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Online retailer GrabAGun had a 2.23% upswing Friday morning following a rocky start — falling 23% on day one — with its NYSE trading debut Wednesday. But board member Donald Trump Jr. says it won’t deter 1789 Capital, the VC firm he joined last November, from continuing to invest in businesses he believes is vital to the future of the US.
“A lot of the things that we’ve done over the last few years [have come] out of necessity,” Trump Jr., who is projected to own around 300,000 shares in GrabAGun, told NYNext this week. “We saw the affront on not just ourselves and our family businesses, but on so many Americans — and we have that ability to push back.”
“USA” chants rippled across the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday morning as Trump Jr., 1789 Capital founder Omeed Malik and GrabAGun CEO Marc Nemati rang the opening bell.
Trading under the ticker PEW, GrabAGun is the latest company to go public via special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). And, as Jeffrey Sprecher — chair and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company that owns the NYSE — told Wednesday’s crowd, the first to do so with zero shareholder redemptions.
More than 60 blank-check companies have already gone public this year, raising $12.4 billion so far — the most since 2021, when the SPAC market reached a fever pitch with $162.6 billion raises, according to Dealogic.
Omeed Malik, 1789’s founder and president, said he believes the public is ready to back businesses previously sidelined by woke investors who prioritize investing in companies promoting environmental, society and governance issues, known as ESG investing.
He coined the term EIG — entrepreneurship, innovation and growth — to characterize 1789 Capital’s priorities.
“It’s not just parallel economy,” Malik told NYNext this week. “We want to invest in any company that’s going to enhance the security or prosperity of the United States.
“It could be a defense tech company. It could be helping with the re-industrialization of the United States around rare earth minerals. Or it could be a very innovative AI company that’s disrupting something inefficient that the American people need.”
When Trump and Malik Jr. took online marketplace PublicSquare public in 2022, the move was framed as a response to what they viewed as ideological censorship by Big Tech.
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Two years later, that stance is no longer considered fringe. And 1789 Capital, its name a reference to the year the Bill of Rights was introduced, isn’t the only firm looking to tap into a widening appetite for businesses that, as Trump Jr. put it, “wouldn’t have been considered PC, and therefore were overlooked.”
Through Colombier Acquisition Corp. — the SPAC affiliated with 1789 Capital — the pair played an outsized role in bringing that agenda to Wall Street. Malik, a mega-donor to the Republican party, has also backed Rumble and is affiliated with Truth Social — both dealing with free speech and First Amendment protections.
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