Founders Reduce Banker Dependence
Ani Banerjee, co-founder of Andromeda Group, on secondary diligence and companies staying private
This shift says founders increasingly want markets for their stock to behave more like software and less like old line banking. In practice, that means replacing banker led allocation, where a small circle decides who gets shares and at what price, with issuer controlled tenders and structured secondary trading that create a visible price history, let employees sell in measured amounts, and give companies more control over who joins the cap table and when.
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The core complaint is not that banks add no value. It is that underwriting, marketing, and price support come bundled with discretion over allocations. Founders can feel underpriced when banks place stock with favored buy side clients, especially in IPOs and tender offers.
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Secondary platforms emerged to unbundle that process. Issuer centric products from Nasdaq Private Market and Carta were built to let companies pick eligible buyers, manage transfers, and run repeat liquidity events. That is a very different workflow from a broker shopping blocks around by phone and email.
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The strategic backdrop is companies staying private longer. Once a startup is worth billions, it needs ways to refresh the cap table, give employees partial liquidity, and establish price discovery before a direct listing. That makes banker dependence look less necessary than it did in an earlier era.
Where this heads is toward a more hybrid market structure. The strongest private companies will keep borrowing pieces of the public market, like recurring trading windows and broader price discovery, without fully handing control to banks until they have to. That shifts power toward company run liquidity programs, secondary platforms, and investors who can act as long term counterparties instead of transaction intermediaries.