Private Markets, Angel and Secondary Investing, Sacra

Sacra

Private Markets, Angel and Secondary Investing

Bringing transparency to private markets so investors, founders, and employees can build on conviction. Sacra delivers deeply researched insights on the private companies shaping tomorrow's markets. By surfacing the data, context, and operator perspective that are missing from private markets today, we help secondary buyers and sellers price equity accurately and unlock liquidity for the people building these businesses.

Private Capital Markets

<ul><li>We recently caught up with Noel to discuss Augment's growth to now $750M in AUM and its vision for building the Robinhood for private markets.</li><li>Matching marketplaces still see ~50% of deals fail due to company ROFRs, transfer restrictions, and non-responsive issuers, pushing platforms toward a principal-trading model where they buy shares directly from sellers, warehouse them in SPVs, and resell slices to investors with instant settlement, no company approval, and retail-accessible minimums.</li><li>Consolidation by big banks and wealth management platforms—Morgan Stanley acquiring EquityZen, Charles Schwab acquiring Forge, and Goldman Sachs acquiring Industry Ventures—brings more participants into the ecosystem and creates an opening for those that stay independent to build direct-to-consumer brands and serve the broader retail market.</li></ul>

We recently caught up with Noel to discuss Augment's growth to now $750M in AUM and its vision for building the Robinhood for private markets.Matching marketplaces still see ~50% of deals fail due to company ROFRs, transfer restrictions, and non-responsive issuers, pushing platforms toward a principal-trading model where they buy shares directly from sellers, warehouse them in SPVs, and resell slices to investors with instant settlement, no company approval, and retail-accessible minimums.Consolidation by big banks and wealth management platforms—Morgan Stanley acquiring EquityZen, Charles Schwab acquiring Forge, and Goldman Sachs acquiring Industry Ventures—brings more participants into the ecosystem and creates an opening for those that stay independent to build direct-to-consumer brands and serve the broader retail market.

Noel Moldvai, CEO Of Augment, On Building The Robinhood For Private Markets

<ul><li>During 2017-2018, initial coin offerings (ICOs) showed extreme product-market fit for capital formation but failed investors by severing economic rights from company performance through "utility token" gymnastics needed to dodge securities law, leaving token holders with no claim on revenue &amp; inspiring today&#39;s tokenized private &amp; public stock securities to focus on delivering economic rights under existing regulations like Reg D and Reg S.</li><li>Just as millennial demand drove Robinhood to fractionalize Tesla and Apple shares, millennial HENRYs with disposable income but sub-accredited net worth are now demanding fractional SpaceX and Stripe ownership—but in most cases, the most democratic and accessible option available to them is 3rd and 4th-layer SPVs that come with smaller minimum ticket sizes but increased risk &amp; far higher costs.</li><li>With Robinhood and Kraken already live with 24/7 tokenized Tesla and Apple trading, and Nasdaq announcing plans to tokenize its entire public market by 2025, the endgame isn&#39;t a separate category of "blockchain-based securities" but blockchain becoming invisible settlement infrastructure, the same way Venmo users don&#39;t think about ACH.</li></ul>

During 2017-2018, initial coin offerings (ICOs) showed extreme product-market fit for capital formation but failed investors by severing economic rights from company performance through "utility token" gymnastics needed to dodge securities law, leaving token holders with no claim on revenue &amp; inspiring today&#39;s tokenized private &amp; public stock securities to focus on delivering economic rights under existing regulations like Reg D and Reg S.Just as millennial demand drove Robinhood to fractionalize Tesla and Apple shares, millennial HENRYs with disposable income but sub-accredited net worth are now demanding fractional SpaceX and Stripe ownership—but in most cases, the most democratic and accessible option available to them is 3rd and 4th-layer SPVs that come with smaller minimum ticket sizes but increased risk &amp; far higher costs.With Robinhood and Kraken already live with 24/7 tokenized Tesla and Apple trading, and Nasdaq announcing plans to tokenize its entire public market by 2025, the endgame isn&#39;t a separate category of "blockchain-based securities" but blockchain becoming invisible settlement infrastructure, the same way Venmo users don&#39;t think about ACH.

Han Qin, co-founder & CEO Of Jarsy, On The Rise Of Fractional pre-IPO Investing

<ul><li>When Robinhood (founded 2012) popularized zero-commission stock trading funded by payment-for-order-flow (PFOF), it pushed Schwab, Fidelity, and TD Ameritrade to give up their lucrative $5-10 per-trade stock commissions—today, private alternative assets like pre-IPO stocks, private equity funds & real estate give brokerages a new source of high-margin, 2-3% commission revenue.</li><li>Alternative asset infrastructure companies for pre-IPO (Monark, Zanbato), private credit (iCapital), and crypto (Alpaca) are selling 1) into brokerage-as-a-service providers like ViewTrade as white-labeled APIs, and 2) as product features directly integrated into consumer-facing brokerages & wealth management apps like SoFi and eToro.</li><li>With $14 trillion in new AUM potentially unlocked by Trump's August 2025 executive order paving the way for 401(k) plans to include crypto & other private assets, Schwab, SoFi, and Robinhood are preparing to bundle up pre-IPO stock and other alternative assets onto their platforms to maximize wallet share.</li></ul>

When Robinhood (founded 2012) popularized zero-commission stock trading funded by payment-for-order-flow (PFOF), it pushed Schwab, Fidelity, and TD Ameritrade to give up their lucrative $5-10 per-trade stock commissions—today, private alternative assets like pre-IPO stocks, private equity funds & real estate give brokerages a new source of high-margin, 2-3% commission revenue.Alternative asset infrastructure companies for pre-IPO (Monark, Zanbato), private credit (iCapital), and crypto (Alpaca) are selling 1) into brokerage-as-a-service providers like ViewTrade as white-labeled APIs, and 2) as product features directly integrated into consumer-facing brokerages & wealth management apps like SoFi and eToro.With $14 trillion in new AUM potentially unlocked by Trump's August 2025 executive order paving the way for 401(k) plans to include crypto & other private assets, Schwab, SoFi, and Robinhood are preparing to bundle up pre-IPO stock and other alternative assets onto their platforms to maximize wallet share.

