Platforms Lose Edge to Issuers
Hari Raghavan, ex-COO of Forge, on late-stage investing and facilitating secondary sales
The edge shifts from broker ingenuity to issuer distribution. When a company sets recurring liquidity rules itself, it no longer needs platforms mainly to work around transfer restrictions or chase scattered sellers. The remaining advantage becomes operational, who can win company mandates, line up credible buyers, handle cap table plumbing, and make repeat transactions feel simple for employees and investors.
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Early secondary platforms won by solving around company resistance. Forge used forward contracts to give sellers cash before actual shares could transfer, while EquityZen used fund structures to keep many buyers off the cap table. Those structures mattered most when the company was not actively organizing liquidity.
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Issuer controlled models change the basis of competition. Nasdaq Private Market and Carta built around tenders and periodic auctions where the company decides who can sell, who can buy, and how much stock trades. Carta framed this as fairer price discovery plus a training ground for public company disclosure and governance.
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Platforms still matter after issuer adoption, but for a different reason. Employee focused and investor focused products remain useful because many companies still cannot run broad programs for everyone, and smaller holders often need faster, lighter weight liquidity than a full tender process provides.
The market is moving toward software and service layers that plug directly into company approved liquidity programs. The winners are likely to look less like gray market brokers and more like private market infrastructure, combining issuer sales, buyer networks, transfer operations, and structured recurring auctions into one repeatable system.