Blog Archives

Of the private companies trading on secondary markets, how much of those companies’ stock is available through the secondary market?

On average…none.

The secondary market for private company stock is brand new, and so nascent that it is virtually nonexistent.

For a very brief time, when Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga were still private, there was a quick flurry of private secondary sales through platforms like SecondMarket and SharesPost. But there was much, much, much more smoke than fire, and

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What are the regulatory barriers preventing the emergence of a liquid market for equity in seed stage startups?

Parts of the answer are that (a) there are enormous regulatory requirements relating to secondary markets, and (b) there are no analysts tracking private company stocks.

But by far the biggest issue is that the very essence of public markets (and what makes them “public”) is that the SEC mandates an enormous amount of transparency, including complete quarterly financial statements,

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