Issuer versus seller-centric liquidity platforms
The Startup Recurring Liquidity Calculator
The key divide in end to end liquidity is not just who offers liquidity, but which side of the market they are designed to satisfy first. Nasdaq Private Market and Carta start from the issuer’s problem, keeping the cap table controlled while running structured programs, while Forge starts from the seller and buyer workflow, helping blocks get matched and settled even outside company run events. That is why the products split along company size, valuation, and auction versus tender mechanics.
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Nasdaq Private Market is built for issuer controlled programs. It had run programs for 200 plus private companies and 85 unicorns, with $4.8B across 87 secondary programs in 2019. It works for companies ranging from smaller employee liquidity cases to pre IPO price discovery, but investors still participate only by issuer invitation.
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Carta’s edge is vertical integration. Because the cap table already lives in Carta, it can invite eligible sellers, reconcile ownership records, and complete transfers with less manual work. CartaX was designed to extend that into recurring auction style liquidity, with events as often as quarterly instead of the one off cadence typical of tender offers.
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Forge sits closer to an institutional marketplace. It uses larger minimum transaction sizes, around $100,000, and tools like forward contracts to help investors and employees trade even when issuers are not running a formal program. That makes it useful for off cycle block sales, but less naturally suited to issuer managed recurring liquidity at company wide scale.
Going forward, the winners in recurring liquidity will look less like one universal exchange and more like a stack. Issuer centric systems will own policy, approvals, and cap table control, while broker and marketplace style networks will keep supplying demand and execution. As more late stage companies stay private longer, auctions should grow where price discovery matters most, while tender offers remain the default for simpler, tightly managed programs.