NEW STARTUPS

😋 Reem’s California

Arab street food, free coffee for like if you invest $1,500+ (LINK)

🫂 Loosid

Community & dating app for the growing sober population (LINK)

🐕 KetoNatural

Ozempic for doggies, we wrote about them last week! (LINK)

SIX FIGURES ACQUIRED

Last week I was in striking distance of a goal of mine.

I wanted to own 100,000 shares of StartEngine.

I entered the week with 84,725 shares, and on Friday I executed a buy that brought my tally up 100,000 flat.

It took me 10 separate transactions and a cost basis of $19,952 to get there. For me, it’s a really big bet - my average investment across my portfolio of 47 startups is just $1,631.

My belief is that StartEngine will be a $5B business in a couple of years, in which case my equity stake would grow to ~$500,000. Some of my investor friends are more bullish and expect a $10B valuation.

And to be honest, their case on a $10B valuation has some merit. StartEngine is in a neighborhood where the winners net many billions worth in value:

• Robinhood (stocks): $101B valuation

• Coinbase (crypto): $81B valuation

• StartEngine (startups): ?????

The fintech that emerges as the leader among retail investors tends to be rewarded with an 11-12 figure valuation.

And thanks to the introduction of StartEngine Private, StartEngine’s revenue growth is indicating that they may become that leader.

This has been punctuated by back back-to-back quarters of profitability - the millions in profit that they’re bringing in can be funneled back into growth to really get this thing rocking.

One of the crazy things about StartEngine Private, is that the above chart only includes the instant revenue that StartEngine receives off the margin (what they sell it for vs what they bought it for).

StartEngine also maintains 20% carried interest in its Private deals, which essentially means 20% of any profits that are made on the deals. StartEngine has sold over $89M in high quality startups like Open AI, SpaceX, Perplexity.

Late stage venture typically targets a 3-5x return, which means that the $89M in equity they sold through private (so far) could be worth $445M in a few years.

StartEngine’s carried interest of that would be roughly $71M, which would be entirely profit. And as StartEngine Private ramps up, that figure will only continue to get larger.

This business has a lot of flywheels and a ton of momentum - and I for one am hoping that they can pull it off.

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