Unless the United States Congress has something to say. The securities law stipulates that Hilbert can only provide services to adults with full capacity. The difference between institutional investors and individuals with millions of dollars is clearly defined here. The law in the House of Lords warned that the threshold would be raised to $2.3 million. Angels in angels in america Investment Association estimates that this will disqualify two-thirds of qualified persons, and will result in the loss of more than half of the trading network of 65,438+03,000 members in the secondary market. There are other potential victims, that is, thousands of startups supported by angel funds.
Angels have long lined up for Hilbert. In February this year, SecondMarket received $7.5 million in cash from Temasek, a Singaporean fund, and $7.5 million from Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Hong Kong.
After graduation, Hilbert spent six tense years in the reorganized team of international investment bank Hualian, flying back and forth around the world, cleaning up bankrupt companies including Enron and selling illiquid assets such as patents, real estate and limited shares. The price is good. Hilbert can sell $400,000 a year at the peak, but the transaction is not concentrated and the process is extremely slow. For example, it usually takes two months and dozens of phone calls to sell restricted shares of a newly bankrupt company. Hilbert thinks that in some more transparent places, such as electronic trading platforms such as ebay, transactions will be much faster. "People say I can't go against Wall Street and change the 50-year practice." He said, "This made me more determined to do it."
SecondMarket is a hybrid system. Sellers post their products on bulletin boards, and a program can quickly search members' records and score buyers according to the type and scale of transactions conducted or interested by members. Salespeople in the second market will call the person with the highest score. There is often a big difference between the bid price and the quotation, which makes it impossible to make a deal online. At this time, Hilbert's 35 negotiators came into the arena. Once the buyer and seller reach an agreement, SecondMarket will immediately finalize the legal, settlement and payment matters, and charge 2% to 4% of the transaction price.
Hilbert's greatest advantage is neutrality. Investment banks like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley may hold their own brokers and pay them to dispose of their assets; Banks may also have other business relationships with sellers or buyers. Hilbert is a pure middleman. Unlike sellers of traditional stock trading, sellers of SecondMarket have the right to restrict who can buy their shares. With Hilbert's electronic platform, members can get the original documents without paying an annual fee.
When he started this business in 2004, Hilbert dug a business card storage box and raised $400,000. He and four employees rented a 250-square-foot office on the west side of Manhattan. Their equipment is: two telephones, a Dell desktop and an Internet router. That year, the company pulled $6.5438+0 million in restricted stock business; In 2007, the stock market overheated and the income soared to $5.5 million.
Venture capital firms started calling. FirstMark Capital bought a 25% stake for $3.8 million. Hilbert has paid $654.38 million to set up an online platform for trading restricted shares. With the newly raised funds, he hired eight R&D employees to build a flexible Google-based system, on which they can build a series of portals for trading new assets.
In February 2008, Hilbert got an excellent opportunity. Prior to this, investors judged that the liquidity of long-term bonds was like cash. In order to prevent investors from clearing and selling these bonds, the auction rate securities were closed. After two sleepless weeks, Hilbert cleared the technical and management obstacles and opened the online market of auction interest rates. The business volume soared, and the income soared to $2 million that year.
In 2009, Hilbert created an electronic trading platform for the limited partnership interests of hedge funds and private equity; Followed by mortgage-backed securities, debt-backed bonds and auto loans. In April last year, SecondMarket began to take shares in privately held companies, most of which are young technology companies. Recently, 250,000 Facebook shares were sold at a price of $59 per share; The highest bid is $50. The holder of Eharmony shares sold 654.38 million shares at the price of 13 USD per share, and the highest bid was 1 1 USD. These shares are sold by anonymous investors and insiders. In order to grow faster, Hilbert's goal now is to persuade the company to offer two auctions to qualified bidders every year-this financing method is cheaper than the initial public offering.
Annison, one of the founders of Mobitv, who implanted live TV into mobile phones, converted the company's stock into $350,000 in cash through the SecondMarket platform before he started developing his iphone application. The newspaper says I am a millionaire, but I'm still tired of paying off my student loans. Anison said, "In the SecondMarket, a large number of such people have accumulated to find opportunities among buyers."
Hilbert's capable Asian partners have great connections. Introducing him to bankers and government officials is very important for winning customers and opening up new markets. Shares in private companies are just the beginning. Now Hilbert is looking at container ships and palm oil plantations in Asia. He predicted that 25% of the revenue will come from Asia in two years, and other target markets are Israel, Brazil and Britain.
"All these are changing the structure of the world market," Hilbert said. "One day, when people say,' I won't expect my broker to give me the best price,' they will find us and they will find 25,000 buyers to buy their assets."