Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision in global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution for global growth for more than 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and seven clearing houses around the world. Now, here's your host, Josh King, head of communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Here at Intercontinental Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, we're privileged to work with thousands of talented colleagues across the US, Asia, and Europe. As you dig into this place, you never know what kind of backgrounds you'll find among the men and women who wear our badge. Today, we're going across the USA to San Francisco sitting with Jose Cobos, head of technology capital markets for the NYSE. That's right, Silicon Valley, the heart of tech, home of legendary performance like Apple, but also newer innovations, really in the infancy of their trajectories. Companies like Twitter, Square, and Snap, all listed here at the NYSE.
Josh King:
The capital markets team of which Jose plays at the leading role in the West Coast. Really helps to underpin our economy. Let me tell you why. His work every day is to help bring private companies to the public markets as the largest exchange in the world, the NYSE has been at it for more than 225 years. Not always in tech, but ask the CEOs of those tech startups who stood at our podium and rang our bell. They'll tell you, this market helped them raise capital so they could deliver their innovations to the world.
Josh King:
There's a domino effect here. More capital allows more companies to deliver more product, which also allows them to create more jobs. One data point we use here at the NYSE is that listed companies have created more than 40 million jobs worldwide. Jose's story is unique, it's special. And it's one of the reasons that our listed companies like working with them so much.
Josh King:
He served our country in some of the world's most dangerous hotspots. And when he left Uniform, got a different kind of training at General Mills. That's NYSE ticker symbol GIS, if you're looking on your smartphones. That training came on the manufacturing floor and he's now joined the NYSE to introduce a new generation of innovative entrepreneurs to the public markets. Our conversation with Jose right after this.
Speaker 1:
Inside the ICE House is presented this week by the Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure or the SFTI network. SFTI is the backbone of the ICE platform providing high security, high speed, direct market access and trade execution capabilities to over 150 global markets. SFTI connects data and analytics from more than 600 proprietary and third-party market sources. More on SFTI later in the show.
Josh King:
Here with me in the ICE House is Jose Cobos, head of technology markets at the NYSE. Jose is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and its basic underwater demolition school. And for those of you who don't know what that means, he was a Navy Seal. He's always felt the need to serve his country in a meaningful way. And after a career in the military and in business, he's joined the NYSE to help inspire entrepreneurs that harness technology to fuel innovation.
Josh King:
When those companies are ready to take the next step, there are a few paths, you know about. We're going to talk about one of them today, going public, the role Jose and his team play in guiding innovators from the private to the public sectors. Welcome to the ICE House.
Jose Cobos:
Good morning, Josh.
Josh King:
Big night last night at the stock exchange. What happened?
Jose Cobos:
What an incredible event. We had medal of honor recipients here at the New York Stock Exchange.
Josh King:
So this is the congressional medal of honor, circle of honor dinner. I think we've done it for how many years, again?
Jose Cobos:
16.
Josh King:
16 years. A special night for the mall as you work the room?
Jose Cobos:
Without a doubt. It's a special week for them, but this is the event that highlights what they've accomplished. There were a number of awards given. One was to Gary Sinise who has obviously helped the troops in many ways over the course of a long period of time. And just a memorable event given that it's amazing to meet one medal of honor recipient, but to have 31 in the same room to hear their stories, to feel the energy and the way that they've impacted, not only the military, but post or military service government, the civilian sector and understand not only what they were able to accomplish while they were in the military, but post is just an incredible event.
Jose Cobos:
They're very humble people. They feel like they're not necessarily heroes, but that they did what they needed to do. And that anybody in that situation would've done the same though we recognized that's not necessarily the case.
Josh King:
And we realize here at the New York Stock Exchange that our freedom to trade equities from 9:30 to 4:00 PM every day is protected has been protected for over 225 years by the 31 recipients who were in the room last night and the millions of people who've always worn the American uniform.
