In this session, Charlie O’Donnell of nextNYC sits down with Vishnu Boorla of Qapita for a 30-minute live session on how secondaries actually get done, when they make sense, how to structure them cleanly, and how to think about liquidity when nobody knows what anything is actually worth.
AI companies are raising at valuations that would have been considered a typo five years ago. Paper wealth is piling up faster than ever and so is the pressure to do something about it.
Which raises the uncomfortable question every founder, early employee, and angel holding hot company stock is quietly asking: Do I sell some now, or do I wait? Take chips off the table and you might be the unlucky goofball who sold at Anthropic's Series B. Hold everything and you might be the unlucky goofball who rode a bubble valuation all the way back down. There's no bell that rings at the top, there's just you, a cap table, and a decision.
Secondary sales are how that decision actually gets executed and they've gone from a whispered-about exception to a standard part of how private companies operate. But the mechanics are still confusing: Who's allowed to sell? At what price, when the last round's number may or may not be real? What does the board have to approve? What are the tax landmines? And what signal does it send when a founder takes money off the table?
Speakers:
Vishnu Boorla, Head of Product, Qapita
Moderated by Charlie O'Donnell of nextNYC.
Thanks to our sponsor Qapita for making this webinar possible!
Qapita is a global equity management platform that helps startups and scaleups manage cap tables, employee equity, and investor reporting with clarity and confidence. Trusted by companies from early stage through IPO, Qapita simplifies equity administration across jurisdictions while giving founders, finance teams, and investors a real-time view of ownership.