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>Zanbato raised $20.5M in a Series C round in February 2021, with J.P. Morgan participating as a strategic investor.</li><li>The platform connects over 100 broker-dealer trading desks, enabling them to post buy and sell orders for pre-IPO and late-stage private company shares.</li><li>The business model relies on network effects, where an increase in broker-dealers on the platform enhances liquidity pools, attracting more institutional participants.</li></ul>

Zanbato raised $20.5M in a Series C round in February 2021, with J.P. Morgan participating as a strategic investor.The platform connects over 100 broker-dealer trading desks, enabling them to post buy and sell orders for pre-IPO and late-stage private company shares.The business model relies on network effects, where an increase in broker-dealers on the platform enhances liquidity pools, attracting more institutional participants.

<ul><li>Sacra estimates that Augment hit $10M in annual revenue run rate in October 2025, reaching profitability within 18 months of launch.</li><li>For issuers, Augment provides a compliance console that allows companies to approve or deny participants, batch-sign transfer documents, and embed custom terms like volume caps or trading blackout periods.</li><li>Augment raised a $12M Series A in October 2025 led by Builders VC, with participation from Neo, Golden Section, E1 Ventures, Corp Capital, and OPCO Ventures.</li></ul>

Sacra estimates that Augment hit $10M in annual revenue run rate in October 2025, reaching profitability within 18 months of launch.For issuers, Augment provides a compliance console that allows companies to approve or deny participants, batch-sign transfer documents, and embed custom terms like volume caps or trading blackout periods.Augment raised a $12M Series A in October 2025 led by Builders VC, with participation from Neo, Golden Section, E1 Ventures, Corp Capital, and OPCO Ventures.

<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

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Platform enabling retail investors to access tokenized equity in high-growth private companies with investments starting from $10

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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

Primer: Zanbato - 07 Dec 2025

Marketplace for institutional investors to trade private company stock via broker-dealers

Sacra

Primer: Augment - 02 Dec 2025

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

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

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