Jose Cobos:
Without them, we wouldn't be here. It's through their sacrifice that we have the ability to help companies to continue to invest in the future of tomorrow and to essentially bring people to the exchange in order to raise capital, reinvest in their businesses and then make this place a safer free democracy.
Josh King:
How did your path lead to the US Naval Academy?
Jose Cobos:
I grew up in the Bay Area. I wanted to experience different cultures, different lifestyles. My belief was that the military would enable me to do that. I also grew up in Spain. So having the ability to serve in the military felt like a great opportunity to give back to a country that I felt had done a lot for me. My mom is American. My dad is Spanish. The two met while she was in Spain.
Jose Cobos:
I grew up when Franco was a dictator in Spain and though I was young and don't really remember it, I recognized that had an impact in the culture and lifestyle that I had and coming to the United States, I feel blessed and fortunate to have had the opportunity to grow up here. I wanted to get back and I felt like the military would provide me the opportunity to do that. Then I was really fortunate. I went to the Naval academy where I learned a lot about leadership, what it meant to lead from the front and lead by example.
Josh King:
Were your parents concerned about sending you to Annapolis all across the country or they were global people to start with, and it was just 3,000 miles away?
Jose Cobos:
I think it was a little bit mixed. My mom was extremely proud at the fact that I had gone into the Naval Academy. She recognized that this was something that I was passionate and had worked extremely hard to get into. But at the same time, to your point, I was 3000 miles away and she knew at some point I could potential be put in harm's way. So I think it was mixed as she got more and more understanding and comfortable with the situations I was in. I think she always felt just a tremendous amount of pride in what I had done and what I was doing. But it's not often that you send your kid off and maybe not know where he might be going.
Josh King:
I'm sort of a little concerned about what's happening with Navy now. Two years losing to Army. Coach Niumatalolo. I mean, what's happening?
Jose Cobos:
I'm not sure why you went there, Josh. We were having a great interview until that point. I will say if I remember correctly, the Navy had won 11 years prior to that. So we expect to change things around pretty quickly.
Josh King:
Huge fan of the customized uniforms that come out every December for the game, especially when they did, I think the hand airbrushed helmets that showed every major ship of the fleet.
Jose Cobos:
It's an amazing event. If you ever have the opportunity to go to the Army-Navy game, you should. It is the one and only time where the Army and Navy who typically works together for a big mission that requires a lot of effort and collaboration in order to accomplish it, get on the battlefield and work it out, if you will. But it shows you the best of America, to be honest. You have young patriots working hard to accomplish the goal of winning the game. But also one of the most telling things is post the game, they each go to the other team's respective sides and sing the song that embodies the schools that they go to. And it's really an amazing event.
Josh King:
You come to through four years of Navy. You could take any path, surface, submariner, aviation, you decide to go to buds. Is that right? Why?
Jose Cobos:
What I liked about the seal teams was, one, you get to work with the best of the best. You know, these are very driven, very motivated, very humble people that want to be at the tip of the spear and accomplish the largest missions that the US has. And my view was I wanted to lead those individuals, be part of that team and help the US in any possible way I could.
Jose Cobos:
The great part about the seal teams is that you're given the resources, the technology and the assets that you need in order to accomplish the mission, but underneath it, you have the people that are there to actually do it. I felt really fortunate, I had the opportunity to work with a tremendous number of people that did a lot of great things. Many people don't know this, but in addition to wartime situations and scenarios, seals help out in humanitarian and disaster relief type situations.
Jose Cobos:
Two of the missions that I did, you wouldn't typically associate with Navy Seals. One of them was in Costa Rica where we saved a fisherman who had a burst appendix and was out at sea for a number of days. The Costa Rican government didn't have the resources to bring him back. So we flew out in a helicopter and fast roped on to the ship, brought him back, and I think frankly helped him. Essentially save his life.
