Monark's Pre-IPO Wedge Strategy
Ben Haber, CEO of Monark, on building the DTCC for the private markets
Pre-IPO is the hook because it gives brokerages something rare, a private market product that retail investors already know they want. Monark is not starting with abstract fund exposure or long tail alternatives. It is starting with a handful of famous private companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Stripe that can get users to click, learn, and fund an order inside the brokerage app they already use. This makes pre-IPO the fastest way to prove demand and justify a full private markets integration.
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The wedge works on both sides of Monark's business. In sales, pre-IPO helps convince brokerages to add private markets because clients recognize the names. In activation, those same names help the brokerage turn investor curiosity into first deposits and trades.
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The economics are much stronger than public stock trading. Monark says private securities often carry about a 5% upfront fee, with brokerages keeping roughly 2% to 3% after sharing economics. That is far richer than near zero commission public equity trading, so a popular pre-IPO offering can be both a customer acquisition tool and a profit center.
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Pre-IPO is also a bridge product, not the endpoint. After a platform launches with single name SPVs that sell on brand, Monark can add evergreen private funds from firms like Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo, which are easier to keep open continuously and better for diversified exposure. Robinhood's 2025 and 2026 launches around private company exposure show how mainstream brokerages are moving in the same direction.
This points to a broader shift where pre-IPO becomes the consumer facing entry point for a much bigger private markets stack. As large brokerages and wealth platforms keep adding private company exposure, the winning infrastructure providers will be the ones that use marquee names to open the door, then expand into funds, custody, reporting, and secondary trading once investors are inside.