FiscalNote, a Washington, D.C. maker of policy management software, was finally expected to emerge a public company on Friday, consummating a long-planned merger with Duddell Street Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC.
Duddell Street, sponsored by Hong Kong-based hedge fund Maso Capital, and FiscalNote had announced the deal last November, and planned to close the merger in Q1. Duddell Street said its shareholders approved the deal in a meeting on Wednesday, but some paper work was expected to close only on Friday.
NEA, Revolution Were Early Backers
AOL co founder Steve Case’s Revolution Growth, billionaire Mark Cuban, The Economist, S&P Global, Yahoo co founder Jerry Yang, New Enterprise Associates and other venture capital firms are among FiscalNote’s investors. Together, they hold a 76% stake in the company.
The deal was expected to raise $275 million, of which $100 million would come from so-called “private investment in public equity,” or PIPE, led by Maso Capital. The rest was due from a trust held by Duddell Street, FiscalNote said.
Shares of FiscalNote Holdings, Inc. — as the new entity will be called — are expected to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Aug. 1 under the ticker symbols “NOTE” and “NOTE WS.” The deal gives FiscalNote a pro forma market capitalization of $1.3 billion.
Childhood Friends Joined Hands
Timothy Hwang, who serves as FiscalNote’s chief executive, is the son of immigrants from South Korea. He was born in East Lansing, Mich., and grew up in Potomac, Md. He was barely 21 and out of Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, when he and two childhood friends Gerald Yao and Jonathan Chen co founded FiscalNote in 2013.
As a teenager, Hwang served on Obama’s 2008 campaign. He was later elected to the Montgomery County Board of Education. Watching government up and close, Hwang observed how difficult it was to access “unstructured and disparate” government data, and legislative and regulatory activity. Therein, he conceived the idea for FiscalNote.
Using artificial intelligence, machine learning and other digital tools, Hwang has built FiscalNote into a leading provider of global policy and market intelligence. FiscalNote raised over $250 million in venture funding and then powered its growth with a slew of 16 acquisitions. FiscalNote’s acquisitions have spanned continents —Oxford Analytica in the United Kingdom, and TimeBase in Australia. Today, it claims over 5,000 customers, including such giants as Microsoft, 3M, Nestle, Southwest, AstraZeneca and FedEx.
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New Industries to Drive Growth
“If you come to our offices, the day before and the day after listing are probably going to be pretty similar,” Hwang told Technical.ly on Thursday. “I think we just need to keep building a great company.”
FiscalNote’s future growth is tied not only to legal, geopolitical issues and ESG becoming “even more inextricably linked to markets,” but also from new industries requiring robust regulation and policies. These include cannabis, cryptocurrency, virtual sports etc.