Jose Cobos:
The other one was during the Hurricane Mitch disaster in Honduras where about 10,000 people perished, we were the first guys on the ground with helicopters, with satellite communications, with fast boats, to get people out of very dangerous situations whether it be rooftops or isolated areas where they hadn't eaten, they hadn't been drinking water. And those are kind of the things that we excel at. They're difficult situations where you have to innovate. You have to think creatively. You have to sort of improvise. Our guys were just extremely capable and able to do that. And the training that leads up to it enables them to effectively carry out that mission.
Josh King:
It's certainly about the character and the teamwork and the training of the teams. I want to focus a little bit on the technology because I've read so many accounts of both bud school and also specific missions like the rescue of Captain Phillips from the Maersk Alabama. But one thing you are not denied is the latest in technology. I wondered what are some of the things that you were exposed to after coming out of the academy, getting onto the teams, you said, "Wow." And you use it in service, and then you see its commercial applications, all this stuff that almost gets proved out in the military makes its way into the commercial use.
Jose Cobos:
No, you're exactly right. When I started out my career in the Seal Teams, we were one of the first to actually start to use satellite communications. And it was interesting to see that over the course of my career really evolve and improve. Just to give you an example, we would work with the engineers to figure out what they could be doing to help us essentially carry out the mission. These guys are extremely brilliant. They know technology really well, but they're not actually applying it in the field.
Jose Cobos:
I'll ever forget a meeting that I had where we were walking them through the type of situations and missions that we were doing. They were providing us with the tools and the technology needed to maybe carry those out. One of the questions I asked was on satellite imagery, could they do it in color? At that point in time, believe it or not, it was just black and white. And they were kind of curious as to why I was asking them if I could have it in color.
Jose Cobos:
And the fact of the matter is at that point in time, we were doing a lot of counter narcotics. The war on drug was a big mission for us. And with color, we could see different vegetation and coca fields or a bright green. And being able to fly over or have an understanding of where that field might be through satellite imagery was something that would help out tremendously.
Josh King:
Coca has a certain color signature?
Jose Cobos:
That's exactly right. Or in a lab that was processing the cocaine would actually send out some of the chemicals into the river. The river would actually change colors as a result. So having an opportunity to understand where those coca fields were, where the labs were located without necessarily having to put boots on the ground was extremely helpful. The other one was, "Could you provide satellite imagery at night?" And they were extremely curious why we would ever want to have that type of insight.
Jose Cobos:
90% plus of the missions we did were at night. So having an understanding of where the shadows were, where the lights were, where I could put my guys and not put guys was extremely helpful. It was only through the ability to have these type of conversations with the guys that were actually creating these technologies and then having an understanding of how they were actually practically being used that enabled us to accomplish the mission and just bring it forward.
Jose Cobos:
Then to your point, we've come a very long away. I mean, when I started my career, we would have probably 45 pounds worth of gear just to get a photo from the field to the command that was overseeing the mission remotely. You had the camera. You had the laptop. You had the radio. You had a crypto device in order to transmit it. And then you had the antenna itself. When you think about what you could do now with a phone and through your GPS, it has evolved so much. And that only makes them better, smarter, and more efficient in terms of their abilities and their skillset.
Josh King:
And certainly with unmanned aerial vehicles, drones over Abbottabad and Afghanistan, those Seal Teams are going in to make the assault on Osama bin Laden's compound, and they're in the situation room, the president, the vice president, secretary of defense and all of his National Security apparatus are basically watching the helicopters land, execute the mission live.
Jose Cobos:
It's amazing what they're able to do now. But I will say the thing that makes the teams and the Seals so special is the individual themselves. At the end of the day, it requires a tremendous amount of professionalism, a tremendous amount of training. You are spending the better part of two, two-and-a-half years before you go out the door, before you step foot in another country and carry out these missions.
Jose Cobos:
And the Navy spends significant dollars making sure that they have what they need in order to carry out the mission. But ultimately it's the drive internally within the individuals and the teamwork that is essentially imbued in them through a tremendous amount of training that enables them to carry out the missions.
