Management time bottleneck in secondaries
Dan Akivis, senior associate at Expansion VC, on selling secondary and managing LP relationships
The real bottleneck in private secondaries is not finding a seller, it is getting management to spend time turning an unknown buyer into an informed one. Outside a financing or tender process, a CEO gets little in return for sharing updates, answering diligence questions, and approving a transfer that mainly helps one existing shareholder. That is why off cycle sales usually happen only in famous late stage names, or when a new buyer also brings capital, recruiting help, or clear strategic value.
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For smaller or lesser known companies, buyers cannot just pull an S 1, earnings release, or broad market data set. They often need management to explain basic things like revenue trend, burn, customer quality, and who else is on the cap table. Many teams will not do that work unless they are already running a round or organized liquidity event.
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This is why the market clusters around issuer led tenders and very late stage names. Internal research on private liquidity shows issuers want tight control over who gets onto the cap table, because investors may receive rights and information access. Dan Akivis describes the practical result, management is usually open in principle, but effectively says yes only if someone else has already done the hard work.
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New infrastructure is trying to remove that burden rather than change management behavior. SPVs, broker networks, and platforms like Sydecar, Forge, and EquityZen reduce transfer friction and aggregate demand, but they still do not fully solve the core problem, buyers need enough trustworthy company information to price risk without dragging management into a bespoke education process for each trade.
The next phase of private market liquidity will be won by systems that make off cycle buyers look less random to companies. That means standardized vehicles, cleaner investor qualification, and repeatable disclosure workflows. As those pieces improve, more venture funds will be able to sell earlier, return cash to LPs sooner, and treat secondary liquidity as a normal portfolio tool instead of a rare special event.