Companies Creating Custom Private Markets
Alessandro Chesser, former VP of Sales at Carta, on the dynamics of CartaX auctions and preparing for liquidity
CartaX was trying to turn private stock from an occasional special event into a company run market with standing rules. Instead of waiting for a one off tender tied to a financing, the issuer could decide who was allowed in, how much stock could trade, how often auctions happened, what information buyers saw, and then settle trades directly against the cap table. That makes liquidity a product the company operates, not a brokered exception.
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The real advantage came from Carta already being the system of record. Because the cap table, transfer restrictions, shareholder history, and tax holding periods already lived on platform, a company could run repeat auctions with less manual legal and back office work than a traditional tender offer.
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This is different from Forge or EquityZen style secondary sales. Those markets help match buyers and sellers for individual blocks of stock. CartaX was issuer centric. The company chose the buyers, set seller eligibility, controlled disclosures, and used recurring auctions to get price discovery without opening the cap table to everyone.
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The strategic goal was not just employee liquidity. Regular auctions gave CFOs a live market price they could use in recruiting, M&A, debt warrants, and eventual IPO prep. Quarterly trading also trained companies to behave more like public companies, with repeat disclosures and investor communication, before actually listing.
The long arc points toward more private companies acting like lightly traded public companies before an IPO. The winners will be the platforms that combine clean cap table infrastructure, issuer control, and enough investor demand to make repeat trading credible. That is the bridge from illiquid startup equity to a real private market.