Distribution Determines Private Deal Access
Ben Haber, CEO of Monark, on building the DTCC for the private markets
Access to top private deals is mostly a distribution game, not a discovery game. The issuers that own scarce names like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Stripe want large pools of qualified demand, simple compliance, and placement across many brokerages at once. Small direct-to-consumer platforms usually cannot promise that, so the strongest assets flow to scaled networks and the leftovers are more likely to appear on standalone retail apps.
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Monark is built around that bottleneck. Instead of signing up retail users one by one, it plugs into brokerages and wealth platforms, lets investors buy private assets from existing account balances, and then sells issuers on one integration that reaches many distribution endpoints.
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The same pattern shows up in incumbents. iCapital scaled by becoming the rails for private funds across wealth channels, while Forge built institutional depth, price data, and large block trading. Both win because supply follows platforms that can aggregate serious capital and operational trust.
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This is why many democratization stories drift upmarket. When customer acquisition is expensive and good supply is scarce, platforms chase larger accounts and higher minimums. In pre-IPO specifically, even SPV structure limits push minimum checks higher, which further concentrates the best deals among wealthier investors.
The market is heading toward private assets being embedded inside the main brokerage and advisor stack, not scattered across niche apps. As distribution networks get denser and product wrappers get more standardized, the platforms that control pooled demand will keep winning access, and asset quality should improve for investors who enter private markets through those larger pipes.