Aggregation Needed in Secondaries Markets
Noel Moldvai and Adam Crawley, co-founders of Augment, on software-enabled secondaries markets
The key point is that private secondaries still operate like a patchwork of narrow tools, not a single market. One platform may be good for issuer run liquidity events, another for employee option financing, another for institutional blocks, and another for small accredited investors. That forces a seller or buyer to shop across venues, brokers, and financing providers, which reduces price transparency and slows execution.
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The market is segmented by customer and workflow. CartaX was built around issuer approved auctions and large institutional buyers. Augment described Sandhill and Hiive as smaller check venues, Secfi and EquityBee as option exercise and employee liquidity products, and Zanbato as institution focused. Each solves one job well, but not the whole trade path.
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That specialization creates real friction in practice. In Augment's earlier matching model, buyers and sellers could find each other, then still face ROFR delays, transfer restrictions, custom docs, and non responsive issuers. By 2026, Augment said about half of matched deals still failed, which shows how fragmentation is not just about discovery, but about closing.
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The strategic opening is to aggregate fragmented demand into one interface. Augment's answer is to combine order discovery, broker tooling, execution software, and later SPV based inventory, so an employee can check value, see live demand, compare financing options, and transact in one place instead of bouncing between specialist providers.
The market is heading toward a few hubs that combine distribution, execution, and inventory rather than just listing opportunities. As banks, wealth platforms, and specialist secondaries firms consolidate, the winners will be the ones that make private share trading feel like one continuous product instead of a chain of disconnected services.