Vested Piggybacks on VC Due Diligence
Dave Thornton, co-founder of Vested, on unlocking startup employee equity
This reveals that Vested is underwriting the company category more than the individual company. Instead of trying to get internal financials from every startup, it uses a simpler filter, recent backing from credible venture firms as a first proof that someone with information rights already checked the business, then screens out obvious trouble signs like down rounds, weak financing terms, or unusual seller behavior. That lets it fund many small option exercises across early and mid-stage startups without building a full analyst team.
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This is the opposite of deep single name diligence. Vested describes itself as avoiding losers rather than picking winners, then relying on diversification and price across a large spread of deals. That is why it can serve smaller checks and earlier companies that traditional secondary buyers often skip.
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The market structure makes this logic practical. Private stock buyers usually face weak access to company data, transfer restrictions, and long closing cycles. Many platforms solve this by working directly with issuers or by focusing on later stage names with more public information. Vested instead uses VC backing as an outside signal and works from the employee side.
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That also explains Vested's place in the ecosystem. Larger players like Secfi or Quid tend to do heavier diligence and pursue bigger deals in later stage companies, while issuer centric platforms like Nasdaq Private Market and Carta run company managed liquidity events. Vested fits the smaller, earlier, employee financing gap between those models.
The model should get stronger as private liquidity becomes more standardized. If startup employees keep needing fast funding inside short post-termination windows, the winners in this segment will be the firms that can turn outside market signals, VC sponsorship, pricing, and workflow automation into repeatable underwriting at scale.