May 17, 2021 – On today’s podcast, we welcome special guest Niccolo de Masi, CEO of dMY Technology Group. dMY Technology Group is focused on sponsoring the success of the next generation of great pioneering technology entrepreneurs onto the public markets.
On the podcast, Niccolo discusses:
- What was attractive about the SPAC asset class and how it has evolved over time
- dMY’s underlying thesis driving its strategy for blank check mergers
- Key principles to be a successful repeat sponsor
- Thoughts on the current state of the SPAC market
- And more
Transcript:
Welcome investors to the Absolute Return Podcast. Your source for stock market analysis, global macro musings and hedge fund investment strategies. Your hosts Julian Klymochko and Michael Kesslering aim to bring you the knowledge and analysis you need to become a more intelligent and wealthier investor. This episode is brought to you by Accelerate Financial Technologies. Accelerate, because performance matters. Find out more at www.Accelerateshares.com
Julian Klymochko: All right. I’m pleased to have Niccol from dMY Technology on The Absolute Return Podcast today. A very well-known SPAC sponsor in the market has done in number of SPAC transactions. Two DMY, blank checks have closed. Transactions with Rush Street and Genius. Have another two live in the market. One of which has announced the IonQ deal and a fifth one on file raising an aggregate over $1 billion dollars of capital from investors for these business combinations. So, Niccolo, you’re a real veteran of the technology industry going through your background. And now these SPAC asset class with soon to be five under your belt. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, why you chose to focus on technology and M&A specifically?
Niccolo de Masi: Well, look, it’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve actually raised over $2 billion if you count the pipes, which I’m sure we’ll spend some time on, but that’s been over half of the capital and all of our deals, if you add it up cumulatively.
Julian Klymochko: Good point.
Niccolo de Masi: You know, [Inaudible 00:01:08] market, of course are robust at the moment. And I’d say that throughout my career in the public markets for the past 20 years, you know, they’ve been interesting to me and they’ve been vibrant, although of course has been many cycles. And I started my career in the.com boom, which then busted, and we had the great recession. And now we’re in an interesting moment with COVID and all this sort of, I’d say stimulus going on in the macro environment.
I’m a physicist originally. So, my master’s degree was from Cambridge University in Electron-beam lithography believer not, way back in the day. And so, most of my career has been pursuing something technical, whether it is mobile devices on the hardware side, mobile software, of course, IonQ, as you mentioned, our third SPAC transaction as the world’s first quantum computing company. That’s a segment that I’ve been following for, you know, 20- 25 years, as you can imagine. And proud to be a pioneering, you know, the public markets with that. Our first two deals were in the gaming space. And as you probably know, I was the CEO and chairman of a business called Glu Mobile for 11 years which we just sold to Electronic Arts for about two and a half billion dollars. Originally, however, my first public company was actually in the UK. So, I ran a business in the mobile music space. And so, I’ve gone from, I like to joke. I’ve been telling the same investor story for a long time which is that, you know, mobile phones are becoming more important. And you’re doing more on them and spending more time on them, and that was true. That was considered a controversial, believe it or not statements, you know, 15, 20 years ago. And that was controversial about gaming. And then it was about streaming. And of course, you know, today we accept that people watch whole movies on their phone. Of course, they don’t have an iPod, they just have a phone. Of course, they don’t have a PlayStation portable. You just have a phone, but believe it or not, there’s been plenty of teething challenges along the way here.
So, I’m sort of proud to be here with a consistent career that see me run or be on the board of something like eight public companies to date. Our fifth SPAC will take that number up to nine. My partner in crime on dMY Technology is that Harry, you know, has done 12 public companies. He’s currently the board of a Coupang, which is the Amazon of South Korea, as they say, he’s also on the board of Broadcom. He was formerly the CFO of EMC Accenture and Oracle. So, Harry’s has done, I think, four- or $500 billion-dollar market cap companies. And so, the two of us have a very complimentary skillset. We both spent their lives in the public markets but he’s, you know, a little more enterprise, I’m a bit more consumer, I guess, the way to put it.
