Ad Hoc Trading Drives Liquidity

The real engine of private share liquidity is ad hoc, holder driven trading, not the formal tender window. Structured programs help a company set guardrails, pick buyers, and create a visible price point, but many sellers wait for their own moment, when they need cash, like for a house, taxes, or fund distributions, and then try to sell the amount they want at the best price they can get.

• Programs are built for company goals first. They are often used to reward employees, reduce cap table mess, or create price discovery ahead of an IPO. Nasdaq Private Market processed $4.8B across 87 programs in 2019, but those events are narrow by design, with set timing, set buyers, and issuer control.
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• Off program trades persist because seller needs are uneven. Early employees may want to sell $50,000 for life expenses, while venture funds may want to sell to return capital to LPs. Those transactions rarely line up neatly with a once a year company run event, so volume leaks into bilateral and brokered deals between windows.
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• This is why the market keeps splitting by workflow. Issuer centric platforms like Nasdaq Private Market and Carta are built for controlled tenders. Marketplaces like EquityZen and Forge handle smaller and in between transactions. Broker networks remain important for large institutional blocks that need high touch execution.
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The market is heading toward a mixed model where companies keep running structured programs, but continuous secondary rails handle most day to day demand. The winning platforms will be the ones that let issuers keep control while also making off cycle trades easier, faster, and cleaner, because that is where the bulk of real shareholder demand shows up.