EquityZen Democratizes Private Secondaries

Lower minimums are not just a marketing tactic, they are EquityZen’s way of turning a thin institutional market into a broader consumer and wealth market. By wrapping private shares in pooled funds, EquityZen can let an accredited investor write a $5,000 check instead of waiting until they can commit $100,000 or more to a single line item. That matters because private secondaries are naturally fragmented, with many small sellers and uneven buyer demand, so more small buyers make more deals clear and more inventory tradable.

• The fund structure is what makes the lower minimum practical. EquityZen aggregates many investors into one LLC that appears as a single holder on the issuer’s cap table, which keeps the company from dealing with dozens or hundreds of tiny new shareholders while still widening access on the buy side.
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• Competitors have historically skewed more institutional. Forge moved toward larger transactions and institutional desks, with a $100,000 minimum transaction size in earlier market design, while issuer led platforms like Nasdaq Private Market and Carta are built around controlled tenders rather than frequent small check investor access.
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• This broader buyer base feeds the marketplace flywheel. EquityZen’s recent mix is roughly two thirds individual activity and one third institutional, and the company’s long term view is that matching institutions with smaller accredited investors improves execution by stitching together big blocks with many smaller orders.
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The direction of travel is toward lower minimums, more standardized vehicles, and a much larger pool of self directed accredited buyers. If EquityZen keeps shrinking ticket sizes without losing issuer trust or compliance discipline, it can own the part of private markets that looks less like bespoke brokerage and more like scaled access infrastructure for pre IPO investing.