But we’re excited by, you know, obviously what’s going on for not just our companies, but the next generation of companies that we believe we can really help nurture onto the public markets and help them set themselves up for successful growth in the next phase of evolution. So, we see ourselves really in the business of, like we’ve done in our own careers. Taking companies public, not because it’s an exit, but because at the next stage, logically in a business’s evolution and something, which the public markets can be a great fit for if you embrace them in the right way.
Michael Kesslering: So obviously you have a very impressive career of adding a ton of value to the companies that you’ve worked with and invest with. And with that experience on the operational side, at the executive or board level, and then investing in companies, how has your operator’s skillset helped with investing and vice versa?
Niccolo de Masi: I actually, I think some of the greatest venture investments of all time, you know, have been done by operating people. So, you know, things like Naspers and Tencent, you know, springs to mind and of course Masayoshi Son has done Alibaba and things like that, and Coupang. So, I believe it or not, I think there is a completely different approach when, you know, what it’s like to be in the trenches, running the business, leading the army, trying to take the Hill as opposed to people that have kind of been in the Ivory Tower, their whole lives kind of looking at businesses as an abstract thing that comes across your desk on a piece of paper. And so bottom line, we have a lot of empathy for our CEOs and CFOs who are considering if they want to be public, how they want to go public? We really know what it’s like to go through that process, you know, emotionally, as well as professionally. And we know what it takes to set a business up, to really use all the levers of growth and all the tools that you can have as a public company effectively. I think the SPAC markets, you know, have gotten interesting in some pockets because there have been firms that have been treating them as, you know, M&A conversations, not IPOs. That’s a mistake in my mind, I’ll come onto that and you’ve got more detail. There’ve been people looking at, you know, SPACs is just another way to raise money. Neither of those, in our opinion is a wise, you know, approach. And it’s not the one that dMY Technology takes or looks to partner with. So, we’re really looking for companies that wants to be public. Know what it takes to be public, realize that you have to price yourself and position yourself to be a successful IPO, and that fundamentally want to be public for the right reasons.
Julian Klymochko: I’d be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on those two points that you mentioned. These misconceptions, or perhaps failures of others, and thinking about the SPAC structure in terms of number one, not just M&A and number two, not just to raise money, what are your thoughts on those concepts and how do you believe, you know, what’s your differentiated view?
Niccolo de Masi: Yeah. So, look, we approach this from the perspective that we’re looking for, you know, Harry L. You and I have done, I don’t know, 45 IPOs, secondary offerings together, probably more, we’ve done 200 M&A transactions or more as a public company, you know, leader, CEO, CFO. So, we’ve been around the block. We’ve been through business cycles. The reality is, you know, a good company to be public is what really looking to sponsor because, you know, it’s our reputations were here to be, you know, I joke. We’re here to be long-term greedy. So, we’re here to be successful long-term. Everyone in our ecosystem at dMY has to be successful. So, pipe investors have to succeed our IPO, our S-1 IPO investors and our blank check companies have to succeed. Of course, the companies we bring public have to succeed, and everyone who comes in to buy piece of these businesses later on, of course, have to succeed, the management teams have to and that requires pricing properly.
If you read about, you know, our transaction, [Inaudible 00:07:56], has written a few articles, you know, we price fairly.
Julian Klymochko: Right.
Niccolo de Masi: You don’t see us price deals where they triple, you know, three days after. That’s one of the reasons, you know, that I think people have gotten fed up in the Bay Area sometimes with traditional IPO’s is like, you know, the Snowflake phenomenon where, you know, the thing triple, you know, the day after, a week after it goes public and companies are like, well, why did I leave so much money on the table? So, you know, we’re looking for businesses that recognize there has to be probably a 15, 20% discount to, you know, to an IPO fully distributed value. Once you get through your first earnings call, but we’re not looking for businesses that are priced at ridiculous discounts.
