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On June 22, 2021 Forge announced that $150 Million was raised in total while a huge $50 Million amount was from investors Financial Technology Partners, Operative Capital, and Panorama Point Partners. Temsaek Holdings was another co-led investor that has 340 investments within Forge. The other investors are Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, Deutsche Borse, and LUN Partners Group who are just from the latest funding cycle. The reason for the huge amounts invested from different co-lead companies is because Forge focuses on buying and selling private company shares to credited investors. Which works in this company’s benefit because private shareholdings percentages are in the top tier of luxury millions invested into each and every big city in the world.
What is the company Forge though? Forge (formerly Equidate) is a marketplace for private equity, giving private and institutional investors access to top pre-IPO companies. Co-founders Samvit Ramadurgam and Sohail Prasad had met in 2012 from a former Summer-based business meeting, from there was founded in 2014. While this Forge has been around since 2014, they are still in Seed Funding rounds which means the company hasn’t grown out of the start-up company spot until 2020. Which allows Forge to still be considered a “start-up venture capital.â€
Forge does have competitors and this pretty incredible list of companies are: iCaptial Network, SIMON, Bloxs, and Beehive Asia. Since both co-founders are finding ways to make private shareholding easier for people such as parents, neighbors, and generally people outside of the WallStreet tenure, this has competitors keeping a close eye on Forge and their new tactics. However, Forge founders claim that they are not a competitive company, rather a company trying to change and bring along their competitors for a fairer even ground when it comes to private shareholding.
While Forge has not merged with another company, there is a company both co-founders have their eyes on either as a new company altogether or as an extension of Forge. D/XYZ currently has no definitive definition but this is what both vc firm co-founders have planned to unveil around the new year.
With locations in New York, San Carlos, Sioux Falls, Hong Kong, and the original home base San Francisco, California we can see Forge expanding even more globally in 2021 than the previous years before.
The growth potential is extraordinary to say the least, because Forge has announcements about this latest seed funding round, where a total of $238 Million has been raised since the conception of the company. Currently Forge has been hiring more employees where their employee count rests from now at 120 – 150 people. With a 44.1 k in consistent global web traffic since 2020. What brings the web traffic to a higher count is Forge’s social media presence, with a current 70% interaction rate from other social users which shows how the company continues to grow based on audience.
Website: https://forgeglobal.com/
Samvit Ramadurgam Twitter: https://twitter.com/rsamvit
Sohail Prasad Twitter: https://twitter.com/sohailprasad