Slack (NYSE:WORK) completed a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange this week.
A direct listing is not a capital raising effort, it is a move by a company to provide liquidity for existing shareholders while remaining compliant under the law. Slack kicked off trading at $38.5 a share – far and above its reference price of $26. Shares in Slack boomed ending its first day with a valuation of almost $20 billion.
Early investors in the company, understandably, rejoiced.
One investor, FundersClub, was amongst the investors that celebrated the successful listing.
FundersClub became a shareholder due to an acquisition by Slack of one of their portfolio companies “many years ago.” FundersClub is an online investment platform catering to accredited investors. FundersClub provides access for retail individuals (accredited) into promising early-stage firms they would not otherwise be able to access as these types of investments are usually the realm of VCs, family offices and UHNW individuals. With Slack, they hit this one out of the park, it seems.
In an email, FundersClub had this to say:
“Many years ago, Slack acquired a FundersClub-backed startup called ScreenHero. We’ve been proud early Slack shareholders ever since, and witnessed first-hand as Slack began powering communication and collaboration at our other portfolio startups, and to companies small and large worldwide. Congrats to Slack on going public today, and on executing a successful direct listing on the NYSE! We hope to see many more companies reaching public company scale and going public from the FundersClub portfolio in the years to come!”
While we are not privy to the total return on the Slack shares for FundersClub, we are pretty confident it was solid. This one investment may drive the overall portfolio returns of FundersClub significantly higher – just like a VC hopes to achieve. If your curious, FundersClub posts portfolio returns, by vintage, here.
