Visionary Founder Advisor Speaker Creator Producer Humanitarian
Capital Markets Catalyst
For nearly four decades, Mona DeFrawi has delivered solutions at the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship, and capital markets – transforming how startups access funding and how investors access opportunity. Her accomplishments include:
- Managing four tech IPOs over 10 years, building IR, comms, and corporate development
- Founding four companies as CEO, including the first private market platform to restore startup exits and VC liquidity (now Nasdaq Private Market)
- Raising CapGen Financial’s $500M debut private equity fund
- Authoring/lobbying legislation that delivered billions in new VC LP funding
- Writing/teaching The Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering’s first entrepreneurship curriculum supporting the creation of the Carey Business School
- Raising/influencing $20B+ in capital formation
Mona’s fourth and current startup, Radivision, was created to resolve today’s startup funding, IPO, liquidity, and wealth divide crises. The broken capital markets are the biggest unrecognized crisis of our time: concentrating wealth while starving innovation – with 99.95% of startups unable to access funding, blocking urgently needed solutions, and shutting out everyday investors from the wealth these companies would create.
From childhood war refugee to Forbes’ “Most Powerful Women in Technology” and “Top 100 Women in Fintech,” Mona’s career embodies what becomes possible when access and innovation meet. Mona speaks passionately on the future of capital markets, IPO and public market restoration, democratizing private investing, high-performance professional development, and what it takes to build companies and movements that drive prosperity and lasting impact.
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The New VC & IR
A new private and IPO investing movement is taking shape – one that will reopen wealth creation to everyday Americans and restore funding to the innovators today’s market has left behind. Mona DeFrawi and Radivision are at the heart of it.
The capital markets are broken. Over nearly thirty years, venture capital (VC), private equity, and investment banking appetites have skewed the markets steeply to mega-deals and the largest institutional investors – leaving 99.95% of startups seeking capital unfunded. Retail investors, who once held 50% of early-stage shareholder bases when IPOs took three to five years, are now disenfranchised – that path today stretches to fourteen years or never happens at all. Only 1% of venture-backed companies ever reach the public markets.
These trends have collapsed the number of US public companies from 8,000 to 4,000, with nearly 30% of total US stock market capitalization now concentrated in just ten companies. The VC and PE industries, and their LP investors, have been stuck in a severe liquidity crisis since 2022.
Change is inevitable, now led by White House, Congressional, and SEC regulations that unlock $12T+ of new retail investment – far outweighing the $1.5T of cumulative VC funding to date. This movement of retail capital into private and IPO investments is the new venture capital.
Mona DeFrawi and Radivision are building the infrastructure to reach millions of new investors – the new investor relations (IR) leveraging technology and content to connect mass consumer audiences with education, transparency, broad visibility, and integrity.
Founders gain funding today’s market denies them. Everyday Americans regain access to the wealth they lost when companies stopped going public. And by bringing the public in earlier, the new IR will smooth the path to IPOs and grow successful listings.
Previous Speaking Engagements:
Entrepreneurship Education:
