How Our $100 Million Capital Deployment Will Change Investing Forever
Updated on February 2, 2023
Historically, online business assets have been unattainable to individual investors.
Only private equity (PE) firms could amass the capital needed to buy the most successful digital properties. Then it was just a small portion of skilled operators who got a shot at running PEs acquired assets.
Individual investors aren’t informed of or invited to these PE deals—and many of them are hidden behind paywalls, private networks, and inaccessible groups. They’re only open to endowment funds, family offices, and much larger pools of capital.
It was a select few getting the chance to invest in online assets at scale. The fragmentation of the market left mountains of money on the table.
We’re talking to the tune of trillions of dollars.
Retail e-commerce alone surpassed five trillion in worldwide sales in 2021. Institutional investors in turn poured $15 billion into the top 100 e-commerce aggregators.
It baffled us. Why would ALL of that money be off-limits to individual investors?
Considering there were already proven, highly valued investing platforms making everything from real estate to art accessible to the investing public, we were further stumped.
We’d seen firsthand the power of online business investing. We had a trusted online business marketplace with half a billion dollars in transaction volume to prove it.
So, why wasn’t anyone offering investment opportunities for our industry?
After sitting with what felt like an injustice for regular, individual investors combined with a glaring missed opportunity for tremendous profit, we had to take a look in the mirror and ask:
Why not WebStreet?
Our Mission: A Moonshot Vision of $100M in Deployed Capital
The success of investment platforms across industries first tipped us off to the colossal opportunity being missed.
Art investing company Masterworks was valued at over $1 billion. Acretrader’s farmland investing platform was valued at $300M. The world of startup investing garnered Start Engine a valuation of $1.3 billion.
The investment model was there; it was possible to take alternate investment classes and turn them into accessible investments.
The ballooning valuations of these different investment platforms proved that granting investment access to a wider audience held tremendous market value.
It felt obvious. We could build a cashflow-spitting, distribution-delivering, asset-multiplying machine for investors that could be just as valuable (if not more so) as any other investing platform.
From that realization, Empire Flippers Capital was launched.
We knew that EFC could make online business ownership more accessible, by providing an unprecedented opportunity for fractional investment in cash-flowing online businesses run by experienced portfolio managers.
While we got a head start at finally addressing the investment gap in online businesses, we knew there could be more done for investors.
Last year we announced Empire Flippers Capital would be splitting from Empire Flippers. To hit our ambitious goals, we are branching out to stand alone as our own investment platform: WebStreet.co
WebStreet combines the ideologies of Wall Street and Main Street: globalized, financial prowess meets individual investors. Our aim is to revolutionize investing by offering investment opportunities in online business assets, making these assets accessible in a way they’ve never been before.
WebStreet has set out to change investing for good.
Our moonshot vision is to deploy $100 million per year in cash-flowing online business investment opportunities.
Our mission is to make digital asset investing mainstream, starting with accredited investors in this formerly hard-to-access market.
Under EF Capital we took our first steps to make our mission and vision a reality.
What EF Capital Has Achieved For Investors
EF Capital was the first platform of its kind to allow investors to passively invest across portfolios of online businesses, while portfolio managers with proven track records scale the business.
The key to making this happen was to find managers with stellar track records who could execute their investment thesis successfully.
We set the bar high and rejected 95% of portfolio manager applicants. The outcome of our rigorous standards has paid off.
To date, here is what EFC has achieved:
- Despite a tumultuous economy, portfolios have delivered 15% cash distributions in the last 12 months and are on track for over 20% annualized returns over the lifetime of asset ownership.
- Over the last 24 months, we launched 4 rounds of investment under EFC. These 4 rounds have brought in $22M+ in investments from 300+ investors.
- We brought on 11 high-performing operators, who have purchased 30 digital assets across content businesses, Amazon FBA, Kindle Direct Publishing, and soon SaaS.
Over the past couple of years, investors found that investing across funds offered a one-stop-shop for portfolio diversification and potential upside that outpaced traditional investments.
When we started, we knew we wanted to offer a similar tech stack to other fintech companies offering minority investments.
Just as you could monitor your investment’s performance with traditional stock, we wanted to bring the same transparency to online business investing.
To make that happen, we built a fully functioning investment platform built solely for that purpose.
Now, we are strengthening our platform’s foundation by building an investor dashboard showing consolidated returns across multiple deals, diversification across different risk factors, and easily accessible quarterly reports and tax documentation.
To support our deals, we leaned on Empire Flippers’ best systems and practices for vetting, deal processes, and migrations – and built teams for those departments in-house.
