Company-Led Liquidity Fuels Zanbato
Zanbato
Company led liquidity would push Zanbato up the value chain from being a routing network for brokers to being a tool that CFOs use to solve a real operating problem, employee retention and cap table management. That matters because late stage companies increasingly want to let employees and early investors sell in controlled windows, and those programs create repeat workflows, issuer relationships, and price data that can feed Zanbato’s existing institutional trading network.
-
Zanbato already sits in large institutional blocks. Between 2017 and 2020 it processed more than $29B of orders across 500 plus issuers, with average order size of $14M. Adding structured issuer programs would let it capture smaller, more frequent flows without abandoning its broker first model.
-
The closest comparables show why this is attractive. Nasdaq Private Market built around issuer controlled programs and did $4.8B of 2019 volume across 87 programs, while Carta’s tender offer business grew past $1B a year by using cap table software to make company run liquidity easier.
-
Recurring liquidity changes employee behavior. In episodic tenders, workers treat one sale as their only shot and either hold out for a high price or rush to sell. More regular windows reduce that pressure, improve recruiting, and give companies fresher market prices to use in fundraising, M&A, and pre IPO preparation.
The market is moving toward hybrid models where private companies want both issuer control and institutional depth. If Zanbato can package periodic tenders or trading windows for companies, it can become part marketplace, part issuer infrastructure, and turn one off secondary trades into an ongoing customer relationship with both the company and the brokers around it.