Earlyasset (Park City, UT) emerges from stealth with $2 million to address venture secondary liquidity constraints, building infrastructure to simplify private share transactions as $4 trillion in startup equity remains largely illiquid.
Park City, Utah — March 31, 2026
Earlyasset has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding as it comes out of stealth, targeting one of venture capital’s most persistent problems: liquidity.
The round was led by New Stack Ventures (Chicago), with participation from Cervin Ventures (Palo Alto), Andrew Ryan of Alex Brown Venture Capital Services (New York and San Francisco), and a group of undisclosed angel investors.
The startup is building infrastructure to simplify secondary transactions in private companies—an area that has struggled to scale despite a massive and growing market.
A $4 Trillion Bottleneck
Venture-backed companies are staying private longer, and the IPO window has remained largely shut for the past two years. The result: a growing backlog of illiquid equity.
According to Blackstone, the average time companies stay private has more than doubled—from about six years in 2000 to roughly 14 years today.
That shift has created a massive imbalance. More than $4 trillion in private company equity is now held by founders, employees, and early investors. Roughly four million shareholders are sitting on that value, often with no clear way to access it.
At the same time, liquidity remains highly concentrated. Data from Caplight shows over 80% of secondary transaction volume is limited to just ten companies.
Co-founder Alex Lurie pointed to structural friction (cost, opacity, and complexity) as the main reason most secondary transactions never materialize outside a small set of companies.
Infrastructure, Not Timing
Investors say the issue isn’t just market conditions—it’s structural.
“Companies are staying private longer, which means equity is accumulating across millions of shareholders. The infrastructure hasn’t kept up,” said Nick Moran, General Partner at New Stack Ventures.
Earlyasset is positioning itself as that missing layer.
CEO and co-founder Shawn Bercuson frames the problem bluntly: private markets never built the basic systems that make public markets liquid.
“If you own stock in a public company, you know what it’s worth and you can sell it immediately,” Bercuson said. “In private markets, you often have neither. That’s not a cycle issue—it’s a plumbing problem.”
Fixing a Broken Secondary Market
Secondary transactions today are slow, expensive, and fragmented. Deals can take months and often cost $10,000 or more in legal and administrative work—making smaller transactions impractical.
Earlyasset is taking a different approach. Instead of operating as a traditional brokered marketplace, the company plans to:
The goal is to make secondary transactions faster, simpler, and more accessible across a broader set of companies and shareholders.
Launch Plans
Earlyasset plans to launch its platform later this year. Starting today, shareholders can join a waitlist to register holdings, access pricing insights, and request liquidity as the company builds out its investor network.
Learn more at earlyasset.com.