Keep pulling the thread on Mark Zuckerberg.
The secondary market for private company stock has reached record volume, doubling the peak seen in 2021.
Employee secondary transactions in companies like Anduril, Anthropic, and SpaceX are projected to represent 31% of all primary venture capital activity in 2025.
Secondary markets are now a principal exit strategy for venture-backed companies, competing with traditional IPOs and acquisitions.
As of Q1, shares in the secondary market for private companies are trading at a 6% premium to their last funding round valuation, a reversal from previous years when they traded at discounts like 80 cents on the dollar.
The acquisition of Forge by Schwab signals to the market that private company equity is a real asset class.
Forge plans to add Schwab's 46 million investors to its platform, which currently has about 3 million investors.
New financial products, such as interval funds from firms like Robinhood, are being created to allow unaccredited investors to invest in portfolios of private companies like SpaceX with minimums as low as $500.
Gavin Baker believes venture capital firms that lack significant exposure to trillion-dollar private companies will struggle to generate good returns and DPI.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in new late-stage investment demand is expected to enter the private markets as IPOs free up allocation buckets at long-only mutual funds.
Zipline's operations in Africa have reduced the maternal mortality rate by 90-95% in some regions by delivering refrigerated medical supplies via drone.
The private market AI basket, which includes 19 companies, has seen an average growth of 300%.
Gavin Baker believes that founders choose to keep their companies private for longer primarily to avoid the scrutiny of public markets.