Rises growth tech fund IPOed here at the New York Stock Exchange last week under ticker VCX and it has skyrocketed since its debut.
Now investors are turning their attention to the fund for its private market access, and its top 10 holdings include some of the most coveted unicorns, including anthropic OpenAI and SpaceX, and these big players could.
Public this year.
Well joining me to weigh in this morning is Ben Miller, the co-founder and CEO of Fundrise, and good morning.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Well here from VCX soaring since its debut last week.
Now the fund does promise to democratize access to Silicon Valley's most exclusive deals here.
So tell me about the unprecedented retail demand you're seeing.
Yeah, well, just to give a little context, we started this fund about 4 years ago.
We were the first public venture fund ever to file with the SEC.
We created actual access 4 years ago with a $10 minimum.
So we have 100,000 individual investors.
All of them invest on average $5000 per investor before we listed.
That was before we went public.
And so I think that broad-based ownership really helped spread the word and created something like a network effect in terms of how then it it it was received by the market after it listed.
Well, I do want to ask you about regulation as well.
So the SEC under Paul Atkins has previously talked about working to expand private market access for investors.
So what would the impact of the speed and retail investors would rather stick with funds such as yours that do serve as an intermediary when it comes to access.
That's such a good question.
So I really think that's the trillion dollar question because there's a huge problem.
Private markets have become a multi-trillion, 10 to $20 trillion dollar space.
Most of the growth, most of the young companies are growing in private markets.
Everyday investors have been excluded now for the last 15 years, and I think that VCX has created the model.
The model is a low cost 40 act like mutual fund structure.
That gives everyone access to private market companies in a regulated wrapper.
And you're seeing from its trading, from it's from the reception that it's actually really well received and it's probably the best solution for how to do this.
So I, I think it's a solved problem actually.
And now it's just the, the main question is how do you get more people to realize that this is the way to address this long standing iniquity.
Yeah, and then finally when the companies do actually go public names that we're watching like SpaceX, OpenAI as well as anthropic, when do you, where do you actually start looking for value then once these names go public?
Yeah, I mean over the last 20 years, uh, most, I would say 99 out of every 100 new companies were created in the private markets.
It's it's something that will always be the case, I believe, and so.
They'll be the next Anthropic, the next SpaceX, the next OpenAI.
AI is unlocking a whole new paradigm of value creation of new kinds of technological innovation.
And so one of our recent investments was a pill that extends lifespans in dogs.
So imagine if your dog could live 5, 10 years, 35, 10 years longer.
That sounds like an incredible blockbuster technology.
And so there's there's going to be more technologies, more investments.
And the whole idea is to create venture capital as a category in your, in your portfolio, the way you have real estate or you have tech, venture capital should be a percentage of your portfolio in a low cost, well regulated wrapper.
Well Ben, we have to shift our focus back to the public markets now, so thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sharing your insights.
Thanks for having me.
