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Republic launched in July 2016 with just four startups raising using Regulation Crowdfunding. Since then, we have grown into a global investment platform and ecosystem, supported startups and enterprises, engaged retail and institutional investors, facilitated primary offerings and secondary trading, offered web2 and web3 products, and provided access to the US and Europe. Billions of dollars have been raised by thousands of businesses through the Republic ecosystem in the past 8 years, and we have become a trusted partner to many global enterprises on web3 and tokenization.
Today, Republic operates the only cross-border investment infrastructure that enables anyone, anywhere to participate in financial products of similar variety and quality that institutional and high-net-worth investors seek for wealth generation and preservation. It promises to be a vast improvement over the financial systems underlying the private markets of the past 60 years. Powered by our infrastructure, Republic has become a marketplace where a UAE resident can invest $100 in a pre-IPO American startup, an American can trade their $5,000 upside in a K-Pop album, and a European can invest $1,000 in a NYC hotel development project paying 14% annually, all alongside major institutional investors. We’re expanding into new markets, adding new assets, and enabling secondary trading. And as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has predicted, transactions on Republic will all be digitized and on-chain.
Eight years in toward building this future, I want to share a few perspectives on the private markets.
In our space, once begrudgingly termed “equity crowdfunding,” companies have rightfully adopted “tokenization” as a new battle cry. That is, enabling the public to invest and trade in fractional interests of real world assets, from startup equity to music royalties to real estate. Tokenization is being celebrated by some as a revolutionary concept, but it’s really more of a powerful technology. One that enables fractionalization, automation, verification, and settlement with great efficiency. We launched Republic before the introduction of tokenization technology, but it’s now core to Republic and our vision. We combine new technology and legal engineering to drive compliant retail participation in more and more asset classes, chipping away at the age-old problem of private market access and illiquidity.
To be fair, Republic supported retail and community participation long before tokenization. For example, two companies, Beacons and Maven, let their power users invest via Republic in a traditional “web2” fashion. (Both went on to raise more than $55M total in investment rounds led by the VC firm Andreesen Horowitz.) Similarly, Bobbie, a D2C organic infant formula company, leveraged Republic’s product to let the moms who buy their product invest alongside actress Laura Dern and the other $140M+ they’ve now raised from venture firms like VMG Partners and Park West.
However, tokenization means faster, cheaper, safer and scalable investing. With it, minimum investments can be as low as $1, and ownership can be a digital badge with perks and benefits to the owners. And that’s why Republic has evolved to become a digital-first financial firm with unprecedented launches like a fan-financing campaign for Watford FC, a 143 year old English football club. More than $6.7M has been raised and reserved from thousands of Watford fans in the US and Europe in a month, with some investing as little as £50 for digital ownership. Strong retail backing has spurred additional demand from institutional and high-net-worth investors who have committed upwards of £25M via Republic’s Capital Markets division. Investors will claim tokens representing their ownership and access perks, structured by our Digital Advisory division, with plans for secondary trading in 2025 both in the US and Europe. Such is the promise of tokenized private shares for community engagement, which in turn drives institutional investment. No other firm but Republic has this full stack capability.
For large asset managers, allowing small investors to access their products is all the rage — albeit “small” here still means investors capable of cutting a six-figure check. These institutions are looking for broader distribution for several reasons: capital, liquidity, and, most importantly, brand recognition and engagement with the new generation. “Mass affluent” is a new market for an industry that almost exclusively serves ultra high-net-worth investors, but “True Retail” –– the 92% of the country that don’t meet “accredited” status in the eyes of the SEC –– is the holy grail. True Retail possesses enormous collective wealth. Many will become accredited, high-net-worth investors through organic growth and through mass transfers of wealth via inheritance. For that reason, we’ve been seeing an influx of asset managers coming to Republic with the same questions: How do we raise from as many investors in as small denominations as possible? And can we tokenize our fund?
