What a change a year makes.
SecondMarket, which helps arrange sales for stock of privately-held companies, said three-fourths of its transactions in the last quarter were for consumer electronics companies. E-commerce made up 19.4 percent of transactions, followed by financial services, which made up 3.6 percent. Consumer web and social media, which made up the bulk of SecondMarket’s deals… → Read More
SecondMarket, which has served as a hub for transactions of pre-IPO Facebook stock for a few years, will have to find some new venture-backed companies to pique investor interest this year. While Facebook is a big loss, there are plenty of other startups that have become hot prospects.
The New York-based company, which arranges secondary sales of stock in venture-backed or privately-held… → Read More
As Erick wrote last week, SecondMarket, the marketplace for alternative investments, has been seeing quite a bit of activity of late. In fact, SecondMarket’s private stock transactions in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. SecondMarket lays out all these stats and more in its third quarter report, including the breakdown… → Read More
Demand for private company shares declined in the second quarter versus the first quarter but was up sharply year-over-year, according to a new report released today by SecondMarket. The market for private company stock saw $112 million in transactions last quarter, versus $156 million in the first quarter, or down 39 percent sequentially. On an annual basis, however, it was up 120 percent over… → Read More
I find myself conflicted about secondary markets. My cautionary side wonders how these private stock sales can potentially distort incentives within companies and artificially impact valuations. The libertarian side of me, however, says all in business is fair game. Everything can be bought or sold. Everyone has a price.
There’s clearly supply and demand in this market, but its effects are… → Read More
Facebook shares on private secondary markets like SecondMarket and SharesPost spiked briefly in March to $34 – an $85 billion valuation. But they settled down to around $31.50 after that and have mostly stayed around that level since then. But something caused the shares to surge past that old record to a solid $35 per share in this week’s auction. Our guess is that newly public LinkedIn’s… → Read More
Now that LinkedIn has stock is trading publicly,, you can buy and sell shares of the company on the New York Stock Exchange. But its shares have traded before privately among wealthy individuals and other accredited investors on secondary markets such as SecondMarket. The chart above shows the price history of LinkedIn’s stock between April, 2010 and March 2011 on SecondMarket.
On SecondMarket… → Read More
Are sales of private company shares taking a breather? Demand for private company shares resulted in $115.4 million worth of transactions on SecondMarket during the first quarter of 2011, down from $120 million last year. The value of shares trading hands was also down from $158 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to its first quarter report.
The biggest buyers were high… → Read More
Just 10 days ago, we noted that Facebook had hit a new valuation record as shares on the secondary markets surged some 5 percent to $31.50 a share. That auction was through SecondMarket and put the on-paper valuation of the company at roughly $78.75 billion (based on roughly 2.5 billion shares outstanding). Today — again, just 10 days later — we have another Facebook share auction that has… → Read More
A little over $8 million changed hands in this week’s SecondMarket Facebook shares auction. And the price surged $1.50 per share, or about 5%, over last week’s record price of $30/share. 257,422 shares were bought and sold.
That values Facebook, with roughly 2.5 billion shares outstanding, at $78.75 billion. Or, 17 Twitters and change.
The confidential (lol) email and part of the attached report… → Read More
Last week, in our weekly report on the insanely hot Facebook stock trading going on behind the scenes on SecondMarket, I wrote the following: “Do I hear $75 billion next week?” I was sort of kidding. But it looks like the joke is on me!
Sure enough, Facebook did hit a $75 billion valuation on SecondMarket this week, a new record. → Read More
And we’re back again with our now weekly update on the insanity surrounding Facebook’s stock in the SecondMarket auctions. Last week, the stock saw the beginning of a rally back to $27 a share, good for a $67.5 billion valuation (based on roughly 2.5 billion shares outstanding). This week, the good times continued to roll. Facebook’s stock hit $28 a share, to push the valuation of the company back… → Read More
Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss have made a co-investment in Facebook on the secondary market. In this video clip posted this week, Rose announces that he and Ferris recently invested in Facebook “before the craziness.” We’ve embedded the video below; Rose talks about the investment just after the 34 minute mark.
We confirmed with Rose that he and Ferriss actually bought shares on secondary market … → Read More
A week ago Facebook shares were being traded at $28.26 per share, a $70 billion valuation. In this week’s auction at SecondMarket the per share price declined just over 7%, to $26.25, a $65.5 billion valuation with around 2.5 billion shares outstanding. That’s a $5 billion decline in valuation. 670,000 shares were sold for a total of around $17.5 million.
Did it peak? I have no idea. We still… → Read More
With shares of Facebook recently hitting a $70 billion valuation in a private auction on SecondMarket, you’d think those are the only shares that trade on the private stock market Facebook did make up the biggest portion of trades (39%) in the fourth quarter of 2010, but the market for private shares is broad and demand is strong for all sort of shares from LinkedIn (7%) and Etsy (5%) to Chegg… → Read More
The SecondMarket Facebook shares auctions are back on after a holiday break, and the valuation is up big time. The last auction prior to this one closed December 15 at $22.75/share. Today it hit $28.26 per share. With 2. 5 billion or so shares outstanding, that’s a $70.65 billionish valuation. A month and a half ago shares were trading on SecondMarket at a $50 billion valuation.
