Interim Stage for Late-Stage Startups

The real shift is that late stage startups are starting to need some of the functions of public markets long before they want a public listing. Once a company is doing hundreds of millions in revenue, has a crowded cap table, and has employees who need cash for real life events, the old choice between fully private and fully public stops fitting. An in between stage gives companies controlled liquidity, recurring price discovery, and lighter disclosure without forcing the full quarterly earnings machine.

• This middle layer solves concrete cap table problems. Secondary sales let early employees and investors sell to new buyers without issuing more shares, which helps a company refresh who owns stock without taking dilution from a new primary round.
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• It also changes how compensation works. With recurring liquidity, employees can sell a small slice of vested stock each year instead of waiting a decade for an IPO, which makes private company equity feel more like cash compensation and improves recruiting and retention.
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• The market infrastructure is already moving this way. Forge and EquityZen serve employee and investor driven trades, while Nasdaq Private Market and Carta built issuer controlled programs. That split reflects demand for a stage that is more structured than startup equity, but still more controlled than public stock.
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The next step is not one giant private stock exchange. It is more companies acting like scaled, privately traded businesses, with regular liquidity windows, tighter investor updates, and clearer internal rules on who can sell and when. That turns secondaries from an exception into part of how mature private companies operate.