We’re also looking for business that overpriced, you know, being over pricing is something that I think is, you know, has happened in a number of pockets in the SPAC ecosystem in the past six months. So, there’s a good number of deals from, you know, people that have done more than one SPAC that are trading, you know, below $10 dollars. There’s a lot of people that have gone for volume and gotten I think overexuberant on the size of SPAC they can raise, you know, we’ve maintained discipline. So, you’ve seen us continue to race SPACs and kind of the same size. We’ve never gone out there and tried to raise a $700 billion-dollar monster SPAC. We keep putting out the $200 million dollar, you know, sort of bite sized. And we keep structuring properly with, you know, pipes of high-quality investors, exactly the same investors you’d seen in an S-1 IPO or a direct listing.
We think the S-4 process that is a SPAC listing. We think it’s here to stay and it’s simply an alternative path to an IPO is an S-1, the traditional IPO. There’s an S-4, and there’s a direct listing. Now, each one has a different fit for different types of companies. And ultimately, you know, we’ve stayed away from businesses that are, you know, being shopped around by, you know, sell side banks. Treating them as if they are an M&A process. Trying to get the highest price possible. That is not a recipe for a successful IPO. You don’t want the lowest price box; we don’t want the highest price box. It’s got to be priced fairly. And that’s really an integral piece of our approach here is, you know, we’re a good sponsor for a company if they value what Harry and I bring to the table as board members, advisors, if they value our institutional relationships. And the fact that we’ve been in the trenches and we’ve done the CEO and CFO role in these situations many, many times before, and we know what the pitfalls are, we know the strategies are, the tactics are. But we don’t work with people who have other things they were evaluating, you know, more highly than that at the end of the day.
Julian Klymochko: Common feedback that I hear these days from investors, looking at business combinations that are announced is perhaps overvaluation of the target. So, it makes sense for a dMY to be valuation sensitive. And you can see that with respect to the two transactions you’ve closed. Rush Street Interactive trading, and under symbol RSI. Genius Sports under symbol, GENI, those two trading well in the market, well above the $10 dollar price, and many of the recent transactions we’ve seen have just not had that positive reaction from an investor. And from what I gather, it’s largely from a valuation standpoint. So, it’s interesting to note that in other aspects of how you approach SPACs in terms of having the right size in terms of, you know, how much capital that you’re raising. And so, you spent the first part of your career as CEO being involved in Glu Mobile, as you indicated for a long time, then transitioned to, I suppose, full-time SPAC sponsorship. So, I was wondering what initially attracted you to the SPAC asset class? And how has that evolved over time? Your first one, dMY I, IPO February, 2020, I’m sure you’ve learned a ton since then. A number of deals under your belt, and, you know, what are your thoughts on it now versus then? And you know, just wanting to get your insights as what seems to be a serially successful SPAC sponsor, because you don’t come across too many with, you know, soon to be four or five under the belt.
Niccolo de Masi: Yeah, no, look, we certainly think we’re in the top 5% or five teams. I had the benefit of my partner Harry You, having done a SPAC before, you know, in 2016, 2017. And so, you know, he came into it with, you know, some stars and some learnings, you know, I’ve benefited from that. And he and I have continued to hone the playbook. There is no doubt that every time you do one of these, you get better at it.
Julian Klymochko: Right.
Niccolo de Masi: Just like everything in life, right. I mean, you know, you don’t want to go in for cardiac surgery with someone who’s learning on the job and doing it the first time, right. That’s a poor strategy, right?
Julian Klymochko: Exactly.
Niccolo de Masi: You don’t pick neurosurgeons because they’re the cheapest, right? You want the ones who are the best order to deliver the outcome. And so, you know, the reality is most people only IPO their business ones. And so, they choose to work with people like Harry and I, because we’re not learning on the job, we might be getting better at it as a great neurosurgeon, you know, should on their thousand surgery. But at the end of the day, we have, you know, tactics, strategies, playbooks, and a community that has supported us, done well by us. And not just done well by us with SPACs, right? I mean, I’ve run two public companies and two private companies before we gone into SPAC business and, you know, same with Harry. And so, there was a coterie of people have made money, you know, fundamentally, you know, backing us repeatedly in both the private and public markets.
