Our 2023 pre-IPO market year-end review and 2024 forecast is now available at www.caplight.com/insights.
It's easy to doom spiral these days. Especially in Venture and VC secondaries-land. If you look under a rock right now you'll find another reason to be worried about the 2024 market environment. A 'will they/won't they' Fed, global geo-political risk, skittish IPO calendar, and a looming US election are all easy things to point to when rationalizing waffling through another year. But at Caplight, to start 2024, we're choosing optimism. We collected $1 billion of closed VC secondary trade data last year. There are gems in the numbers, so we decided to share our findings here: www.caplight.com/insights. We noticed a clear rebound in market activity starting in June last year that picked up momentum before the holidays. Holding aside macro risk, we expect more VC secondary deals in 2024 than in 2023. The opportunity is explained as follows: 1) Secondary funds (PE + VC) had the best fundraising performance last year of all categories. Investors want managers to find attractive secondary opportunities. *(market demand force)* 2) Dry powder amongst funds remains near all-time highs. How much longer can funds hold off on actually deploying capital raised? *(market demand force)* 3) Many funds that invested in pre-IPO companies w/ active secondary markets are 8+ yrs old, creating pressure to return capital in a DPI-starved environment. *(market supply force)* We've built tooling to help investors and brokers in the pre-IPO secondary market understand the market opportunity. Let me know if you want a demo of the latest. We love illuminating this opaque market, and we have much more to do. See you out there!