Young Multi‑Billion Startups Seek Liquidity
Alessandro Chesser, former VP of Sales at Carta, on the dynamics of CartaX auctions and preparing for liquidity
This points to a classic wedge market, companies big enough to have painful liquidity problems, but still young enough to change how they operate. These firms already have employees with life changing paper wealth, late investors looking for partial exits, and CFOs who need cleaner price signals, but they are not yet institutionally committed to the IPO path. That makes them the most willing to trade a bit more disclosure for controlled liquidity and better recruiting leverage.
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The oldest and most IPO ready companies look like the logical buyers, but they are also the most conservative. If they are already 12 to 18 months from listing, building quarterly disclosures and auction processes can feel like extra work versus simply finishing the IPO.
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Younger unicorns have the sharper pain. They may be Series B through D, already worth billions, with fast growing cap tables and employees who have vested stock but no cash path. A recurring auction gives them a way to let people sell some shares without opening the company to full public market scrutiny.
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This is also where Carta had a structural advantage versus broker style marketplaces like EquityZen. Because the cap table already lives in Carta, the company can set seller limits, choose buyers, run the event, and settle the transfer in one system, which matters more to issuer controlled companies than raw marketplace openness.
Over time, this adoption pattern tends to pull private markets down the maturity curve. First come the fast moving multi billion dollar startups, then later stage companies preparing for direct listings or IPOs, and eventually a broader class of private companies that treat quarterly liquidity and disclosure as a normal operating rhythm rather than a one off event.