Before I get started…the story below is all ‘first world’ and I what now call ‘Patagonia Vest Problems’.

I hope/intend to highlight a huge opportunity in fintech/tradefi with respect to offering choices, closing the risk gaps and providing liquidity to companies and shareholders. I imagine tokens and blockchains can be integral in solving these gaps.

At Social Leverage we have been investing by way of funds since 2013 (fund 1) and are now investing out of fund 4.

It has been an epic bull market and software/internet boom since 2009 and we have been so lucky to be in a position to invest our own money and that of our LP’s.

Tom, Gary and I have all had winners before Robinhood. We have started and sold companies, been LP’s in funds that have had companies go public, and been seed investors in companies that have gone on to IPO (for me Tubemogul and Lifelock).

BUT for the three of us, Robinhood is the first investment in our own operated fund to go public via a ‘traditional’ IPO where a distribution would be made to our limited partners.

There is a discussion/argument happening in the venture and LP world regarding how and when to distribute shares/proceeds of an IPO post lockup from GP to LP and we decided to distribute the stock to our LP’s the moment lock-up restrictions were lifted and let them decide what to do with their shares since the company is public and our fund focus is on private market/seed investing.

Now that we have done that some thoughts…

Lucky for me, it was Tom handling the bulk of the operational work the last six months pre IPO and post IPO on the Social Leverage side. The amount of legal paperwork, legal reading and rules, reporting, spreadsheets, people involved, communication and stress is staggering relative to the eight years we were invested in Robinhood.

In the last four months, Robinhood has traded from $37 to $70 and to $22 with the company’s valuation swinging between $19 billion and $70 billion. The moment and style of the IPO get way too much attention relative to smoothing the liquidity and valuation gaps that come pre and post IPO (let us call it the 6 months prior and post IPO for sake of this post).

The reason we are and have been so excited about our fund and personal investments in Stocktwits, Etoro, Robinhood, Alpaca, Angellist, Multicoin and FTX is to take part in the fixing, smoothing, choices that investors and companies have all throughout their lifecycle. This last mile is a huge focus of mine.

Back in July, I had FTX’s founder Sam Bankman Fried on my ‘Panic’ podcast and we discussed the lack of choice I saw ahead re Robinhood and the gaps and opportunities I was excited to be part of solving. You can listen to the podcast here and specifically the last 8 minutes starting at minute 59.

Back to work.