the time a company makes their public debut and becomes available on the stock market — the majority of their valuation growth is often already in the past. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of companies that have IPO’d in recent history who have gone out to 10, 20, 50X in value once on the stock market.
But the frustrating reality is that companies stay private for longer, growing in value benefiting their pre-IPO investors.
Below is a quote from that post that further explains what I’m talking about.
“Venture capital is all about capturing the value between the startup phase and the public company phase.”
— Fred Wilson, Partner at Union Square Ventures
As you can see from the graphic above, the startup journey is long and hard — and even longer for the everyday retail investor who has to wait until the IPO to get in on the action.
Only after the founders and venture capitalists make their money — are we, the retail investors (“anyone” in the graphic above), allowed to invest into these companies. This happens once the company is taken public and made available to us on the stock market.
But why can’t everyday people invest into privately-held companies?
Why do we have to wait for them to IPO at a $50B valuation? Why can’t we invest when the company is only worth perhaps $1B? That would be a 50X return on investment — why are those returns only given to the VCs?
Regulation and Safety.
We’ve been told that regulation is intended to keep us safe from “risky investments,” which is largely true — but it has also inhibited our ability to invest meaningful amounts of money.
As you all remember from this post that further explains Republic’s platform — retail investors are only allowed a few thousands dollars per year in “liquidity” to be deployed toward privately-held companies.
This is because of something called “accreditation” status.
To even be given the legal authority to invest meaningful sums of money into a large privately-held company — you need to become an “accredited investor.”
To meet that “accredited” threshold and invest more freely in the most interesting opportunities, investors needed to make $200,000 a year for the last two years (or $300,000 between spouses) or possess a net worth north of $1 million.
This 2016 S.E.C. report suggested that just 13% of the U.S. population qualified as accredited.
The unfortunate reality is when you keep growth investments out of the hands of retail investors — limiting them only to accredited investors — the best potential returns are saved for people who already have money.
Beyond accreditation status, there’s another problem — access.
The various, less restrictive crowdfunding-type platforms (Republic, WeFunder, etc.) weren’t created to attract the Stripe and Reddits of the world — but instead smaller, tightly held companies who are more like the companies you might find on Shark Tank.
No disrespect to any Shark Tank founders — but Shark Tank companies aren’t likely going to IPO on the stock market. They’ll maybe grow into a $100M business that turns into a cash cow for early investors — but they’re generally not going to IPO.
Enter, Destiny.
⚡️ What is Destiny (D/XYZ)?
Let’s take a step back — in 2014 a company named Forge Global was founded by Sohail Prasad and Samvit Ramadurgam. The company was founded with the mission of increasing liquidity, access, transparency and efficiency in the private markets.
After making an account on Forge Global’s website, accredited investors could expect to be presented with offers to invest into privately-held companies like SpaceX, Stripe, Chime, Impossible Foods, Discord, Reddit, Airtable, etc.
However, Sohail Prasad (former CEO of Forge Global) didn’t want to stop there.
👉 The Problem to Solve
Companies such as the above were only available to invest into if you were an accredited investor — they were also only offered one by one, and often had minimums of $50,000 or $100,000 for a single investment.
This means if you were given the opportunity to invest into a popular company, like Stripe — who has pushed back their public debut for years now — you’d be forced to write a check the size of a down payment on a sizable suburban home.
It’s painfully obvious that fortunes are made between “idea” and “IPO,” and for the ~13% of people who have the legal authority to invest into privately-held companies during these stages typically can’t get access.
We are forced to choose investments one by one, making investment sizes larger than we’d otherwise like — or have to pay a massive premium or high broker fees on the secondary market.
👉 The Solution
Introducing Sohail Prasad and Samvit Ramadurgam’s newest company, Destiny (D/XYZ) — a company dedicated to unlocking investment access to the world’s largest private tech companies to anyone and everyone who wants in.
Destiny is creating a family of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are structured in a new way that will enable anyone, regardless of accreditation status, to invest in portfolios of privately-held technology companies.
“Just as (SPY) is an exchange-listed portfolio of 500 of the largest publicly traded companies (S&P 500), and (QQQ) is an exchange-traded fund of 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on Nasdaq (Nasdaq 100), Destiny Tech100 (DXYZ) will be a portfolio of the top 100 venture-backed private technology companies — providing everyday investors access to these private market leaders for the first time.”
“Such a structure would open the fund to anyone, and not just the professional investors, institutions and wealthy families who typically buy into startups before they go public.” — WSJ
Just as you might own the (SPY), (QQQ), (SPHD), or (VGT) ETFs in your online brokerage account — you’ll soon also be able to own the (DXYZ) ETF.
👉 What’s Inside the Destiny Tech100 ETF?
According to Destiny, best-in-class companies.
“The Destiny Tech100 is designed to be an exchange-listed portfolio of the top 100 high-growth tech companies — providing everyday investors access to these private market leaders for the first time.
To be eligible for inclusion in the Destiny Tech100, companies must have been vetted by top US institutional investors and meet key health metrics.
Further, the companies in the portfolio will generally have reached a level of maturity and stability expected of a late-stage venture-backed company.”
⚡️ Specific Criteria That Has to be Met:
⚡️ Portfolio Details:
⚡️ Current Top 6 Holdings:
⚡️ Upside Opportunity Metrics:
👉 Who is Financing and Advising D/XYZ?
Destiny has recruited an experienced team of Private Markets experts to lead its investments, regulatory approvals and day to day operations.
The key to its strength will be its team’s nuanced background in all aspects of private tech investments — not just to choose the right companies, but to source them in the market at attractive prices and structures using their expertise and relationships.
Early backers of the Tech100 include the founders of Dropbox and Coinbase, as well as current and former Partners at Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and Y-Combinator
To help advise and support the growth of the Destiny Tech100, Sohail and his co-founder Samvit have also recruited some of the best in the industry as backers:
The founders and CEOs of leading future-forward companies such as Plaid, Quora, FIGS, Caviar, Mercury, Superhuman, Screenhero, Runway, Mux, Truepill, Human Interest, Clever, Augur, Chartboost, NerdWallet, and SandboxVR.
Current and former Partners at Kleiner Perkins, Pantera Capital, Paradigm, Riverwood Capital, Streamlined Ventures, and Better Tomorrow Ventures.
Early employees and executives at companies like Google, Stripe, Facebook, and Apple.
A diverse set of figures across competencies, from law firms such as Wilson Sonsini and Gunderson to entertainment figures such as Prohgress of Far East Movement.
How to Receive a Free Share ($8)
Here’s the deal — I was introduced to Sohail Prasad a few months ago by a mutual friend. Sohail shared with me what he’s trying to achieve with the Destiny Tech100 ETF — specifically, his intention to unlock this asset class to everyone in the investor class and not just the millionaires.
To achieve this goal, Sohail is working with dozens of online personalities (like myself) to help the company give away 700,000 shares of this ETF to their respective audiences.
There are ~13,500 people who are subscribed to Rate of Return, and I was allocated 5,000 shares of D/XYZ stock to give away to my audience.
By visiting this landing page you’ll be able to sign up to receive your share of stock and learn more.
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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