SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are all the rage right now, and people are emerging from all corners to raise them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the latest entrants \u2014 and someone who might be of interest to Silicon Valley watchers \u2014 is\u00a0Emil Michael,\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0a former\u00a0Uber\u00a0\u00a0executive and top lieutenant to former CEO Travis Kalanick. Earlier today, Micheal\u00a0registered plans<\/a>\u00a0with the SEC to raise $250 million in an IPO for a blank-check company that will broadly acquire a company in the tech sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n IPO Edge had reported\u00a0earlier today<\/a>\u00a0that the SPAC<\/a> might be in the works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The filing lists as special advisors a bit of a rogue\u2019s gallery, including Shervin Pishevar, an early Uber investor and advisor to the company who left his previous venture firm after being accused<\/a> by multiple women of sexual misconduct; Alphabet\u2019s former executive chairman (and erstwhile playboy<\/a>) Eric Schmidt; and Betsy Atkins, a founder of Ascend Communications and investor who has served on so many boards that last year she wrote a book about it. <\/a>Indeed, among her other roles currently, she\u2019s on the boards of Volvo, Wynn Resorts, and Oyo Hotels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael was a senior vice president of field operations at Tellme Networks, then later served as COO of the startup Klout before landing at Uber, where he was a senior vice president of business for nearly four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He gained prominence in the role but also some disrepute after he publicly made comments about hiring opposition researchers to quiet journalists critical of the company and following a later report that he had attended an \u201cescort bar\u201d in Seoul with other Uber executives, including Kalanick. Indeed, when he left the company in 2017, Uber declined to say whether he left of his own accord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite \u2014 or perhaps even because of \u2014 his trajectory at Uber, Michael was reportedly vetted at one point for the position of Secretary of Transportation after Donald Trump was elected president. Now, he apparently sees a way to jump back into tech by using a SPAC<\/a> to take public a still privately held company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Certainly, we\u2019re seeing the same trend with a small but growing number of tech companies, including electric vehicle makers, such as the troubled Nikola, and the electric-truck maker Hyliion, which revealed plans in August to go public through a reverse merger into a SPAC.<\/a> (Nikola is already publicly traded; Hylion\u2019s deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Companies in other sectors of the economy are seemingly up for grabs, too. Just yesterday, Hims, a direct-to-consumer company that sells health products and services targeted at young men and women, revealed that it will go public by merging with a SPAC sponsored by Oaktree Capital Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last month, Opendoor, a home buying and selling platform, separately agreed to go public via a reverse merger with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp II, one of numerous SPACs that has been successfully raised by investor Chamath Palihapitiya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in late August, Desktop Metal, a Burlington, Ma.-based maker of 3D metal printing systems, agreed to go public via a reverse merger with a SPAC<\/a> formed last year by veteran telecom investor Leo Hindery, called Trine Acquisition Corp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael has a bit more M&A experience than some who are beginning to take an interest in SPACs. For example, he was involved in selling<\/a> Uber\u2019s China business in 2016 to rival Didi Chuxing in exchange for a stake in the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n