Carta Quarterly Liquidity Strategy
Charly Kevers, CFO at Carta, on progressive price discovery and investor relations
Quarterly liquidity turns employee equity from a surprise payout into a repeatable compensation system. The point is not just more chances to sell. It is lower pressure per event, better pricing behavior, and a cleaner signal for management about what the stock is actually worth. Carta had been doing tenders every 12 to 18 months, and Kevers framed the move to quarterly events as a way to remove the one shot mentality that makes employees either rush to sell or hold out unrealistically.
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In episodic tenders, employees often act like this may be the only window for a long time, so they push for a high price or skip the sale. In Carta data across 64 tenders, participation averaged 37%, and more underpriced tenders saw lower employee participation. More frequent windows reduce that pressure and make selling smaller amounts over time more rational.
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For management, recurring trades are also a valuation tool. Kevers ties market based pricing to recruiting, M&A, debt with warrants, and pre IPO preparation, because a recent trading price is more useful than pointing to a financing round from one or two years ago. The broader liquidity research makes the same point, using Spotify’s quarterly pre direct listing trades as the clearest example.
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This only works if liquidity is structured and issuer controlled. Carta’s edge was never an open exchange first. It was owning the cap table system of record, then using that data to run cleaner tender offers and transfers. Later discussion around Carta’s retreat from direct brokering reinforces why cadence and predictability matter more than turning private stock into nonstop free trading.
The likely direction is a middle state between private and public, where late stage companies run regular, controlled liquidity windows and gradually build disclosure habits before any IPO. That makes equity more usable for employees, gives CFOs a live price to work from, and lets companies stay private longer without letting liquidity pressure build into a crisis.