Aadil Mamujee

Two of the most significant issues with private market investing are their inherent illiquidity and the unpredictable nature of exits. It means that you need to ‘invest and forget’ when investing in private markets, and is particularly true for angel investing. This problem also applies to equity based compensation for employees at startups, where employees are unable to realize value even when the business has increased in value.

I believed this problem will be solved over the next few years. There will be a number of new options for liquidity in the private markets and early stage investing is going to become even more attractive to even more people. I also think that the US government will make further relaxations to the accreditation rules that restrict investors from making certain investments based on their net worth or income (originally intended for their protection).

For late stage (pre-IPO) private companies there are a number of platforms (e.g. Forge, EquityZen) working on the liquidity problem, but very little is automated. Typically ‘blocks’ of equity become available either in secondary offerings (existing holders, like an early employee selling their stake) or when early investors have pro rata rights to a future fundraising round and can’t fill it themselves. I’ve used these platforms from a buyer’s perspective (and explored as a seller) and it’s all fairly manual right now, and the products are mostly a nice user interface. There are also more traditional alternatives like Setter Capital who don’t claim to be a technology platform.

In real estate, companies like Cadre are both providing access to large real estate projects to small investors (breaking up allocations into smaller chunks), and providing “windows” where investors on the platform can sell portions of their positions (every 6 months or so). This both increases the number of investors who can invest in the asset class (lower minimums) and improves the exit options for investors who would typically have to hold their equity position for 5-10 years.

In the future, I expect platforms like Carta and AngelList to lead the way in creating a true ‘marketplace’ for private securities. Carta just announced their new liquidity platform CartaX, a private stock exchange which is an awesome innovation launching in January 2021. It’s a natural extension of their business model, and I’m excited to try it out. Angellist will also continue to innovate, especially because of their SPV and fund offerings, as they hold a lot of private company stock (and have access to a lot of data).

There are some problems that need to be solved such as restrictions on employee stock, rights of first refusal and companies at the early stages desiring control of their cap table. I think these are all surmountable, and most of the trading will start with late stage private companies first, where these concerns are less relevant.

Overall, these developments make me even more excited to continue angel investing; as private company stock becomes more liquid, it’s value will increase (in addition to normal value creation through growth). Ultimately, it means that more investors will invest in private companies and they can have more of their capital ‘working’ (and need less of a cash buffer) because they know that there will be a liquid market in case they need the capital.