Unifying Private Secondaries Data
Noel Moldvai and Adam Crawley, co-founders of Augment, on software-enabled secondaries markets
The real moat in private secondaries is becoming the system where orders, execution, and pricing data all meet in one place. In this market, the hardest part is not just finding a buyer, it is knowing who is real, what similar blocks cleared at, and how to move from interest to signed paperwork without losing the deal. If every platform walls off its own data, the market stays opaque, spreads stay wide, and liquidity never compounds.
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Augment is trying to aggregate brokers, direct buyers, and sellers onto one order book, then use software to handle notice, matching, and closing. That makes data a byproduct of marketplace activity, not a separate product first. The strategic bet is that execution volume will create the most trusted pricing layer over time.
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This is the opposite of an issuer centric model like CartaX, where the company controls who sees liquidity and events happen in a more gated way. It is also different from institutional networks like Zanbato, where closed trade data can become a premium intelligence product for banks and brokers.
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The broader market has repeatedly split by constituency. Employee liquidity tools source sellers, issuer platforms run tenders, institutional venues serve large blocks, and broker networks sit in between. That specialization creates useful products, but it also means no single participant sees the full demand curve or the full history of comparable trades.
The next phase of private markets will be won by the platform that turns fragmented deal flow into shared market structure. If one venue can become the default place where brokers connect, issuers process transfers, and investors see reliable price signals, private company stock starts to behave less like bespoke paperwork and more like a real asset class.