Republic's Note is about to hit the market

Today’s newsletter was written during a turkey & mashed potatoes-induced food coma. Please pardon any typos, let’s get to it:

• ⛳️ Hit the Links: The top tidbits from around the web

• 📔 Taking Notes: Republic’s profit-sharing token hits the markets

• ♨️ Getting Hot in Here: Investment is up. Are we back??

HIT THE LINKS

It’s time to hit the links…

⛳️ Cadi, a startup that's changing the way people buy golf equipment, is putting together an advisory board. And YOU can apply. The positions will be compensated with equity and potentially cash. (link)

💰 Vitalize VC is rolling out a new community for accredited AND non-accredited investors. Members pay a quarterly fee and get access to vetted deal flow (link)

🚀 28 equity crowdfunding campaigns recently launched, The Crowd List scoured through them and shared the top 5 most interesting ones (link)

TAKING NOTES

Republic does things a little differently…

Wefunder and StartEngine have each issued equity in their company to the retail community. Republic, often the number 3 platform by investment volume, has bucked the trend by leaning into a blockchain-based approach. 

It has created a profit-sharing token called Republic Note, of which there are 800 million in total supply. The Notes distribute profit from two different sources.

1. Republic takes 2% in equity of the total amount raised for all startups that list on its platform. If Startup X raises $1,000,000, Republic takes $20,000 (2%) in equity in that startup. Should that startup have an exit event, Republic's investment is converted into cash and added to the Republic Note dividend pool. If Startup X sees a 10x return, that $20K would convert into $200,000 being added to the dividend pool.

2. Republic Capital, their venture arm, also contributes to the pool. They invest on a larger scale and have funneled $650M+ into startups. However, a much smaller portion of this makes its way to the dividend pool. Of the investment profits, only 0.25% gets added to the pool.

There are currently 765 private companies in Republic's portfolio that could end up contributing to the dividend pool. So far, over $920,000 has been added to the pool. This may sound like a lot, but split 800 million ways it comes out to less than one cent per Note. However, it's early days for the Republic startup portfolio as it takes a long time for startups to reach an exit event.

Republic has only ever sold Republic Note in small private batches. The last sale placed each token at $0.36. A colossal update is coming in the next few weeks, as Republic intends to list the Republic Note on the Avalanche blockchain. This would make Note available to be publicly traded, which could attract a lot of interest from the crypto community.

The crypto industry has dealt constantly with zero-value tokens meant for grifters to make a quick buck, so the fact that Republic's token has actual financial value tied to it is a fresh advancement. During Note's last private sale, I decided that it was not worth the price and wrote about why in this article.

However, I will be watching the public listing of Note closely. If the price plummets for some reason, it could be an excellent entry point for those that believe in the long-term potential of Republic's platform + startup portfolio.

GETTING HOT IN HERE

The magic is BACK…

It's been a tough stretch for startups raising capital. Venture capital funding fell by 50%+ in the past year and startup valuations got rocked. Equity crowdfunding was not spared, but experienced far more modest declines than VC.

It feels as if the momentum is returning to equity crowdfunding. In the week of 11/12, retail investors poured $16M+ into Reg CF startups. That figure comes close to entire months of funding in the worst parts of the downturn.

 In fact, the last time this amount of money was raised in a week's tally, we have to go back 53 weeks to 10/8/2022. And there's signs that the momentum has legs to continue or even push higher - Stephanie Hekker of The Crowd List noted that a rush of companies are getting their raises live.

I've noticed that the deal flow has been strong as of late and am excited to dig into the next wave of startups hitting the market. In fact, I'll be profiling one next week that I'm pretty excited about.