What’s changed? → Read More
Just as the Securities and Exchange Commission is starting to take a closer look at the increasing amount of trading in private company stock, a new startup that’s been in stealth mode since August, 2009 is preparing to launch another way to trade private shares. The company is Xpert Financial which, through its registered subsidiary, Xpert Securities, brings to the table a tacit stamp of… → Read More
Back in early 2009, I was concerned about the development of private stock secondary market exchanges. I was concerned that it would affect retention of top executives if people were able to cash out before an IPO too easily. I worried companies wouldn’t be careful enough about who they would allow to own chunks of them. I thought it would be just a band-aid for a larger industry problem of… → Read More
We’ve been tracking these fabulous SecondMarket Facebook stock auctions for the last three weeks. The shares hit a roughly $50 billion valuation in a big auction in late November, when $40 million changed hands. Last week the price edged up 1.2% to $21.01.
This week’s auction has now closed as well. The closing price was $21.90, up 4.2% from last week. Someone actually guessed that price in our… → Read More
It was just a few weeks ago that Accel Partners sold off around half a billion dollars of Facebook shares at a company valuation of $35 billion. If you thought that was insane, and a lot of commenters did, then don’t read the rest of this post. You’ll only get more jealous.
Around $40 million changed hands last week in a Facebook share auction held by SecondMarket. The end price per share was… → Read More
Private company stock trading startup SecondMarket just released their Q3 transaction report. The highlight – Facebook continues to dominate with 37% of total transactions, although SecondMarket doesn’t break out the total size of those transactions. Nearly $75 million worth of stock flowed through them in the last three months, though (up from $51 million in Q2):
The SecondMarket private company… → Read More
The World Economic Forum has announced its list of 31 Technology Pioneers for 2011. The Technology Pioneers are its list of up-and-coming startups. Last year’s list included Twitter, Playfish, and Boston Power. The year before, Mint, Etsy, and Brightcove were named.
Joining the pantheon this year are foursquare, Knewton, Layar, Scribd, and Spotify. However, greentech is equally strong on the… → Read More
StockTwits has built a business out of people tweeting their thoughts and actions around various public stocks. SecondMarket has built a business out of people interested in the buying and selling of various private stocks. It seems only natural to shove the two together. Which is exactly what they’re doing today with a new partnership.
As you may be aware, to send a tweet to StockTwits, you have… → Read More
If Facebook were a publicly traded company, its market value would rival Yahoo’s and be ten times bigger than AOL’s, if demand for its private shares are any indication. Shares of Facebook on private-company stock market SecondMarket are going through the roof right now. This week, Facebook shares traded on SecondMarket passed $50, giving Facebook a total market value of $25 billion, according… → Read More
Facebook, Twitter, and other places people gather, socialize and share, have turned out to be ideal app platforms. At TechCrunch Disrupt, we’re taking this trend offline. Disrupt is our media and technology conference starting tomorrow. Check out our amazing agenda. And yes, we will sell tickets at the door. Disrupt-as-platform started yesterday with our developer-packed Hack Day and Scrapyard… → Read More
Facebook shares just keep going up on SecondMarket, a platform for buying and selling private company stock. Sales are now being closed at $50/share, we’ve heard from a source (and we’ve confirmed that the best asking price is also $50/share). That values Facebook at around $22.5 billion.
That’s a 100% increase since January, just a couple of months ago.
Part of the quick increase may be due to… → Read More
Transactions of private-company stock on SecondMarket nearly doubled in March, rising to $70 million from $43.8 million in February. It is the highest amount that has ever been traded on SecondMarket. The stats are in its March report, which you can download here.
A full 41% of the transactions were sales of Facebook stock, compared to 48% in January. We’ve reported that these sales are being… → Read More
In January, private company stock marketplace SecondMarket published data on private company stock sales that they helped complete in 2009. And February’s report showed the transactions that took place in January, which showed a strong demand for consumer products and services startups. The majority of transactions in January were sales of Facebook stock. SecondMarket just released its February… → Read More
Last month SecondMarket published data on private company stock sales that they helped complete in 2009. They’ve now released last month’s data as well.
A total of a little more than $13 million in sales occurred, with the average transaction size of around $2 million. There continues to be very strong demand for consumer products and services startups (which includes companies like Facebook… → Read More
SecondMarket opened up its private company stock marketplace in early 2009 and gave employees at hot startups something they never had before – an organized place to sell their stock even before the company went public or was acquired. For the first time the company is releasing information on private company buy/sell demand and completed transactions.
Most companies don’t like SecondMarket one… → Read More
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