SPAC, the New Black

Plus: The Quest for Monopoly, Ant Group, The FAAMNGs of Finance

Issue #15 of Net Interest and welcome to all new readers. When I launched this newsletter in May, I had a soft target in mind of 5,000 subscribers by the end of August. With a few days to go, we’re at 4,620—so close I can feel it! So if you have a friend or colleague interested in learning more about the finance industry in a digestible way, please invite them to sign up. Let’s make it happen!

SPAC, the New Black

This week’s been a big one for stock market listing announcements. Palantir, Asana, Unity, Snowflake and Ant Group all filed to go public. It’s a major transition, going public, and the process isn’t without its controversy. Bill Gurley, of venture capital firm Benchmark, made his views plain in a blog post earlier in the week:

“The traditional way of going public is systematically broken and is robbing Silicon Valley founders, employees, and investors of billions of dollars each year.”

Bill Gurley has a particular perspective as a Silicon Valley investor. In order to get the per…