Turn Brokers into Power Users
Andrea Walne, GP at Manhattan Venture Partners, on getting on the cap table
Winning larger institutional flow in private stock depends less on replacing brokers than on turning them into power users. Big buyers do not want to hunt through listings for a $50,000 slice. They want a trusted intermediary to find a real block, confirm the seller, manage the company approval process, and move the deal through closing. A marketplace goes upstream when it gives brokers better data, workflow, and settlement tools, then shares economics with them instead of trying to cut them out.
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The market is structurally split. Platforms like EquityZen and Forge are well suited to smaller employee sales and pooled demand from smaller checks. Larger blocks usually come from early funds and other sophisticated holders, and those deals are still broker led because they require high touch handling and trusted buyer seller matching.
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What brokers need is concrete workflow software, not just a listing page. The winning tools help them track clients, see pricing and demand signals, coordinate counterparties, and push trades through approval and settlement. Zanbato and Caplight are examples of building picks and shovels for brokers rather than trying to replace them.
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The tradeoff is margin versus volume. If a platform shares fees with brokers, it keeps less revenue per trade, but it can capture transactions that would otherwise happen off platform. That matters because most private secondary volume still moves through one to one broker relationships, email, and phone calls, not open exchange style markets.
Over time, private markets should look more like public markets, with software taking over more of the plumbing while brokers remain important on the biggest trades. The platforms that compound fastest will be the ones that become operating systems for brokers, issuers, and settlement all at once, because that is how they earn both trust and the transaction flow that comes with it.