Thursday, July 28, 2016

Cashing out of Private Equity!!

Tech solutions are helping early unicorn investors cash out

If you were lucky enough to be an early investor in a startup unicorn like Airbnb (valued at $30 billion) or Uber ($60 billion-plus): Congrats, drinks are on you. For life. 

But like many of your fellow investors, you're probably ready to get at least some of your cash back, and that's a challenge these days. Thanks to the current IPO drought—there have been just three IPOs on U.S. soil so far this year—many investors (and founders) lack the means to sell their shares without calling a banker. 

Nasdaq's trading platform for private companies aims to solve that problem. Called Nasdaq Private Market, the platform has seen a brisk increase in trading volumes in 2016, logging $544 million in trades during the first six months of the year. Nearly half of that volume involved preferred stock, an indicator of investor activity. 

If IPO activity doesn't pick up soon, those numbers are likely to climb even higher.  

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