Rebecca Kacaba

CEO and Co-founder @Dealmakertech, Democratizer of the captial markets, Financial Times Most Innovative, Inc Most Innovative Companies.

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

I was just on @MTSlive, the new @a16z backed and hosted live streaming tech show, built around @eriktorenberg's bet that the "main characters of the moment" show up there first.

From the movement to buy @SpiritAirlines, to @SpaceX offering 30% allocation to retail in its upcoming IPO, to @RobinhoodApp's publicly-traded venture fund investing in private companies, the world is tilting towards retail.

I'm saying this trend is going to continue to accelerate, but I'm not the only one. @profgalloway predicted on his podcast that someone would pull off a Spirit Airlines style deal with retail investors in the next 12 to 36 months. @vladtenev was interviewed recently by Stripe's co-founder and said the end goal of what they're building is capital formation for businesses at the earliest stages.

We've been working for years to tear down the walls that separate retail investors from investing in private companies. There's much more to unlock with the market's momentum behind us.

Thanks to @JackFarley96 and @maxwiethe for the conversation. 🫡

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

An idea that's stuck with me from the All In Liquidity Summit: LLMs are coming for real-world data.

Major unlock for the companies that capitalize on this next wave.

@theallinpod

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Heard this from @altcap on a panel at the All In Liquidity Summit.

He named the timing problem directly. The next step is giving retail a way in earlier.

@theallinpod

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Chamath picked Revolut as the company he’s not in that he wishes he was.

@chamath, revolut was OG retail-backed! European retail got in a decade ago. Today: $75B valuation.

Which company should be raising from their retail consumers today? Let’s bring them to every American.

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

I’m at the All In Liquidity Summit. The panel on retail access to private markets felt like an inflection point.

@altcap: "It is destabilizing when you are creating trillions of dollars in private value and 80% of America thinks it's a scam where they are left out and left behind."

Great panel @Jason, @chamath, @altcap, and Kelly Rodriguez @theallinpod

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

I’m at the All In Liquidity Summit. The panel on retail access to private markets felt like an inflection point.

@altcap: "It is destabilizing when you are creating trillions of dollars in private value and 80% of America thinks it's a scam where they are left out and left behind."

Great panel @Jason, @chamath, @altcap, and Kelly Rodriguez @theallinpod

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Green Coffee Company, the exclusive US and Canada partner for Juan Valdez retail coffee and the largest and only vertically integrated producer of Colombian coffee, just announced a $5m retail capital raise.

After the raise closed, they sent every new shareholder a thank-you discount code. The shareholders used it. Thousands of orders followed.

That is the flywheel I keep talking about. When a customer becomes a shareholder, they buy more, refer more, and show up.

Retail capital is leverage.

Congrats to Cole Shephard and the GCC team.

https://t.co/sfkLMz4FYS

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Two weeks ago, I spent time in Medellín where we now have a team of 30+ building @Dealmakertech.

A few things I keep coming back to:

• In-person beats async. Decisions we made face to face in days would have taken weeks over Slack. Relationships aren't separate from innovation, they're part of it.

• The best work happens at the intersection. We ran a hackathon with engineers and marketers in the same room. The output was things neither team could have built alone, and ideas neither could have arrived at separately.

• Building in Colombia is one of the best decisions we've made. The talent depth and commitment to what we’re building at DealMaker to empower founders to raise from their community is real.

This is what blue ocean building looks like: sitting next to the people doing the work, in the city where they're doing it. Medellín is an important and growing hub for DealMaker. 🇨🇴

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Since last week, 371,000 people have pledged $337M to buy Spirit Airlines back.

There are two paths. Pacaso ran the for-profit version with Reg A+ on our platform. The Green Bay Packers ran the non-profit version. Both work. We've done it.

To the Let's Buy Spirit team: we are here to help.

https://t.co/hNPXHHmrwA

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

The movement to buy Spirit Airlines has my attention.

I don't know how this plays out. But customers wanting to own a piece of the businesses they care about, that's the story @Dealmakertech has been built around for years.

To the campaign team: if you want to talk about what's structurally possible, we're here.

Would you want to own a piece of a company that you cared about?

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

A few years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

SpaceX is allocating 30% of its upcoming IPO to retail investors, and it's a signal the entire market should be paying attention to.

I got into it with @RemyBlaireNews on https://t.co/0Vv3I3bowt's Market Movers before the NYSE opening bell yesterday morning. The short version: capital raising is shifting, and the companies leading the next wave of IPOs, OpenAI included, are going to follow @elonmusk's lead.

Retail is no longer an afterthought. It's becoming the strategy.

Thanks to Remy, @VinceMolinari, and the https://t.co/0Vv3I3bowt team for having me on. Looking forward to discussing this shift towards retail continues to gain momentum.

@FINTECHTVglobal

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

@chamath, as an avid All-In listener I refuse to believe you'd dump on retail.

But real question: when does a pro actually go "risk off"? I'd argue the turbulent moments are exactly where alpha gets made, not avoided.

