Disclosures drive private market liquidity
Dan Akivis, senior associate at Expansion VC, on selling secondary and managing LP relationships
The real bottleneck in private market liquidity is not clicking buy or sell, it is getting enough trusted information for someone to underwrite an unfamiliar company. Most secondary platforms already handle listing and paperwork, but buyers still need to understand basics like revenue shape, cap table, preference stack, and why the seller is selling. Without that, platforms become storefronts for people who already know the name, not true markets that create new demand.
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Issuer centric platforms try to solve this by pairing execution with disclosures. Carta argued that serious buyers need data like fully diluted share count, preference stack, cap table history, and company approved disclosures, because opaque brokered trades leave investors guessing.
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Marketplace models like Forge and EquityZen are strongest when the buyer already wants exposure and just needs a compliant way to transact. They help smaller holders sell and smaller investors buy, but research across the market still finds that software has not displaced the broker driven, relationship driven system.
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This is why information rights are weaker than they sound. In practice, a buyer may technically get rights but still depend on the company choosing to share updates. That keeps the best informed buyers close to issuers and leaves unfamiliar names with thin liquidity, wider discounts, and fewer natural bidders.
The platforms that win from here will look less like listing sites and more like structured private market infrastructure, combining company approved disclosures, repeat trading windows, and cleaner buyer education. That is what turns scattered curiosity into recurring liquidity, especially for lesser known companies that cannot rely on brand alone to pull buyers in.