Sacra Logo

What incentives exist for companies to voluntarily disclose financial information and how effective are liquidity incentives via platforms?

Hari Raghavan

Co-founder & CEO at AbstractOps

Yeah, I don't have a good answer for that. I have no problem having lots of strong opinions, but  I think it's just -- there are too many companies with too many different agendas and too many different moving pieces to know if there's one solution to do that. I think examples of why a given company might decide to have a certain approach is that -- I mean, I'm sure it was an element of coin basis decision. The fact that Brian Armstrong was an early employee at Airbnb. It gives you a certain amount of unique -- like, I don't know Brian personally, I don't have any insight into what the conversation or that room where that decision was made was like -- but I'm just reading between the lines.  I think having the next wave of founders be former early employees at early companies, at other really successful companies, is going to be a really important component of that.

I think another one is, again, the large law firms need to understand that regulating this away, it's just not going to happen . They're going to have to have a more holistic approach to this. I think another component is regulation probably will play a role. And I think another one that I really hope happens more and more is that early employees start forming -- I don't want to use the union word, but  they start forming a coalition of like, hey, you know, the most important constituency, the most sought after constituency at private companies, the most powerful constituency in the venture ecosystem is not venture capitalists, it's not founders, it's not  angels, it's employees, it's talent. And so if that's the case, some kind of shift where people start to understand that -- I actually think unions have their own problem  like in other ecosystems and stuff, like I'm not saying  change at-will employment, or I'm not changing collective bargaining rights and stuff like that -- but at the same time,  having a unified voice that says like, this is BS, we need this norm to change, is going to be a pretty important part of it. And finally, I think, the market will invent solutions.

And I think having the right solution come along at the right time, like the iron is hot and somebody needs to strike. And so figuring out the right solution that caters to as many of the constituencies as possible. It's really hard to predict what the tipping point for some of these things will be. And so I think it's more transparency, more adoption market-wide, more incentives changing, more people's perspectives evolving are all important components of it. I don't know what the one solution is going to be.

Find this answer in Hari Raghavan, ex-COO of Forge, on late-stage investing and facilitating secondary sales
lightningbolt_icon Unlocked Report