Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge Global, joined Cheddar News to discuss the company's public debut on the NYSE, and the company's mission of providing users access to private market trading.

Closing Bell

Forge Global Goes Public, Giving Investors Access to Private Market

forge global going public. Todavia spec now forge global. It emerges as the first publicly traded private securities marketplace and comes as volatility in the public market is causing more investors to turn to the private side joining us now as ceo of ford global kelly, Rodriguez and kelly. What is forged global and what does it do forged? Global. Story is about the private markets and the private markets escalating and accelerating. We provide a marketplace a data service for pricing custody and later this year lending all around support of the private markets. So the private market has historically lacked liquidity access and transparency. So how can investors huge forge to gain this access? Well that's what we're investing in. The forge platform Has been in development for over 10 years. The data product that we launched last September is the most comprehensive data set we know in the private markets for price, discovery and access is about the global partnerships we've built all around the world, so we're really solving those problems to give a greater Group of access to a really exciting asset class. Now, some 23 SPAC mergers have been canceled since 2021. So why did you feel that the public way was this back way? Well we didn't think that necessarily stacks were the way but we thought that the markets were changing direct listings I. P. O. Formats were changing. We had a great sponsor and motive and we had a unique structure that guaranteed us that even in a choppy market we could raise over $200 million Uh and so based on the performance of our 20, and 2020 in the last three years, we thought a really good company could still get out and we did. Now, I'm looking at the numbers right now and it looks like you guys are up 86.9%. Can you tell me what that feels like? Well, it feels good, but it's one day and we think this is a journey, not the destination. So you know, we're going to keep our heads down and execute. But I suspect that volatility will affect us and everybody else, but we think the story is strong and we're going to work really hard to take care of, you know, the shareholders and the clients and really excited for for what went down today though. Can you talk about the blurring of lines between the public and private markets? How is public market volatility affecting private markets? Well, you know, we've been watching that ourselves and the greatest examples of what happened in Q one of 2020 and then in december when the market turned and you saw seller sentiment far out paced buyer sentiment, what we could see, what we could see is about a 6 to 8 week lag in pricing. But even now, since december pricing is off by about 10% As opposed to the 3035 that you see in the public market. So there is some latency. But look, we're here to create more liquidity and faster price. Discovery. We suspect that's part of what you'll see in the future of the private markets. And the last question for you is the private market is home to some 1000 unicorns worth more than $3 trillion bucks at this point. So how can investors access some of this value? Well, that's part of what we're here for. I think if you're an accredited investor or an institution, then that's about forks. But part of the reason we went public was to provide public company investors with a proxy for those 1000 unicorns. So by buying forged stock, you're essentially participating in the proxy for the private markets. All right, kelly, Rodriguez Ceo of ford Global Congratulations again, Katie, Thank you for being on our show.