Josh King:
So you go from basic underwater demolition school to Stanford Business School, right?
Jose Cobos:
I did. It was the most difficult decision I ever made whether to continue to serve my country or not. It was a very personal one. It's one that I still question whether or not I made the right one, but I felt that business school would give me the opportunity to do a few things. First, get a better understanding of frankly what it was that I wanted to do coming out of the military. Two, build a network in order to have me tap into potentially different industries or different job opportunities. And then three, give me the skillset, frankly, that I needed and hadn't gotten in the military to effectively carry out my new job.
Josh King:
So of the many things that you could have done coming out of Stanford, you're in the home of tech. But you had good old fashioned real manufacturing with General Mills.
Jose Cobos:
It was a great opportunity. I had a role that enabled me to help a union facility continue to innovate and become a leader on the West Coast. I essentially helped 700 people do their jobs better. And what I mean by that is, it was a union facility that had a tremendous amount of talent and technology. During my period there was improve the systems. And what I mean by that was the intersection of people and technology in order to create more throughput.
Jose Cobos:
And that was through just figuring out where the plant and the actual line itself could be improved upon. So it was an amazing experience. I'm very grateful for having had the opportunity to work there, but it also enabled me frankly to realize that what I really wanted to do was something more tech focused. And that also leveraged the finance skills that I had gotten at Stanford and that led me to investment banking.
Josh King:
Cowen and Company. Tell me about your path through Cowen that ultimately led to the New York Stock Exchange?
Jose Cobos:
I was investment banker for about 13 years. I headed up the internet and digital media groups at Piper, Jaffray, and Cowen. I had an incredible opportunity to work with innovators, leaders in the technology profession, specifically companies like Facebook, and Snap that were disrupting what was traditionally a different sort of ecosystem and helping them both from a financing perspective from an M&A perspective, but also just from a consulting and guidance perspective, giving them my insights in terms of what they should expect as the company continue to grow as they continue to hire and then sort of some things to consider as they looked at alternatives or potential acquisition candidates.
Josh King:
I mean, Facebook, Snap, two companies that couldn't be more in the headlines today, but tell me about some of those one or two of those interactions with tech companies that had a fast rise and a successful exit or still at it, but we might not know about?
Jose Cobos:
Frankly, it was one of the situations that led me to the New York Stock Exchange was a company by the name of Despegar. Despegar is essentially an online travel company based in Latin America. Think of them as the Expedia of Latin America. We had a long term relationship where we had given them some guidance and thoughts about going public and what that would mean to the brand, to their visibility, and frankly to their balance sheet with additional capital.
Jose Cobos:
They have done an amazing job of localizing their offering to the specific countries that they're in. Many people think of Latin America as one country, it's many countries. So you have different cultures, different payment systems, different languages. And they were very good at customizing their offering depending on the country that they were in. They decided to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. I was actually here with the bell ringing ceremony. And that to some extent was a tremendous opportunity, not only for me and the company, but it gave me an appreciation for what the exchange did. Interestingly enough, at the same time I was contacted by a recruiter to potentially explore this opportunity and here I am.
Josh King:
Is the model of what you did with Cowen and Despegar sort of... Is that grafted on to what you do now with the New York Stock Exchange, surveying the environment, seeing which management teams, companies, model are at that inflection point, when they need new capital, when they need to expand?
Jose Cobos:
There's a lot of similarities between what I did back in banking and what I do today. I still have the opportunity to talk to disruptors, innovators, people, that are really changing the status quo. And that's part of the reason I love this job so much. The additional thing is you have the opportunity now while at the New York Stock Exchange to bring a lot more to the table, to be honest, just in the sense of they recognize that the IPO is not only an opportunity to add to the balance sheet, but provide visibility in a way that isn't necessarily available as a private company.