Look forward to getting into it IRL at Liquidity Summit.

[Ted Zhang @TedHZhang]

.@Chamath is literally telling us likely what most VCs are thinking right now:

SpaceX IPO and a potential Anthropic or OpenAI IPO is for early insiders to take chips off the table and dump on retail.

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

“How do you think this will change the way founders build companies?”

Great question I got earlier today on @etnshow about the impact of adding a company’s strongest advocates to its cap table.

The example I always come back to for the wider ripple effects of online capital raising: stock option plans weren't typical in the 1950s and 60s. Then one day someone said, "If we give employees a stake, they'll be more invested, more aligned with shareholders, and better companies will get built." That turned out to be true, and now every company has a stock option plan.

It's the same thing with bringing consumers into your brand.

If they're invested in the business and in the journey, they're in it for the long haul. The companies already doing this are seeing real outcomes.

@lukeknight and @Ronanchamberss, forgot to ask: how do I get one of those etn hats I've been seeing? Can we negotiate a trade for some @Dealmakertech merch?

Glad I got you to ring the bell twice. Next time I'm on, aiming for three.

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Honored to present @Dealmakertech at TechTO's Best Of event this week. Eight years ago, I was in that audience as a founder with a pre-seed idea and a lot of hope.

Since I was a kid, I've been picking up the phone, making sales calls, and hearing "no." My view around the skill that makes a successful entrepreneur always comes back to being able to make cold sales. Every no has made me more resilient.

Thank you to the TechTO team for the invite, and to every founder who presented and showed up in that room.

And a special thanks to the young entrepreneur who 3D-printed awards for all of the speakers. 🏆

@TechTO

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Link to full podcast episode:

https://t.co/Jv4hNIKFkQ

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Why did I leave a thriving securities law practice to start @Dealmakertech? Because some ideas won't let you go.

I just sat down with Heather Barnhouse on her @Dentons podcast to talk about that leap, and everything that came after. We covered learning from paying customers, building resilience when things get hard, and shipping an MVP that actually mattered.

One thing that stuck with me from our conversation: the best founders aren't the ones with the perfect idea. They're the ones who can't stop thinking about the problem. That obsession is what carries you through.

Finding a co-founder (Mat Goldstein) who shared that same fire made the decision even easier.

If you're a founder weighing your capital strategy or curious what it takes to build something from the ground up, have a listen.

@DentonsCanada

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

OpenAI plans on opening their blockbuster IPO to retail. This trend is becoming the new normal.

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

This is a historic moment for retail investors: SpaceX is allocating 30% of its IPO to retail. The typical allocation is 5-10%.

@elonmusk, the most successful entrepreneur on earth, just looked at his cap table and made a choice to allow retail a greater stake in his company. This isn't a gesture. It's a signal.

We've been building toward this moment for years.

DealMaker has processed over $2B in online capital raises. We've seen companies use retail offerings to tap into their most loyal communities. The infrastructure exists. The regulatory framework exists. And now the biggest IPO in history is validating what we've always known.

Here's what happens next: other companies nearing IPO take notice. Then earlier-stage companies start asking why they don't open their cap tables to the people who actually use and believe in their product.

This is a major shift. And it's not going to slow down.

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Every day I get to read why people invest through DealMaker, and honestly, it never gets old.

"I bought my first bag 2 years ago and I've been using it EVERY single time I travel. So when the opportunity was presented to not just be a customer but a partner, it was a no brainer for me."

That's not an institutional check. That's conviction. Someone who loved a product so much they decided to own a piece of it.

This is what happens when you remove the gatekeepers. When customers become investors. When belief becomes ownership.

This is retail capital formation. And it's why we built DealMaker.

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

I’ve been invited to the All-In Liquidity Summit in May to chat with some of the sharpest LPs, fund managers, and founders in the industry.

This unique event brings together a small, curated room in Napa Valley where real conversations happen.

Message me if you’re heading to the Summit!

[Rebecca Kacaba @RKacaba]

Robinhood launched a publicly traded venture fund that lets retail investors access private companies. Portfolio includes Databricks, Revolut, Ramp, Stripe, ElevenLabs, and more.

Vlad and I have discussed this and it’s clear we've been circling the same thesis for a while. He went on Bloomberg recently and explained the motivation behind this new initiative plainly: this is about getting retail access to private companies. Not after the IPO. Not after the wealth creation has already been captured. Now.

This is a massive signal because of what it confirms: the wall between public and private markets is coming down. And it's not regulators forcing it. It's demand.

Retail investors want in earlier. They want access to the companies reshaping industries before the markup, before the wealth creation is already captured by a handful of institutional players.

The industry's response used to be: "retail doesn't belong in private markets."

Now one of the largest retail brokerages in the world has built the exact infrastructure to prove otherwise — and stacked it with some of the most recognized private companies.

For anyone still skeptical that retail capital is reshaping private markets: the biggest platforms in the world are now betting their roadmaps on it.

That's not a trend. That's a structural shift.