One DESPAC CEO took his freshly raised public capital and vanished for a month to golf across Japan. Christine McNerney, Portfolio Manager at Periscope Capital, has seen why that ego sinks a DESPAC - and what makes an institutional investor say yes instead.

Christine McNerney is Portfolio Manager at Periscope Capital, a Toronto-based fund active in SPACs for over a decade. She joins host Chaz Churchwell on what institutional investors look for before backing a DESPAC: real capital needs vs. ego

Six months before a DESPAC closes, retail investors have already decided if they trust the deal — and Mo Abdi says that excitement is measurable, and it tracks against redemption rates.

EPISODE SUMMARY
Mo Abdi, Chief Executive Officer of RetailVolts and creator of the GateWatch AI sentiment platform, joins host Chaz Churchwell on The DESPAC Podcast. A physician by training turned founder, Mo built RetailVolts out of a decade moderating 120+ subreddits into a retail investor activation agency wo

There are four ways to take a company public. Brandon Sun says 95% of companies realistically have access to one.

Brandon Sun, Managing Director and Head of SPAC Investment Banking at Cohen & Company, has closed more than 130 DESPAC and M&A transactions representing over $210 billion in enterprise value, plus 120+ IPOs raising over $45 billion. He walks host Chaz Churchwell through the decision facing private companies today: an IPO backlog roughly 1,000 companies deep, bulge-bracket banks acti

Most founders ask what a SPAC is worth before they ask whether they need it at all. Michael Strauss of Boardroom Alpha flips that: the first question is whether you need the capital now, or can afford to optimize price and stay private longer.


Michael Strauss, Director at Boardroom Alpha, joins host Chaz Churchwell for a data-driven look at the SPAC and DESPAC decision. Boardroom Alpha rates public-company CEOs, CFOs, and board directors, and tracks the sponsor teams behind SPAC vehicles. Mic

Most private companies treat a DESPAC as the finish line. Jeffrey Duncan and Jonathan Grubbs of Aprio explain why day one as a public company is where the real work begins — and why targets that wait until the BCA is signed are already behind.


In this episode, host Chaz Churchwell sits down with Jeffrey Duncan, Partner and leader of Technical Accounting Consulting Services at Aprio, and Jonathan Grubbs, Director and Complex Financial Instrument Leader in Aprio's Valuation & Investigation Serv

What actually disqualifies a private company from a SPAC deal? Patrick Sturgeon says the answer is often the same thing that would sink a traditional IPO — size. A single-asset biotech at Phase 1B with a sub-$100M valuation "just should not be a public company," and the exchanges are taking a harder look at microcaps trying to list.


In this episode, Chaz Churchwell sits down with Dimitre Genov, Managing Director, and Patrick Sturgeon, Managing Partner at Brookline Capital Markets, for a pract

Most DESPAC votes don't fail at the ballot box. They fail months earlier, in silence — when no one is communicating with the shareholder base and the redemptions are already climbing. By the time the panicked calls go out to redeeming holders, it's already far too late to change the outcome. In this episode of The DESPAC Podcast, host Chaz Churchwell sits down with Desiree Carlo, Senior Vice President of Client Services at Laurel Hill Advisory Group, for a practitioner's breakdown of the prox...

What no one tells founders before a DESPAC: the deal itself is the easy part. Roshan Pujari took Stardust Power from a 2023 startup to a shovel-ready national lithium project in roughly three years — and he is refreshingly candid about the volatility, the hidden costs, and the discipline it took to survive year one as a newly public company.


EPISODE SUMMARY Roshan Pujari, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Stardust Power Inc. (NASDAQ: SDST) and Founder of VIKASA Capital, joins host Chaz Churchwell

Why do so many DESPAC deals look great on day one and collapse months later? In this episode of The DESPAC Podcast, host Chaz Churchwell sits down with Douglas Ellenoff of Ellenoff Grossman & Schole, one of the most prolific securities attorneys in the SPAC ecosystem with 25 years and over 1,000 SPAC IPOs behind him.


Doug pulls back the curtain on what actually separates DESPAC deals that thrive from the ones that crater. The conversation moves from regulatory tailwinds under the current SEC

Misclassify warrants or earnouts and you can blow up your DESPAC valuation, delay closing by months, and stack millions in advisory, audit, and legal fees on a deal that was supposed to be ready.

Sam Salty (Managing Partner, GuzmanGray) and Mark Stoller (CMO, GuzmanGray) join Chaz Churchwell on The DESPAC Podcast to break down what real PCAOB readiness looks like, why AICPA-grade audit evidence rarely survives PCAOB scrutiny, and how the post-inspection shakeup created a vacuum that disciplined