Webull & Monark Markets Open the Door to Pre-IPO Investing

The biggest growth often happens when a company is still private, but that world has always been closed to everyday investors.

Weeble is changing that, and through a new partnership with Monarch Markets, qualified investors can now buy into private companies right from the app before they even go public.

So, here to explain how this works and what the risks are is Anthony Denier, uh, CEO of Weeble, and Ben Haber, co-founder and CEO of Monarch Markets.

Guys, welcome to you both.

So happy to have you guys.

Here on the floor today.

Yeah, awesome to be here.

All right, so let's start, get, let's get started from the very beginning.

The partnership between Weeble and Monarch.

How did that come together and why is it now the most important moment to open up this pre-IPO access on the platform?

Uh, I mean, we've been, we've been working together for a long time.

This is not something that just happened overnight.

We've been working for years now to get this to market, so we're very, very excited because, I mean, IPOs, retail has always been the last one. and getting into IPOs.

Probably we've seen in the last 3 months, we've seen a lot of companies, issuers allocating large portions of their IPOs like we saw in SpaceX, right, to retail.

That is new.

But what retail is still getting pushed out of and not getting access to is pre-IPO or private companies.

So, very excited for this product.

So, help us understand the bigger shift.

What change in the market that makes getting into companies before they actually go public so important for everyday investors right now?

I can touch on that.

Yeah, so, we've been seeing this trend for a while now.

Companies are staying private for a lot longer.

I think the average lifespan now of a private company is about 13 years.

1020 years ago, it was, it was closer to 4 or 5 years.

Um, so, so that extra 8 years of private life for a company is where a lot of value is created.

Um, and I think another stat worth noting, 87% of companies today in the US doing over $100 million in revenue are private companies.

And so if you think about the broader context of investing, that means if you want to really be investing in growth and generating alpha as an investor.

You need to be allocating it to private companies as well as public markets.

All right, so let's talk about access, uh, for investors specifically.

Let's get to the practical aspect of it.

If I'm a Weibo user, walk me through what is IPO investing actually look like and what should I expect.

So pre-IPO investing, uh, you must be an accredited investor, uh, which is a, uh, self, uh, attestation, an indication process, and then once the deal closes, we'll allocate shares based on the indications of interest across the different, uh, different clients of Weber.

Just to, just to add on that as well, um, I think one of the unique innovations that Weeble is really bringing to market is that pre-IPO access and leveraging monarchs APIs is available inside the Weeble app.

And so that's a real differentiator from other ways that investors have been able to access private markets in the past.

Now, you can go on your Weeble brokerage app that you use today to invest in public markets, options trading, fixed income, and Access private markets in that same user experience.

And so it makes it a lot easier for investors who are looking for that access but may not know where to go to find it, to just get that from the brokerage app that they already use today.

All right, so let's talk money cause everyone wants to know what they get for their money and what happens to the money when they actually put it to use.

So, when someone is actually using the app, what could they actually learn about each private company uh inside the app?

Yeah, so we provide uh extensive research reports that are available directly in the Weeble app, uh, that, that really give a good sense of what it is that you're investing in.

And so that's research on private companies.

There's a live price feed that provides, uh, uh, real-time pricing updates for these private companies, which is a new innovation that I think is really worth noting historically.

Access to real pricing data for private companies has not been available, uh, especially to everyday investors.

Now that that tape, that chart will be directly in your Weevil app to be able to view the price of the companies that you're buying.

And then, um, on top of that, there's a news feed that gives you real-time updates as to what these private companies are doing.

So it feels a lot like investing in a public security, but.

Uh, obviously these are private securities, private companies that people can now access.

Yeah, I mean, and just, just opening up and shedding light on the process.

Private companies traditionally have been something that's always been in the dark, and there hasn't been a lot of clarity on what I own, how do I own it, where does it sit, and working with Monarch, that was one of our core propositions to our clients to make sure it was transparent and the process was transparent.

So I want to talk a little bit more about the real advantage of doing this through Weibo versus somewhere else.

Well, first, we are a regulated broker dealer.

Um, we protect our clients, um, assets, and we are responsible for making sure that those assets are safely held.

Uh, if you're accessing private markets through a random website, there's really no, um, There's really no proof that it is legitimate, and there have been a lot of schemes and frauds.

So putting this process behind a regulated broker dealer, opens it up, sheds a lot more light on the process, and gives a whole lot more comfort to investors.

So, I wanna talk about the bigger picture on a personal level.

What corners of the pre-IPO market are you guys most excited to finally put in front of investors?

So there's a lot of interest in AI.

OpenAI and Anthropic are still private companies, maybe IPOing this year, but today is still private.

And behind them there's a whole string of AI companies that investors are really excited about.

Personally, I'm also excited about robotics.

I think the robotics wave is starting to really become.

Um, show, show real, real-life applications, um, whereas historically, maybe it hadn't been as, as usable for everyday people.

And so for me, AI and robotics are, are two categories that I'm excited about.

I think investors are really excited about.

Yeah, the, the pre-IPO market is the future of the market.

All right, so I, I wanna take a step back.

Let's look at the big picture.

This week specifically has been a big one for you guys.

So where is all of this heading and what's the long-term vision?

So, I think, I think a few things are important to note.

One, the ability for everyday investors to just understand private markets and get access to their brokerage account, through the platforms that they use every day.

That's an incredibly important step forward for private markets in general, and that's something that Weeble is really pioneering and championing for the market more broadly.

I think, second, The ability to invest in a private company is, in my view, something that really ties everyday people to the growth of our economy, right?

There's a tremendous amount of opportunity in America right now.

There's a tremendous amount of growth, and there's a lot of people that feel like they're not able to participate in that because they've been locked out of it for so long.

This changes that dynamic.

This gives people agency to be able to invest in the things that they care about and that they believe in, and that is not only important for investors, but important for people every day.

Yeah, I mean, from, from Weil's perspective, our core has always been in providing access.

Uh, we've been lucky enough to offer IPOs to our clients since 2019.

This is the next evolution of that, giving more availability, more diversification in their portfolio, and more ability to take, take that American dream.

The last question is for an investor that's watching this, that is either interested in what this is and what you guys are doing, what advice would you give to them today?

I'd say if you don't have a Weil brokerage account open, you should go open a Weeble brokerage.

Nice.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Um, make sure you do your research, right?

Understand what you're buying, understand the company, understand what they're doing, and think about the future implications of how this company is going to interact with the global economy of the world.

Awesome.

Well, gentlemen, thank you guys so much for joining us and very excited to see where this goes in the next couple of years.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you so much.