EquityZen

@staringispolite : yes, pretty much. I discussed it with my uncle, who works for the London stock exchange. He said how they would refer to it is that you're trading on a derivative of the stock; rather than magic ;)

So is it essentially some legal magic where investors pay for a contract with the equity holder in exchange for money up front? (Investor gets rights to all profits in the event of a sale, but equity doesn't actually change hands until a change of control/liquidity event as usual?)

These guys are really awesome. Tackling a big problem (lack of options for generating liquidity in pre-IPO companies). There used to be things like SecondMarket, but that is now completely flopping (pivoting to do something in bitcoin I heard), as companies don't want random people on their cap table. I think EquityZen has the potential to be huge in the future.

This sounds great. Guessing the company needs to OK this before employees do this, or is it not needed b/c you're not actually selling your shares? Also, didn't hear SecondMarket was making a move to bitcoin stuff - I thought they were still doing a similar thing?

@KristoferTM - I won't pretend to know much about this but most companies have a right of first refusal (and probably other terms) to prevent employees from selling outside the company. I'm interested to learn more about this though.

@KristoferTM - While the shares aren't being transferred, we still require company involvement. Also, more questions are available on our FAQ page (link is above). Thanks!

@KristoferTM looks like bitcoin link in the top right of secondmarket. But basically I hear their struggling, as no private company wants anonymous random people on their cap table, getting voting rights etc.