Ben Haber, CEO Of Monark, On Building The DTCC For The Private Markets

<ul><li>Over the last decade, we’ve gone from 90% of companies blocking secondaries to 10% as both employees and VCs increasingly seek liquidity—with VCs now accounting for roughly a third of all secondary volume as they sell down stakes to return capital to LPs.</li><li>Fragmentation in the marketplace—with supply-and-demand splintering between individuals &amp; institutions and through overlapping layers of SPVs and brokers—has become the biggest bottleneck on liquidity in the secondary market today, distorting signals around price and creating confusion for buyers, sellers, and issuers alike.</li><li>As programmatic trading added liquidity to public markets in the early 2000s, private secondary markets like EquityZen are unlocking liquidity by breaking the dichotomy between institutional investors and accredited retail investors, stitching together institutional blocks with individual orders and turning fragmented supply and demand into executable flow.</li></ul>

Over the last decade, we’ve gone from 90% of companies blocking secondaries to 10% as both employees and VCs increasingly seek liquidity—with VCs now accounting for roughly a third of all secondary volume as they sell down stakes to return capital to LPs.Fragmentation in the marketplace—with supply-and-demand splintering between individuals &amp; institutions and through overlapping layers of SPVs and brokers—has become the biggest bottleneck on liquidity in the secondary market today, distorting signals around price and creating confusion for buyers, sellers, and issuers alike.As programmatic trading added liquidity to public markets in the early 2000s, private secondary markets like EquityZen are unlocking liquidity by breaking the dichotomy between institutional investors and accredited retail investors, stitching together institutional blocks with individual orders and turning fragmented supply and demand into executable flow.

Atish Davda, CEO Of EquityZen, On The Biggest Bottleneck In The Secondary Markets

<ul><li>The EU loosening restrictions on on-chain stock trading and the SEC signalling its new-found enthusiasm for tokenization, along with more consumer-friendly crypto wallet UX and now near-zero transaction fees on Solana & Ethereum, have kicked off the tokenization of equities—starting with public companies, with Coinbase & Kraken launching always-on, fractional blockchain versions of Apple and Tesla stock that can be traded 24/7 outside of the U.S.</li><li>To tokenize private stock, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) buys up the underlying shares of e.g. OpenAI or Canva—or acquires an interest in an SPV that does—and then a blockchain token is issued that represents a proportional, non-voting interest in that SPV, enabling investors to get exposure to private stocks without needing issuer cap-table approval.</li><li>With different approaches fragmenting along regulatory regimes and blockchains, Republic operates in the US under Reg CF rules that cap investments at $5K and enforce a year-long lockup, while in Europe, Robinhood’s tokens (under MiFID-II) trade only on Robinhood’s L2 blockchain and can’t be traded to other wallets or platforms, while PreStocks’s Solana tokens (under Reg S) can flow into any Solana exchange, wallet, or DeFi app.</li></ul>

The EU loosening restrictions on on-chain stock trading and the SEC signalling its new-found enthusiasm for tokenization, along with more consumer-friendly crypto wallet UX and now near-zero transaction fees on Solana & Ethereum, have kicked off the tokenization of equities—starting with public companies, with Coinbase & Kraken launching always-on, fractional blockchain versions of Apple and Tesla stock that can be traded 24/7 outside of the U.S.To tokenize private stock, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) buys up the underlying shares of e.g. OpenAI or Canva—or acquires an interest in an SPV that does—and then a blockchain token is issued that represents a proportional, non-voting interest in that SPV, enabling investors to get exposure to private stocks without needing issuer cap-table approval.With different approaches fragmenting along regulatory regimes and blockchains, Republic operates in the US under Reg CF rules that cap investments at $5K and enforce a year-long lockup, while in Europe, Robinhood’s tokens (under MiFID-II) trade only on Robinhood’s L2 blockchain and can’t be traded to other wallets or platforms, while PreStocks’s Solana tokens (under Reg S) can flow into any Solana exchange, wallet, or DeFi app.

Xavier Ekkel, Founder Of PreStocks, On 24/7 Tokenized pre-IPO Stock

United States

Marketplace and software suite for trading private company shares across brokers and investors

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Augment (AUGMENT US)

Noel Moldvai, CEO Of Augment, On Building The Robinhood For Private Markets

You were just starting Augment in the early stages when we last spoke in 2023. Can you talk us through the last two years and what the key...

Sacra

Han Qin, co-founder & CEO Of Jarsy, On The Rise Of Fractional pre-IPO Investing

What is Jarsy in short? What inspired you to start the company...

Sacra

Ben Haber, CEO Of Monark, On Building The DTCC For The Private Markets

What is Monark in short? What was the founding insight and how did you get inspired to start it...

Sacra

Atish Davda, CEO Of EquityZen, On The Biggest Bottleneck In The Secondary Markets

You started EquityZen back in 2013, just after the eruption of secondary market activity around pre-IPO Facebook. What was the original insight...

Sacra

Xavier Ekkel, Founder Of PreStocks, On 24/7 Tokenized pre-IPO Stock

Before PreStocks, you were a software engineer at Canva. Did your experience at Canva inspire you to start PreStocks...

Sacra

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