Software-enabled private secondary markets
Noel Moldvai and Adam Crawley, co-founders of Augment, on software-enabled secondaries markets
The core bet is that secondaries can scale only if the messy middle of a deal becomes software, not labor. In private stock, matching a buyer and seller is only the first step. The slow part is KYC, issuer notice, ROFR handling, transfer-agent coordination, and closing documents. Augment is trying to turn those steps from broker work, emails, and PDFs into product workflows, which lowers cost and lets volume grow without hiring a large brokerage team.
-
Older platforms often grew by adding brokers, or by running episodic issuer controlled tenders. Augment is aiming at the gap in between, a standing workflow where investors, shareholders, and independent brokers can post orders, negotiate, and move toward signed agreements inside one system.
-
That matters because execution is where private trades usually stall. Transfer restrictions vary by company, closing can take weeks or months, and brokers still juggle spreadsheets, CRM records, PDFs, and email. If software handles notice, matching, and closing steps, deal failure drops and commissions can compress.
-
It also explains why Augment seeded the network with independent broker dealers. Those brokers already carry institutional flow, but their economics are getting squeezed on closed platforms. Giving them software to manage books, clients, KYC, and execution is a faster wedge than trying to win liquidity one employee seller at a time.
The market is heading toward more specialized stacks, with issuer tools, broker tools, and investor interfaces connecting rather than one firm owning everything. If Augment can make execution feel closer to a modern trading workflow, it moves from being another venue for listings to becoming infrastructure the broader secondary market runs on.