I really like the SPACs Aren’t Cheaper Than IPOs Yet by Matt Levine. 

With an IPO, you typically pay investment banks a fee of 1-7% of the amount of money raised.

The SPAC, on the other hand, pays investment banks a fee of 5.5% of the money raised and in turn, gives its sponsor—the famous investor or operator who runs the SPAC and who finds a target company to take public—20% of its stock virtually for free, which is then passed on to that target company.

SPAC is the hottest thing in Silicon Valley for 2020!  Here is just a shortlist of SPACs founded by some well-known technology veterans this year:

• Reinvent Technology Partners by Reid Hoffman (founder of Linkedin), Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga), and Michael Thompson
• Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. II by Chamath Palihapitiya (early Facebook executive) and Ian Osborne
• one by Kevin Hartz (founder of Eventbrite and Xoom), Eugene “Spike” Lipkin, and Troy B. Steckenrider III
• FTAC Olympus Acquisition Corp by Betsy Cohen (founder of Bancorp) and Ryan Gilbert
• Tailwind Acquisition Corp by Philip Krim (founder of Casper), Chris Hollod, and Matt Eby

This week a total of 31 startups raised $646.3M in funding, 3 M&As:

• $167.4M goes to 14 Enterprise startups
• $59.5M goes to 3 FinTech startups
• $125M goes to 1 HR startup
• $15M goes to 1 Video startup
• $38.5M goes to 2 Energy startups
• $1.4M goes to 1 Education startup
• $7.5M goes to 1 Gaming startup
• $165M goes to 3 Healthcare startups
• $15M goes to 1 Robotics startup
• $20M goes to 1 AgTech startup
• $4M goes to 1 Construction startup
• $10M goes to 1 Veterinary startup
• $18M goes to 1 Other startup