And this is really part of the success recipe. If you have people that know that you understand what it takes to deliver an outcome in the public markets, both in good times and bad, you know, more bullish and more resilient as well as more bearish. They tend to trust you. And of course, you know, it gives you an edge over other IPOs are going on, and to be clear, we are competing with other IPO going on. You know, there was talk always of, you know, The SPAC Market. And there really isn’t a distinct SPAC Market in our mind. You know, Goldman Sachs is our underwriter. I give Goldman a lot of credit for dramatically changing the past two or three years, the perception of not just SPACs, but all the investors involved in SPACs and dramatically turning around with flywheel, by raising the bar on sponsors like us, who then attracts quality companies, who then attract quality investors and recognizing there’s a virtuous circle in this ecosystem, you know, the fundamentally self-reinforcing.
So, you know, if you look at the investors, you know, Fidelity led my pipe on my first and third SPAC, you know, Caledonia led the pipe on the second SPAC. If you look at Glu Mobile and our investors on a secondary that I did at Glu Mobile last year and you know, and you look at you know, people that we’ve invested in dMY I, II, III, IV and backed our pipes in I, II and III, you know, some of these people I’ve seen eight or nine times, you know, in the period of 18 months and more than one situation, but all in the technology markets, all in sectors that Harry and I are experts in and they’ve supported us, you know, almost every time. And so, there’s absolutely an investor following that we think is a differentiator. And it’s something that we’re really precious about protecting, you know, their interests.
At the end of the day. You know, we are here so that everyone gets a good outcome. Goldman, you know, obviously trusts us and we continue to work with them. You know, our pipe investors trust us, our IPO investor trusts us and our partner companies that we’re bringing public trust us as well. And as long as everyone does well, every time and feels that it was fair all around. You know, you have the long term and you have a lot more opportunities to keep going and bringing more great companies public. And that’s really what we’re all about.
Julian Klymochko: Another frustration that I hear from SPAC investors aside from valuation is perhaps mandate creep or pivoting when a SPAC has a mandate say it’s cannabis. And then all of a sudden, they announced a deal in the electric vehicle space. So, you guys dMY Technology. I assume you’re going to stay on brand with respect to tech deals. And it seems like your focus seems to be on gaming and mobile. I was wondering behind the business combinations; do you have an underlying sort of macro or micro thesis driving the SPAC strategy at dMY?
Niccolo de Masi: Yeah, absolutely. The underlying thesis is actually not gaming and mobile. Even though we’ve done a couple of those and we’ve done quantum computing, it’s actually very simple. The big idea that we’ve been focused on, Harry and I for a long time in our career. And that is what I call all the weather accompanies.
Julian Klymochko: Okay.
Niccolo de Masi: So, Harry and I have been through plenty of macro micro cycles. And what we really care about are businesses that can perform, regardless of whether we’re in a recession, we’re in a great market, regardless whether there’s COVID, shelter place, you know, regardless of whether there’s inflation, if you look at all of the businesses that we’ve brought public today, they are priced givers, right. So, whether or not you’re locked at home or whether or not, you know, you’re on a plane, quantum computing is a price giver who the world’s most powerful quantum computer.
Julian Klymochko: Yeah.
Niccolo de Masi: Same with gaming, gaming does better in COVID but it does well in all cycles because it’s the cheapest form entertainment per hour you’re going to find, right. From bull markets, people have more money spend [Inaudible 00:17:26] when it’s a bear market, they cancel the Hawaii vacation and they spend $90 dollar on Call of Duty and advise you, you know, a week of entertainment.
Julian Klymochko: Right.
Niccolo de Masi: And so, you know, that really is the overarching theme here is, the businesses that we support, whether they are enterprise SAS, or they are gaming, or they are quantum computing or anything like that, or AI, they’re always going to be in a business we think that are going to crush it across the business cycle. Because at end of the day, you know, Harry and I don’t control the macro economic climate, we’re not politicians. And we’ve seen time and time again, that great secular stories where businesses are price givers, so to speak and have leverage over the customer base and or they do something which is such good value for money that it’s always in demand. These are the businesses that, you know, do well on a five, 10-year view. And that’s very much our, you know, our investing horizon.
