Software first model for private secondaries
Noel Moldvai and Adam Crawley, co-founders of Augment, on software-enabled secondaries markets
The key difference was cost structure and workflow ownership. A traditional brokerage grows by hiring more brokers to chase leads, negotiate one deal at a time, and push paperwork through ROFRs, transfer restrictions, and issuer approvals. A software first model grows by turning those same steps into product, so users can see prices, message counterparties, submit orders, and move deals forward inside one system instead of through scattered emails, PDFs, and phone calls.
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The old model in private secondaries was mostly manual matching. SharesPost, SecondMarket, and later many other platforms still depended on brokers and services teams because trades often took 3 to 6 months and companies wanted control over buyers, sellers, and cap table changes.
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What software changes is not just matching, but execution. Augment describes automating order books, company notices, broker workflows, client portals, KYC, and eventually closing with issuers and transfer agents, which lets volume grow without adding headcount linearly.
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That puts Augment in a different lane from issuer centric tender platforms like Carta and Nasdaq Private Market, and from broker heavy marketplaces like earlier SharesPost. The bet is that better product can pull in brokers, investors, and shareholders at the same time, instead of serving just one side well.
The market is moving toward platforms that package messy private share transfers into repeatable software flows. The winners are likely to be the ones that turn secondaries from a relationship business with software attached into software products that still handle the regulatory and issuer complexity underneath.