Dream Exchange, the first majority black-owned stock exchange in America’s history, will launch this year.

The Dream Exchange will be the eighth licensed stock exchange in the country, but it will be the first minority-run stock exchange. It will function similarly to exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange, where people can buy stock in companies that have gone public. However, the companies on the Dream Exchange will be much smaller. 

The founders of Dream Exchange are Joe Cecala and Dwain Kyles. In the 1990s, Joe was legal counsel for the entity that created Archipelago, making the electronic infrastructure the New York Stock Exchange’s NYSE-Arca exchange.

Dwain Kyles’ father was a fellow preacher and a dear friend of iconic civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr. He was on the stairway of the Lorraine Motel at the moment Dr. King was assassinated. 

“What he [Dr. King] began to understand in the later years of his life [is] that you were not going to achieve equality anywhere in this country or anywhere else if there is no economic parity,” said Kyles to Scripps News. “You’ve got to be able to give people the opportunity to earn a good living and care for their families, or it’s never going to work.” 

For over seven years, Cecala and Kyles have worked on legislation with members of the US Senate and House of Representatives. The legislation, named the Main Street Growth Act, would cater to a market currently underserved by mainstream exchanges.

“In the last 17 years, we’ve seen small companies not being able to reach the public market,” Joe Cecala told NewsNation. “We built this state-of-the-art electronic stock exchange because it’s difficult to raise capital if you’re a small business, let alone a small minority business.”

“Most people in all communities have access to Main Street in some form or another, but the gulf which exists between Main Street and Wall Street has continued to exist, and we see that serving as that bridge as being vital to the revitalization of our economy,” said Dwain J. Kyles.

The goal is to make the stock market accessible to more people, especially people of color and grant them access to capital. It will also give smaller companies the benefits and wealth of becoming publicly traded companies. 

In addition to the venture exchange, Dream Exchange would open a fully licensed National Market System Stock Exchange similar to the NASDAQ and NYSE.

Funding to Black founders was down in 2023 for the third year. Black founders in the U.S. raised 0.48% of all venture dollars allocated last year. That’s around $661 million out of $136 billion, according to the latest Crunchbase data. That number is the lowest it’s been in recent history.

The Dream Exchange’s mission is to upend that statistic and invest in companies from underserved communities. 

“If we can build these companies and expand them, we’ll have prosperous communities,” said Cecala. “I think it has a ripple effect to solve many of our nation’s problems.” 

About Dream Exchange

Dream Exchange was founded in 2018 to build the first US venture stock exchange for small and medium-sized businesses. Over the last 20 years, these small-to-mid-sized businesses have been shut out of capital markets that provide the kind of financing vehicles (such as stock) that have funded many of today’s largest, most successful businesses.

The exchange would democratize the Initial Public Offering (IPO) market by allowing underrepresented founders of early-stage and emerging enterprises to leverage public capital markets to issue early-stage stock to fund and scale their businesses. This would achieve the Dream Exchange’s ultimate vision: to significantly expand access to capital, stimulate innovation, create jobs, and build wealth in all communities.