Secondary Market for Buying and Selling Private Company Stock and Employee Stock Options

Private Company Stock

Market Description

SecondMarket's Private Company Market facilitates transactions in both debt and equity securities in a wide variety of dynamic, high growth private companies. By some accounts, up to $200 billion has been invested in private companies by venture capital funds and angel investors over the past 5 years. The lack of a functioning IPO market and minimal M&A activity have left shareholders with few options for liquidity in these investments. Moreover, systemic problems facing companies wanting to go public, including lack of research sponsorship, requirements stemming from Sarbanes Oxley, etc., compound the problem of an IPO as an exit strategy. For those companies seeking to stay private, administrative burdens surrounding shareholder management and communication add to the pressing need for liquidity.

Through SecondMarket, private companies have the ability to opt-in to an organized and controlled private marketplace environment. This platform enables early investors and employee shareholders of private companies to exit their investments in cooperation with company management. SecondMarket affords companies with a set of robust tools, allowing streamlined shareholder communication and access to SecondMarket's market participants.

Mar 16 2010

Decision engine Hunch confirms $12M led by Khosla — deals.venturebeat.com

The search engine Hunch announced that it has raised a $12 million Series B round led by Khosla Ventures
Since its launch it ’07, Hunch has handled over 50 million queries
Hunch has now raised $19.2 million to date. Former FaceBook CFO and current partner at Khosla, Gideon Yu, will join Hunchs Board of Directors

Mar 15 2010

Incubator Betaworks raises $20M — deals.venturebeat.com

The NY based start-up incubator Betaworks has announced $20 million in new financing led by Intel
Betaworks has made 24 investments since inception including: Bit.ly, Tweetdeck and Twitterfeed
The firm had originally raised $8 million in financing in 2008. Other investors in the firm are RRE Ventures, Softbank, Founders Collective, DFJ Growth, AOL Ventures and the New York Times

Mar 8 2010

Adenyo lands $30M to expand mobile marketing platform globally — venturebeat.com

Mobile marketing company Adenyo announced today $30 million in funding
Genuity Capital markets added $17.2 million while $9.7 million came from private funding
The Company operates in three core services: mobile marketing and advertising, mobile storefronts and mobile analytics and metrics