Unlocking $4 Trillion in private company equity
Millions of shareholders are sitting on valuable but illiquid equity — years of work locked in shares they can't sell, at prices they've never been able to verify.
Unlike traditional secondary marketplaces, Earlyasset combines transaction infrastructure with capital to expand liquidity beyond the small number of companies that dominate today's market.
Find out what your equity is actually worth
Return capital to LPs via managed liquidity
Manage secondary transactions with SecondaryOS
The problem, right now
Life doesn't wait for an IPO.
The average venture-backed company stays private for more than twelve years. During that time, employees get married, buy homes, start families, pay for school, change jobs, and build lives — all while a meaningful portion of their net worth sits locked in shares they can't easily access.
It's not just employees. Venture funds are sitting on aging positions too — with LPs waiting years for capital to be returned. As fund hold periods extend, the pressure to find liquidity before a traditional exit grows. The secondary market should serve both — and largely hasn't.
The equity is real. The liquidity isn't. And for the vast majority of private shareholders, there's been no reliable way to bridge that gap.
Private market
$4T
Estimated value locked in private company equity globally
Average hold period
12+ yrs
Before venture-backed employees see any liquidity event
Market access today
<5%
Of private shareholders have access to meaningful secondary market liquidity
The founding story
Built by people who lived this problem firsthand.
In 2010, Earlyasset co-founder Shawn Bercuson was facing a problem with no clean answer. He had options in Groupon — a company he helped start — that would expire when he left. Exercising them meant a tax bill he couldn't afford. His only way out was liquidity: find a buyer, get cash, cover the taxes. What followed was a crash course in how broken the secondary market was. Opaque pricing, no reliable path to a transaction, almost no infrastructure to support someone in his position.
The venture secondary market has grown significantly since then. The experience for most shareholders hasn't. The same friction — fragmented processes, opaque pricing, limited access — still defines the market for everyone outside a handful of high-profile names.
Earlyasset was built to change that. Our goal is to increase the breadth and depth of the venture secondary market — reducing friction so that more shareholders, across more companies, can actually access the liquidity their equity represents.
The Founders
Shawn Bercuson
Co-Founder & CEO
Shawn is co-founder and CEO of Earlyasset. He first encountered the secondary market in 2010 while trying to exercise options in Groupon — a company he helped found — before they expired. Facing a tax bill he couldn't cover without liquidity, he discovered firsthand how inaccessible the market was. That experience became the foundation for Earlyasset. Prior to founding the company, Shawn was founder and managing director at BullVC Fund, a venture secondary firm. He holds a degree in economics from Vanderbilt University.
Alex Lurie
Co-Founder
Alex is a co-founder of Earlyasset with a background in venture secondaries and corporate law. Prior to Earlyasset, he was at 137 Ventures, a leading secondary venture firm, where he led key legal and business development initiatives that helped expand the firm's investment portfolio and strategic partnerships. Earlier in his career, Alex was a corporate transactional lawyer at an international law firm. He holds a math degree from Stanford University and a law degree from William & Mary Law School.
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