Julian Klymochko: So, a couple of threads from that focusing on companies that are price givers also while being valuation sensitive. So, from the point of view, as a serial SPAC, repeat sponsor, what are some of the keys to success, you know, without giving away the secret sauce to your competitors, why should an investor want to invest in your IPOs
Niccolo de Masi: Well, I mean, it goes around to the track record here [Inaudible 00:18:46] looking after public market investors, right? So, you know, I ran public companies on both sides of the Atlantic. Harry has been the CFO of really successful businesses like Accenture that has grown 20X from IPO, right. It was a $10 billion dollar IPO and he was CFO [Inaudible 00:19:01]. And today it’s like a $200 billion dollar market cap company, right. So, there is a lot of, you know, I think support enthusiasm for dMY and Harry and I, because we treated people right over the years in good times and bad. We don’t try and take every dollar off the table, as they say on valuations of anything we’ve done, whether it’s secondaries of public companies, we run or SPAC we’ve done. We’ve been good about looking after investors rights and representing them on, you know, on the board, whether or not we are, again, you know, chairman of Glu or on the board of a Rush Street or, you know, a Genius or an IonQ et cetera, or Harry’s case, you know, Coupang, Broadcom, Accenture, EMC, et cetera, and Oracle.
So, you know, I think track record matter a lot and people have long memories and doing right by people in good times and bad, I think builds, you know, franchise power ultimately. Showing you can get good results for them, even when you have to work harder and in more challenging environment. I think is just frankly, you know, the hallmark of a successful, you know, track record in the public markets. The other thing that obviously we’ve shown or adept at is structuring fairly. Picking, you know, to quote Warren Buffet. You’re better off getting, you know, a great company at a fair price and a fair company at a great price. And that’s also something that we’ve been keen on demonstrating with dMY Technology. I think time the market is also been important for us. You know, we’ve been raising SPAC money and getting transactions announced, you know, certainly under six months, but often, you know, under, under four or five months. And so, IRR and all transactions are really quite solid and I think we’re also grown-ups about the fact that there is a transition that occurs at every stage of the life of a public company. And in the case of a SPAC, every stage of that SPAC from IPO through to target company identification, business combination announcement, you know, analysts’ days, these SPACs and at some point, in the future, you know, even secondary deals after a business has fully closed that business combination of this trading undertone, ticker symbol. So, understanding what everyone’s interests are across the life cycle, I think is important. And also making sure that we are looking after people across that life cycle.
Michael Kesslering: Something that you mentioned was board representation. And that’s something that will typically happen is the SPAC sponsor will stay on the board of the newly formed to public company. And you obviously have a ton of board experience. And so, within that, what would really differentiate a board member that is just kind of completing their fiduciary duty to one that is truly excelling and adding value to the company?
Niccolo de Masi: Well, that comes down to sectoral and stage fit, right. So, I spent my entire career in businesses, you know, that are sort of sub $10 billion dollar market cap. And so, I have a lot of expertise on what it’s like, you know, running businesses that are at the sort of scale that dMY Technology has been successfully partnering. I really understand what the scaling challenges are when you go from, you know, a business with hundreds of people, to thousands of people. We understand what it’s like taking a company public. That’s got hundreds of employees, not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. We also understand ultimately what kind of inorganic and organic growth initiatives are likely to pay off and, you know, end of the day we have some domain expertise. And so, you know, business building chops, as I like to put it is, not nearly as well understood by most SPAC sponsors as it is by people like Harry and I have actually run businesses, right.
So, there’s plenty of you know, a recovering investment banker, you know, to some extent or venture investors who have had SPACs, but most of them aren’t operators, right. The super majority of SPAC sponsors are not operators. There are some, I would pause it. They’re probably all doing a little better than the people who are not and in Harry and my case. We’ve been, you know, bankers earlier in our careers and then we’ve been operators later in our careers. So, you know, we never forget all overall training as well as you know, the fact that we are really quite comfortable operating across every element of the tactics that it takes to successfully bring a business public, conduct public market M&A, think through how you position the business for his first earnings call, as well as, you know, it’s tenth earnings call and make sure that everybody has a good experience every step of the way, and as being successful against the metrics that they are measuring themselves against. So, you know, the end of the day, I think good board members, you know, have the sectoral expertise, they have the stage expertise and they really have the ability to recollect and empathize with what it’s like to be in the shoes of other people at the table.
