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About the Author
Jeff Stewart offers a rare vantage point on IPOs. He’s a serial founder who built Inc. 500 companies, an investor who’s backed ambitious entrepreneurs, and a FinTech CEO who successfully scaled across borders. After seeing the corrosive impact of companies staying private for too long, Jeff became somewhat obsessed with understanding the opportunity of multi-jurisdictional public offerings.
By 2018 he co-founded the Global Public Offering Fund, a growth stage venture capital firm, focusing on founder-lead, disruptive business that can benefit from accelerated international expansion and public market access.
Jeff made his first public market investment and started his first company before high school. He cut his teeth at Earnst & Young consulting for the Nasdaq regulatory group, the predecessor to FINRA, an experience that later proved invaluable as a Fin-tech founder, who worked with regulators across two dozen countries.
As an adjunct professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Jeff has lectured on the impact of technology on global capital markets and international policy affairs.
Having been on both sides of the table, raising capital as a founder and deploying it as an investor, Jeff understands what it takes to build great companies and back them at the right time. He believes passionately in the power of startups to drive innovation and create wealth, not just for founders but for investors who recognize their potential early.
Why This Story
Matters
We are on the cusp of a major change in how venture backed companies go public.
Technologies such as AI, distributed ledger, mobile computing and cross-border telecommunications are combining with global demographic and geopolitical trends to restructure the public markets, ultimately leading to a new era of IPOs. We call it “The Global IPO”.
Entrepreneurs who recognize and adapt to these changes will build businesses with greater durability, impact, and long-term value. Investors who can identify these opportunities early, before the market fully appreciates them, stand to benefit as these companies compound in value.
Technologies such as AI, distributed ledger, mobile computing and cross-border telecommunications are combining with global demographic and geopolitical trends to restructure the public markets, ultimately leading to a new era of IPOs.
From Founders to Funders
We didn’t set out to be VCs. We were founders first, hands dirty, sleeves rolled up. We built several venture-backed companies. We made angel bets. We lived in the adrenaline of scaling at speed.
Then we saw the pattern: staying private too long was killing value.
At the same time, we were building across borders. We saw up close, the global surge of demand for high-quality investments. Hundreds of millions joining the middle class. Wealth becoming distributed. International Institutions hungry for access, not as venture insiders, but as public market investors.
The world’s capital markets were being rewired. The IPO wasn’t dead, it was going global.
So in 2018 we launched the Global Public Offering Fund. Not just to “invest,” but to fix a problem. To back the most ambitious founders. Leaders who wanted to take their companies public earlier in their lifecycle. Just like Oracle, Salesforce, and AOL did, long before “unicorn” became a buzzword.
Our mission: help companies use the credibility, visibility, and financial flexibility of being public to build generation-defining businesses.