Jose Cobos:
So the opportunity to find ways to be helpful prior to going public, whether it be through introductions into New York Stock Exchange listed companies to give them insights into the IPO market, to give them a view as to what to expect as they go public is definitely something that I find really beneficial to them.
Jose Cobos:
But I think the other thing is just sharing with them what they should be considering as they go public is something that I think I bring to the table just given my experience as a banker.
Josh King:
How do you keep up with all of the emerging companies, the new developments? I mean, when you're a Navy Seal, you're bringing in intel reports, satellite imagery, anything you can to understand where the target opportunity is. How are you finding the target opportunities on the West Coast?
Jose Cobos:
It's a combination of things. One, you do a lot of reading. Part of the reason I like this job so much is you're constantly reeducating yourself based on trends and themes in the market. You obviously have a lot of publications out there that are highlighting what's going on in the industries that you support. But frankly, where I get most of my information is just by meeting people. That could be a host of different parties. It's obviously the companies themselves, but it's bankers, accountants, lawyers, IR firms.
Jose Cobos:
There's an ecosystem out there that helps tech companies as they consider going public. And we work across all those people to not only have an understanding of who is out there, but ensuring that we have a insight into what's changing, what's taking place so that we could be much more proficient, not only in the industries and the verticals that we're focused on, but in terms of what's going on from a regulatory perspective, from a compliance perspective, from an accounting perspective to help these companies as they move forward.
Josh King:
How do you talk with new management teams, not only about the opportunities of raising new capital going public, but also the risks as they boldly go where no company has gone before?
Jose Cobos:
Part of the reason I like the West Coast and Silicon Valley so much is that there is a willingness to fail, right? People just understand that in order to really be successful, you have to take risks. And their ability and willingness to do different things that maybe haven't been done in the past is really what sets that region apart. We have great companies everywhere, but I do think that there's something special about the West Coast and the ecosystem that powers it.
Jose Cobos:
As we talk to these companies, we recognize that going public is not for everybody. But for those companies that are thinking about that, there are significant benefits associated with it. Obviously raising capital is part of it, but also extending the brand, having a huge platform to communicate the message and then enabling reinvestment into the business in order to hire new people, continue to grow the business and execute on its strategy is something that we definitely help companies understand.
Jose Cobos:
Then also give them insight into the potential pitfalls that other companies have maybe stumbled upon while they were going public to ensure that they don't have the same type of experience.
Josh King:
Some of those great opportunities, also great challenges. We're talking with Jose Cobos, head of technology capital markets here at the New York Stock Exchange. After the break, we get into some of those great risks and opportunities in going public.
Speaker 1:
When the pressure is on to get that final order in before the close, you need to make sure that you have fast, secure access to the world's leading markets, whether you need to trade or access data on ICE's futures exchanges, the NYSE, other third-party exchanges, or the leading crypto currency exchanges, ICE's SFTI network delivers premier content and direct market access to hundreds of global exchanges and trading desks around the world. Learn more about ICE's SFTI network at theice.com/sfti.
Josh King:
Back now with Jose Cobos, head of technology and capital markets for the New York Stock Exchange. There are so many pioneers out in Silicon Valley. William Hewlett and David Packard famously started their company HP in a garage. It's the American Dream. How do does a company get from someone's garage to the podium of the New York Stock Exchange?
Jose Cobos:
Through a lot of hard work, a tremendous amount of innovation and just a tenacity to be honest. What is lost on many people is when someone rings the bell, they capture sort of a moment in time, but underneath it or behind it, or a tremendous amount of people, a tremendous amount of experience and just a significant amount of effort that went to getting them to that place. Right?
Jose Cobos:
I think what shouldn't be lost is that it takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and a lot of innovation to get a company to go public.
Josh King:
What about a lot of money? I mean, first of all, you need to empty your own credit card account, if you're in that garage. You need to ask your mom, dad, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, then you go... Then you tell me what happens in the valley. These early stage investors, angels, and then ultimately these late stage investors before you even make it to the podium?