Each team’s focus is to create the best possible deal experience and investment performance for our portfolio managers and investors.
While EFC made the breakthrough of online business investing a successful reality, it’s our next iteration that will make our investment platform soar.
WebStreet: Your Gateway to Own a Slice of the Internet
We’re getting rid of the gatekeeping to those trillions of investable dollars.
That means all of the opportunities reserved for those in the high towers of private equity and venture capital will be brought down and handed out to main street investors.
WebStreet will give everyone a fair shot at being a part of the tidal wave of growth happening in the online business space.
We are serving investors and entrepreneurs by giving them a piece of digital assets without trading their valuable time. They get in on the cash flow, and can monopolize being one of the early adopters of an asset class positioned to skyrocket.
WebStreet will focus on offering unlimited investment opportunities, across digital asset classes.
In large part, this is because we are able to establish ourselves independently from Empire Flippers and expand our acquisition search to other marketplaces and deal sources. Thus, Portfolio Managers will be able to go after all available acquisition targets and bring assets into the fold that will meet their most ambitious investment criteria.
This is a drastic change to how we operated before, and we believe this change alone will have compounding benefits for both investors and operators.
Let’s explore what the potential upside looks like for both parties.
Benefits to Investors and Portfolio Managers on Our Road to $100M Deployed
Expanded Deal Sources
Portfolio Managers can now buy from any trusted marketplace or network with solid acquisition opportunities.
This means they will have a wider pool of buying opportunities and can be more fine-tuned in their search to hit their buying criteria. They’ll have more diversity, more options, and will have room to hunt for hidden gem assets. Even if the assets involve a broader search across their personal network or marketplaces, PMs can assertively pursue those deals.
Ultimately, this freedom allows them to execute their strategy to the fullest and realize the returns they aim to get investors.
Investment in New Monetizations
By casting a wider net with deal sources, we also can cast a wider net for the monetizations we consider.
Under EFC, if a portfolio manager was hunting for a FBA or content business on Empire Flippers’ marketplace, the opportunity is great, as EF is the world-class provider of those businesses.
But if a portfolio manager was insanely talented at running a marketing agency? Or acquiring apps? It would be tough for them to find deal flow solely from Empire Flippers.
Now though? With WebStreet the door is wide-open to capitalize on almost any profitable online business. Everything from SaaS, media companies, marketing agencies, apps – all businesses that can be cash-flowing assets are fair game for investment.
Thus, we have a positive compounding effect.
Opening up to ALL models creates a welcome mat for even MORE world-class portfolio managers to join us in helping our investors make incredible returns.
Not to mention, expanding to new monetizations is a real blue-ocean strategy. Lots of opportunities, minimal competition.
Curated Community of Elite Portfolio Managers
As our base of portfolio managers grows, they will continue to share knowledge and best practices for acquiring and growing prospective businesses.
We’re building an elite community that hosts some of the top portfolio managers and online business acquirers in the world.
The lessons they’re able to share from their own in-the-trenches perspective have been incredibly valuable. The collaborative nature of the community and the transparency with which they communicate and share will build an unbeatable knowledge base over time.
Extended Invitation to a Wider Investor Market
The pool of investors who already know about online business assets is fairly small and close-knit.
It’s great to have an active community who has already bought into what we have built at Empire Flippers Capital, but with WebStreet we want to extend the invitation to investors who exist beyond our current circles.
To ensure no one misses out on this powerful investing opportunity, we’ll be marketing to a wider audience of investors interested in alternative investment classes. These high-net-worth individuals may be comfortably invested in other areas but have yet to discover the chance to invest in online businesses without time or skills investment through WebStreet.
This is exciting because it creates a full-circle effect for our portfolio managers and current investors. As more investors join in on the online business movement, it strengthens Portfolio Manager’s ability to raise money for funds to acquire high-performing assets and gives all investors the chance to invest in bigger, better deals.
Expected Higher Returns
Overall, more options = better deals = better ROI for investors.
The foundation we laid with EFC was strong and the investing opportunity was the first of its kind.
But now we are reaching for unparalleled upside for those who share our vision, and are willing to take action.
Are You Ready?
The future for investors joining in on the digital assets revolution is bright.
The potential to make life-changing ROI from this investment model will only continue to grow as our market matures.
The opportunity is there and someone is going to take it. Why shouldn’t it be you?
Don’t miss out – visit the new WebStreet site now!
Once you are there, be sure to click Get Started in the top right corner to quickly create an account.
This will make you the first to hear about new developments, investment opportunities, and historical returns the moment they’re up.
