Compound's Model for Private Liquidity
Jordan Gonen, CEO of Compound, on software-enabled wealth management
Compound is turning wealth management into a distribution channel for private stock liquidity. By already serving founders, employees, and investors as advisory clients, it can source both sellers and buyers from inside its own network, then use partner funds, banks, lenders, and platforms to fill the rest of the order book. That makes private transactions feel less like one off brokerage work and more like an extension of ongoing financial planning.
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This works because startup shareholders and startup investors have opposite needs at the same moment. Employees and early backers want cash for taxes, homes, or portfolio diversification, while later stage funds, family offices, and crossover investors want access to scarce pre IPO shares.
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The hard part in secondaries is not finding one side, it is stitching together fragmented demand, issuer approvals, paperwork, and cap table constraints. Markets like EquityZen and Augment have built around exactly this problem, combining investor networks, software workflows, and issuer friendly structures to get deals closed.
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Compound sits one layer higher than a pure marketplace. It starts with the client balance sheet, tax position, option exercise decisions, and concentration risk, then routes a client into a sale, loan, or hold decision. That makes liquidity a planning product first, and a transaction product second.
The next step for this model is deeper integration between advice, cap table data, and execution. As more private companies stay private longer and run recurring liquidity programs, firms that already own the client relationship and can assemble trusted buyers will gain a durable edge over standalone brokers that only appear at the moment of sale.