Secondaries versus Option Financing

The real competition is not over who helps employees sell stock, it is over who solves the employee cash problem with the least friction. EquityZen turns vested shares into liquidity by pooling investors into an LLC that sits on the cap table and waits for an exit. Secfi and EquityBee usually step in earlier, when an employee has options to exercise but not enough cash for the strike price and taxes, so the employee can keep upside instead of selling shares outright.

• EquityZen is built around secondary sales. In its standard flow, a shareholder sells liquidity rights into an EquityZen vehicle, the company sees one fund on the cap table, and investors buy into that vehicle with minimum checks as low as $10,000. That structure is designed to make small employee sales workable.
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• Secfi and similar option financing firms use a different instrument. They fund the exercise of employee options, often through loans or forward style structures, so the employee can acquire shares and defer the actual cash out event. That makes them most useful when the problem is paying to exercise, not finding a buyer for stock already owned.
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• The two models can be complements. Research across the market shows employees may first compare what they could get by selling shares on a marketplace like EquityZen versus keeping exposure and financing the exercise through a provider like Secfi or EquityBee. The choice depends on whether the employee wants immediate cash or continued upside.
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The market is heading toward a stack of specialized liquidity tools rather than one winner. As companies stay private longer, employees will increasingly use marketplaces for partial sales, tenders for scheduled liquidity, and option financing when they want to hold instead of sell. The platforms that win will be the ones that fit cleanly into that workflow and reduce legal and cap table friction.