Republic is working with two of the world’s largest managers with a combined $1 trillion of assets under management / supervision on how to make the True Retail dream a reality. As a former legal academic, it doesn’t surprise me to see the finance industry’s best lawyers struggle with navigating the complex matrix of securities laws, investment company restrictions, tax considerations, bank custody regulations, and money transmission rules. Theoretical knowledge alone is not enough here. Without the right plumbing––the financial, legal, regulatory, and technology rails that Republic has built through cross-border licenses, company acquisitions, and partnerships over the past 8 years––it’s simply not possible to accommodate True Retail. Additionally, we bring to our partners a depth of business perspectives and pragmatism that can only come from our own experience managing private funds ($700M+ in AUM) with a commitment to retail access.
At many tech companies, especially in SaaS, professional services units may generate significant revenue (often 20%+ of total revenue) but are undervalued by growth-minded operators and investors for being inherently less scalable. However, in a nascent market driven by a new technology, professional services are crucial for driving adoption and retention of such technology and lay the foundation for future products with recurring revenue.
Large enterprises are often not equipped to evaluate, procure, and implement a new technology effectively. Many rely on the services of specialized advisory firms who bring expertise, market understanding, and a degree of risk mitigation for the enterprise client. This is true in the context of the AI boom, and we find it equally applicable to the private market transformation and tokenization. Republic’s Digital Advisory business has been instrumental to our market positioning, offering our partners not just a product and an infrastructure to use but also full stack services to support onramp and implementation. Since 2020, notable protocols and web3 firms (like Ava Labs, Solana and Creta) as well as web2 enterprises have looked to Republic for technical, regulatory, and community engagement services. We guided a massive global conglomerate in Korea on their web3 go-to-market strategy, and we inspired a top 5 technology company to reinvent its value delivery method using NFT technology. Unlike other consulting firms, our team advises and builds for others what we have already tested and built for ourselves –– our Wallet and the R/ Note being two of many Republic products that broke new grounds.
A recent advisory client with a major portfolio of real estate-based assets came to Republic with an interest in expanding access to retail investors through tokenization. They had the inventory of quality assets, and we had the infrastructure and expertise to help them tokenize and engage with True Retail. What started as a standard advisory service engagement quickly became a joint venture, whereby Republic provides Marketplace-as-a-Service (or “MaaS”) to power a new platform that specializes in structuring and distributing real-estate-backed digitized financial products to the retail public. I expect that we will continue to “white-label” our legal and technical infrastructure for select partners with proven expertise in a niche sector or a new market, so that together we can digitize more pockets of the private markets. By pairing professional services with products and infrastructure, Republic has carved out a unique market position and a reputation as a leading firm at the forefront of driving blockchain adoption.
When I reflect on the past 8 years, I’m so proud of what we’ve built and amazed by the opportunity ahead. I’m equally grateful for the millions-strong Republic community and the backing of world-class institutions like Valor Equity Partners, GoldenTree, and Morgan Stanley. Yet, I sometimes wonder why what we’re doing feels not-yet-obvious. Founders Fund CMO and Anduril co-founder Mike Solana recently described how venture capital chases trends, pouring funding into sectors only after a company has emerged that has captured most of the value in that sector - Uber in ridesharing, Coinbase in crypto trading, and Anduril in defense tech. These are the category-defining “prime movers” now valued at more than their next 10 competitors combined. He argues: by the time defense tech or ridesharing were obviously compelling, it was too late for outsized venture returns because those markets had been won.
More so now than ever, I believe we’re poised to become the prime mover in our space –– next-generation investment infrastructure driving the digitization of finance. We certainly need a better name for it, but when we do have one, it will feel patently obvious that this was all inevitable. Ah, of course. Transfers and payments should be instantaneous and on-chain. Any-one should be able to invest in any-thing, whether they’re a mechanic in Ohio or a family office in Japan. Technology will transfigure these archaic, byzantine financial systems into an accessible future of open, liquid markets for everything that’s investable. The opportunity is vast, and digitized finance is at the cusp of mass adoption. Those facts mean that the race will soon get crowded and noisy as it envelopes Wall Street itself. I’m glad our team is more energized than ever, for the foundation we’ve built positions us well to drive this sea change, globally.
Republic’s vision –– unlocking access to private markets for everyone, everywhere –– may not be obvious yet. And that makes this moment in time especially humbling and all the more exciting.
Onwards,
Kendrick Nguyen
CEO, Republic
