Liquid Stock as Real Currency
Charly Kevers, CFO at Carta, on progressive price discovery and investor relations
Liquid stock turns equity from a delayed promise into an operating tool. For a CFO, that means stock can be used not just to pay employees, but to price acquisitions, refresh the cap table without issuing new shares, and anchor debt, warrants, and recruiting conversations to an observed market price instead of a stale round from a year or two ago. Regular liquidity also gives employees a predictable way to sell small amounts over time instead of waiting for a tender every 12 to 18 months.
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In the interview, the logic is very concrete. A recurring market gives Carta a current reference price it can point to in M&A, recruiting, and financing. That is why liquid stock acts like currency. It is easier to use shares in a transaction when both sides can see recent trades instead of debating a private mark set in the last fundraise.
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Tender offers solve liquidity only partially. Across 64 tenders totaling more than $3B, 83% were priced at or below the last round and average participation was 37%. That makes employees hesitant to sell, because a one time window at an old price often feels like giving up upside. More frequent trading can reduce that pressure and improve price discovery.
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This matters for cap table management as much as compensation. Late stage private companies use secondaries to move out early holders, bring in crossover or strategic investors, and avoid dilution from issuing new shares. Carta sits close to that workflow because its core product is the system of record for private company ownership and it had already built tender infrastructure on top of that base.
The next step is a middle ground between private and public, where mature startups run recurring liquidity, disclose on a steady cadence, and build a real pricing history before any IPO. In that world, the strongest private companies will look more like lightly traded public companies, and stock will increasingly function as real corporate currency long before a listing.