Augment as Coinbase for Private Tech
Noel Moldvai and Adam Crawley, co-founders of Augment, on software-enabled secondaries markets
The real bet is that private tech is maturing into an asset class that needs a default consumer gateway, not just a network of brokers and one off deals. Coinbase won by making a messy, trust heavy market feel simple, visible, and always available. Augment is aiming for the same shift in private stock, by aggregating orders, standardizing execution, and turning fragmented secondary trades into a repeatable product for institutions, employees, and eventually smaller investors.
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The analogy is less about crypto itself and more about market structure. In both markets, buyers want access to scarce assets, sellers want liquidity, and the old workflow runs through opaque intermediaries. Augment is trying to replace email threads, broker calls, and legal back and forth with software, order books, and standardized trade flow.
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Coinbase mattered because it concentrated liquidity and trust in one venue. Augment is pursuing the same center of gravity in VC backed tech by serving more constituencies than point solutions like tender platforms, employee financing firms, or institutional only desks. That matters because fragmented private markets produce weak price discovery and high failed trade rates.
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The biggest practical implication is that if private trading gets easier, companies can stay private longer without forcing employees and early investors to wait for an IPO. That shifts secondaries from an occasional pressure valve into core market infrastructure, closer to how public markets continuously clear ownership changes without the company raising new capital each time.
If this works, the winner in private tech secondaries will look less like a boutique broker and more like a high trust trading venue with embedded custody, execution, and distribution. The market should move toward more frequent trading, lower minimums, and a narrower gap between being a fast growing private company and a publicly traded one.