Julian Klymochko: And it definitely helps to have that capital markets experience. And operatorship when guiding business combination target from a board level perspective. So that’s truly understood. Now I wanted to touch on some market dynamics. There’s been a recent downturn in the SPAC market. Some de SPACs have attracted some negative attention. I was wondering given the current market dynamics, have you guys modified the strategy at all at DMY and do you believe this negative perception of, you know, the SPAC market in general is justified?
Niccolo de Masi: It’s interesting. You know, SPACs had a poor reputation, you know, 10 years ago.
Julian Klymochko: For a long time.
Niccolo de Masi: Then they had an amazing reputation. And now, you know, there’s this already mixed reputation, not very mixed, there’s sort of big differences between, you know, our friends like Harry Sloan and Sagansky. They just announced a deal with Bill Gates portfolio company and the deals we’re doing, and people who are not able to close pipes, they’re dying out the buyer.
Julian Klymochko: Yeah, and it’s a media as well. I find those, I like a media negative bias against it.
Niccolo de Masi: They just love to hate, right. Look, I mean, here’s what I always point out. You know, there’s been some, you know, unfortunate deals happen, like, you know, the Nicholas self-driving car one or truck or whatever. But there’s also been, if you remember, you know, tremendous frauds in the normal IPO markets, you know.
Julian Klymochko: This is true.
Niccolo de Masi: Whether it’s Worldcom or Enron, or like all of these sorts of things, right. And those there’s a problem every year or more than one problem, or otherwise the SEC wouldn’t exist, right. And so, you know, I think more scrutiny treating your deal like a traditional IPO is something that we’ve always expected. You know, we do full underwriting diligence on all our deals. We’re very conservative in how, you know, we’ve guided markets and how we’ve priced.
You know, there’s no doubt that there’s a couple people at, I’d say, you know, there’s definitely a difference between a top tier underwriter, at Goldman Sachs, you know, Morgan Stanley and a third-tier underwriter that you’ve never heard of.
Julian Klymochko: Right.
Niccolo de Masi: There’s definitely some people out there that have been pushing sponsors to, you know, to put themselves out and hold themselves out, that don’t have the experience, don’t have the track record and really shouldn’t be doing this. But I think that is naturally getting expunged from the system right now. So, there’s going to be people who run at a time, who can’t get a deal done, who can’t get a pipe done. There’s going to be a lot of people that, you know, probably in the middle of the market to get, you know, have to reprice and have gone out, you know, to exuberantly, then there’ll be people at the top of the market, whether it’s the top five, 10, 15% who carry on. And as I said, a few minutes ago, I think, you know, dMY Technology, you know, believes we’re in the top 5% of the top five teams. And ultimately, you know, we’re finding, you know, businesses, you know, is doing just fine for us because almost all our institutions reserve, you know, 10% of their capital for their highest quality, those trusted partners. And so, we’re seeing that checks are being written for our deals even if they aren’t being written for anybody else.
Julian Klymochko: Yeah, that’s true. So, we are still seeing deals get done as you mentioned, that Harry Sloan deal, that was a big one. We’ll see how it trades in the future, obviously with a negative sentiment nothing’s trading too well in the current market dynamic, but moving on a go-forward basis. I was wondering, what do you believe is the future of the asset class? Is it along the lines of just a number of, you know, top 10 sponsors are able to have a number of SPACs out there is the number of outstanding blank check companies going to come down dramatically from the 560? Is this going to be a smaller asset class or a larger asset class and our deals going to kind of be in the same kind of target range?
Niccolo de Masi: Yeah. So, I think it’s here to stay. I also think that, you know, SPACs been around, whatever 20, 30, 40 years. They keep evolving continually. I think it’s an asset class that here to stay. I do, there’s no doubt, you know, this terms into what the private equity industry and venture capital industry has turned into, so there are fewer bigger, better, higher quality teams who ended up persistent, you know, and winning long-term. So, I definitely don’t think you’re going to see, you know, how many hundred there are, they’re not going to be hundred more. I think it’s going to shrink, the debate will be, you know, whether it shrinks to 5 teams, 15 teams, 50 teams. But I think if something’s going to shrink, right, because there’s just too many people learning on the job, right.