Jose Cobos:
You're totally right. There is a ecosystem there to help these companies get to the stage where they can go public. So there's a partnership that is well understood and formulated that enables these companies to do great things. But ultimately it's the leaders and the people within the business that create the opportunity and enable the company to get to this stage.
Josh King:
How actually do people come in and say to someone like Larry Ellison or Hewlett-Packard, "We can get you capital to keep moving forward." The next stage after that startup phase.
Jose Cobos:
There's venture capital.
Josh King:
Or accounting company.
Jose Cobos:
Yeah. There's a tremendous number of different investors out there that they could tap into. There's the venture capitalists, there's the private equity firms. There's now strategic investors that are looking to put money to work in new and disruptive companies so that A, they can be incremental to their own offering, but also have an opportunity at some point in time to potentially acquire the business. Right? And one of the things that we've seen a lot of here recently is just the desire of companies to have investors within their cap table that bring much more than just money, right?
Jose Cobos:
They bring experiences, they bring relationships, they bring their own network and they have an insight into the industry that maybe isn't afforded just within the internal management team that helps them continue to accelerate and move down the path in a much faster way.
Josh King:
And when they get to the end of that path, they really get to point of deciding really time to tap the public markets. And there's a couple choices that they have. Why would they choose the NYSE?
Jose Cobos:
There's really four different reasons why they would choose the New York Stock Exchange. We have a very differentiated market model that combines the best debris technology with people on the ground, in order to help companies ensure that they have flawless execution and minimal risk. We are the only exchange that still has people on the ground, on the floor, ensuring that companies and their financings go well.
Jose Cobos:
And the combination of people and tech is essentially what enables those transactions to be executed in a global complex manner, in a flawless way. The second is the network. We have 2,400 companies that represent 87% of the Dow Jones, 75% of the SMP. And their willingness to be associated with those companies, tap into those companies, and help them as they think about commercial opportunities, strategic discussions, or just benefit from their experiences, something that we bring to the table that nobody else can.
Jose Cobos:
The last two things would be obviously the visibility that's afforded through our platform. We have 35 media outlets on our trading floor that makes it second only to the white house in terms of number of-
Josh King:
Having worked at both places, I can attest to that.
Jose Cobos:
It's an amazing thing. When you see the amount of content that's being created on a daily basis on our floor and their ability to push out a company's message, it really can't be replicated anywhere else. And then the last is the IR type services, the technology services that we help companies with both pre the IPO and then post, which enables them to have a much better understanding of who their investors are, where the money is coming from and how to effectively communicate the message in a way that continues to help the company in the long term.
Josh King:
After you go public, what is your ongoing relationship with the New York Stock Exchange?
Jose Cobos:
We have companies that come back to the exchange to announce new products, new features, maybe an M&A transaction that they've done. We have numerous situations where companies come back to do board meetings at our facilities, to have corporate events that showcase their offerings where-
Josh King:
It's really like a New York headquarters for Silicon Valley company.
Jose Cobos:
Mostly for companies that don't have a facility or a location here on the East Coast. We had MuleSoft who has been to the New York Stock Exchange I think 13 times in the last 12 months that really take advantage of our facilities. We renovated this space over the course of the last couple years. We have 35,000 square feet of facilities and conference rooms that-
Josh King:
Including the beautiful library in which we are sitting in today.
Jose Cobos:
It's a gorgeous spot. And these are available to companies at any time. So we obviously have created this space in order for companies to take advantage of it. And those that do, I think are very well served.
Josh King:
Jose, there is some mythology out there that some people have that the New York Stock Exchange is not as receptive a home for tech companies as some other exchanges might be. I'm not sure with all your background in tech, you would join a company that wasn't tech friendly. But what do you say to people who say, "The NYSE, it's more heavy manufacturing, big aviation, global. It may not necessarily be Silicon valley."
