Administrative Support Enables Secondary Workflows
Andrea Walne, GP at Manhattan Venture Partners, on getting on the cap table
Administrative support is what turns secondaries from a nuisance into a company approved workflow. For issuers, the hard part is rarely finding buyer interest. It is managing transfer notices, cap table updates, ROFRs, tax treatment, 409A sensitivity, and legal review without pulling finance and legal teams off higher value work. The secondary players that win are the ones that absorb that operational load while keeping the company at arm's length from pricing and market making.
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This is why issuer centric platforms gained ground after the early Facebook era. Companies saw unmanaged trading as distracting and risky, then shifted toward partners that let them control participants and rules while outsourcing execution logistics that can otherwise take 3 to 6 months.
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The clearest product advantage is being the system of record. When the cap table already lives on the platform, it can reconcile ownership automatically, handle transfer agent work, preserve holding periods, and reduce manual work for finance, legal, and outside counsel.
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This also explains why companies tolerate some secondary activity but dislike direct brokering. They want liquidity for employees and early investors, but they do not want to look like they are setting the market price of their own stock. Low friction processing plus limited issuer involvement solves both problems at once.
Going forward, the strongest secondary infrastructure will look less like a marketplace shouting prices and more like software that quietly runs the plumbing. The firms that consolidate buyers, standardize paperwork, and make transfers feel routine will be the ones that get invited onto more cap tables and capture more of the market as private companies stay private longer.