Zanbato's Broker-Driven Liquidity Moat

Zanbato’s moat is less about having a website with listings and more about becoming the default rail that brokers use when a large private stock trade needs to get done. Each added broker-dealer brings its own institutional buyers, sellers, and issuer relationships onto ZX, which raises the odds that a $14 million average block finds a match, improves price visibility from pooled order flow, and makes the next broker more likely to join.

• This network effect is broker first, not retail first. A hedge fund that wants Stripe shares works through its prime broker, then that broker uses ZX. More broker-dealers means more hidden inventory and more live demand in one place, which is what actually creates liquidity in private markets.
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• The private secondary market is fragmented because issuers want control, institutions want large blocks, and brokers still control many relationships. Zanbato leaned into that structure instead of trying to remove brokers, which is why market participants have described it as especially encompassing to the broker community.
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• More executed trades also strengthen Zanbato’s data products. Pooled transaction data lets it show pricing and demand curves for restricted stock, turning marketplace activity into analytics revenue. That creates a second flywheel, where liquidity produces data, and data makes the market easier to trust and use.
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The next phase is for private market venues to look more like core market infrastructure. If Zanbato keeps deepening broker participation, it can capture more of the large institutional flow, expand its data layer, and become harder to displace because the market will increasingly run through the network where the most serious counterparties already are.