Jose Cobos:
Yeah. We work with great leaders across industries, but I think the thing that has really changed as a result of our willingness to change our listing requirements was that tech companies that historically maybe hadn't had the opportunity to list on the New York Stock Exchange now due. Just to give you a sense within the last 12 months, specifically in 2017, we did 59% of all tech IPOs. That equated to 86% of all tech IPO proceeds.
Jose Cobos:
So we really are the leader when it comes to tech transactions. And then for the larger companies within technology specifically, we've done 23 of the last 26 tech IPOs that have raised north of $300 million. So as companies recognize the value of the New York Stock Exchange, the differentiated market model, the network, and sort of everything that we bring to the table, I think things have changed significantly from where maybe they were in the 1990s or 2000s as they think about going public.
Josh King:
You'll be back in California tomorrow and focused yet again on the companies that are ready to take the next step. What kind of companies are you meeting with every day? What kind of questions do they ask you? And what kind of questions do you ask them as you sort of test whether they're actually ready?
Jose Cobos:
We're meeting with a tremendous number of companies across internet, software, semiconductors, hardware, components. They are, again, disrupting the status quo in looking to really transform the systems and ecosystems that they operate in. The things that I'm really sort of looking at sort of for next stage is artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, things that are getting a lot of traction and a lot of financing, but we haven't seen yet hit the public markets. The type of questions that they're asking is, "At what point in my life cycle, am I ready to go public? How large do I need to be? How fast or how quickly do I need to be growing? How profitable should I be? What kind of systems and infrastructure do I have to have in place in order to go public?"
Jose Cobos:
And from a positioning perspective, from a storytelling perspective, are there are things that we should be considering as we go out to a much larger community. The type of questions that we get are really different depending on the situation and the company. You have guys who have been there before and done that. So they're asking maybe more technical type questions, but then you have people that have not taken that path in a previous life.
Jose Cobos:
And they're just frame trying to get a much better understanding of what it is that they need to do in order to ensure that they don't run into a pothole.
Josh King:
You mentioned one of those unicorns that is both well financed from a venture capital perspective and also bringing in a huge amount of revenue. There is a case for some of these unicorns that they make, which is, "Boy, tapping the public markets bring a number of headaches and burdens, Sarbanes-Oxley that I may not want to deal with." These are special cases that have huge access to huge amounts of capital and have a lot of revenue coming in the door. What do you say to more of those companies that are in the middle that say, "I don't know. I really want to stay private, but there's so much opportunity tapping that public capital"?
Jose Cobos:
Going public is not for everybody. And one of the things that's not lost on us is there are some benefits and there are some considerations as they think about what they want to do. In addition to raising capital, part of the reason a company decides to go public is to broaden out its investor base, to ensure that they have a much larger opportunity to tell the message or the story that they want to tell, to have a public stock with which to do acquisitions, to provide liquidity to shareholders that maybe have been in for a long period time.
Jose Cobos:
So we recognize that there's different financing sources that they could tap into, but as they continue to expand the business, as they go internationally, as the business continues to mature, we think that going public is definitely beneficial for some companies. And we just want to make sure that we're there in having those discussions when the time is right.
Josh King:
Well, Jose Cobos, head of technology capital markets here at the NYSE, thank you for your service to the exchange and to all these companies that are taking the next step as they pursue their dreams, but much more importantly, thank you for your service to the nation.
Jose Cobos:
Thank you, Josh.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest Jose Cobos, head of technology capital markets here at the New York Stock Exchange. If you like what you heard, you've heard me ask you this before, please rate us on iTunes., give us a review. Help other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a question or a comment, you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, or if you're one of those tech companies out in Silicon Valley, listening to Jose for the last 30 minutes and think you may have what it takes to go public, email us at [email protected]. We'll try to answer it. We'll put you in touch with Jose or tweet at us @NYSE.
Josh King:
Our show is produced by Pete Asch and Ian Wolff with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Porter. I'm Josh King, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. See you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of this information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or recommendation of any security or trading practice.