Hi Jerry – thanks for your thoughtful post and for joining Crowdwise!
I was talking to Kendrick (CEO of Republic) yesterday and he mentioned that they’ve been seeing 2x to 8x growth year over year. Now, obviously that can’t continue forever, but if they do in fact add 200+ companies next year to the public platform (and see similar growth rates on their private platform), that could impact the potential 5-year returns in a much more positive way than I’d been assuming (which was a 35% YoY growth rate).
Honestly, and this is purely speculative – while the current future value of the Note may seem somewhat underwhelming, I think that both Kendrick and the entire Republic team are so dedicated to making this succeed that they’ll do whatever it takes to make the Note succeed (i.e. adding future business lines to contribute to the profits of Republic Core, continuing to grow and expand offerings, etc.).
So if anything, I reserved some Notes because I believe that the team is truly committed to making it succeed; having it end up a flop would obviously be bad for Republic and the industry. Also, yes – the apparent demand was much higher than even they anticipated, so who knows, the value may initially spike if/when they are tradable, but I expect there could be a lull as well in 1-2 years when it’s after the hype dies down but before profits start being distributed.
Anyway, I’m in it for the super-long run (10+ years), and I’m overall excited to see how this experiment turns out!