And if you’re learning on the job for that little discussion on surgery, you know, you’re not going to have a great outcome, right? So, we think that there’s too many people that are learning on the job and too many people that, you know, don’t have investor following into, who have never run a public company, aren’t operators, and they just, you know, kind of chancers as they say. And so, you know, that that part needs to get, you know, cleaned out to enable the quality, you know, operators and quality target companies to really shine through. And so we are, you know, we’re, obviously, we believe this is a healthy and natural continuation of what always happens in public markets, right. And it’s true if you look throughout time and memorial here, you know, if you look at how public markets function, they do always bring discipline and they’re fairly Darwinian approach. And so, as I said, people will be unable to close business combinations because they can’t raise pipes, they will have to reprice dramatically and, or they’ll find they can’t raise another one. And so, I think, you know, the reality is you’re going to get whether it’s one third, two thirds of the market pushed out, I think this will be, you know, this this’ll be back down to a hundred SPAC or fewer I expected what happens in the next, you know, year or so.
Julian Klymochko: And from what I’m hearing for each business combination announced there’s 10 that go unannounced because they’re either unable to, you know solidify the pipe. It’s largely just the financing and aftermarket support there. So certainly, the dynamic has changed from January and February, where basically anyone could IPO. Now it appears that the market has become much more discerning. So, you’re assuming on point with that. Prior to letting you go today was wondering where can investors find out more about dMY Technology and what you guys are up to?
Niccolo de Masi: Well, our website obviously stays up to date, so www.dMYtechnology.com, You can also follow me on Twitter @NiccoloDeMasi or on LinkedIn, just look for my name. And so, you know, we keep a pretty current on what our portfolio companies are doing. All major SEC announcements of course, are on our website. And, you know, ultimately, we are cautiously following SEC rules, obviously on use of social media. And so, we tend to make sure that we’re only re-tweeting things that have already been announced in a formal 8K, you know, et cetera across all of our businesses, but it’s an exciting ecosystem here. You know, Rush Street is doing well, Genius is doing well, IonQ is pathbreaking here and has yet to close, but as well on its way. And you should watch the space. I mean, obviously we continue to source transactions for DMY IV and other specs that we have coming to market. And we look forward to being back on the show and do course to talk about our next deal.
Julian Klymochko: So, you’re telling me you’re not taking the Elon Musk approach to Twitter.
Niccolo de Masi: Yeah, not that one, not Chamath Palihapitiya one either. I mean, there are, I mean, there’s a number of people that have felt the fly a little closer to the sun, but I think when you get the chair of the SEC writing you letters back personally, as open letters back to you, it’s probably not a good sign for you, right. So, you know, I think you want to be always conservative in public markets. It’s like I said, it’s all about in our view that the long-term here about who’s going to win long-term, build the biggest and most reliable and most trusted franchise long-term. That’s what public markets really, you know, respect.
Julian Klymochko: Well, that’s a great place to wrap it up, looking forward to seeing what you guys bring to market with dMY Technology Group IV. We’ll have to have you on the show again, after that one is publicly announced, wishing you the best of luck in the market out there. And yeah. Can’t wait to chat soon and good luck with the fifth one.
Niccolo de Masi: Thank you. Looking forward to it.
Julian Klymochko: All right. Bye everybody.
Niccolo de Masi: Bye.
Thanks for tuning in to the Absolute Return Podcast. This episode was brought to you by Accelerate Financial Technologies. Accelerate, because performance matters. Find out more at www.AccelerateShares.com. The views expressed in this podcast to the personal views of the participants and do not reflect the views of Accelerate. No aspect of this podcast constitutes investment legal or tax advice. Opinions expressed in this podcast should not be viewed as a recommendation or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any securities or investment strategies. The information and opinions in this podcast are based on current market conditions and may fluctuate and change in the future. No representation or warranty expressed or implied is made on behalf of Accelerate as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this podcast. Accelerate does not accept any liability for any direct indirect or consequential loss or damage suffered by any person as a result relying on all or any part of this podcast and any liability is expressly disclaimed.
