Startups Turn to Share Sales to Retain Talent

NewView and Carta have entered a strategic partnership designed to simplify the process by which startup employees can sell portions of their stock holdings. The collaboration aims to address a growing pain point in the venture capital ecosystem, where many companies remain private for extended periods, leaving staff with little opportunity to monetize equity compensation before a final exit event.

The core mechanism of this initiative is the tender offer. In these transactions, approved buyers purchase specific shares from employees and, in some instances, early investors at a predetermined price. As the average timeline for public listings or acquisitions lengthens, late-stage companies are increasingly adopting this model to provide internal liquidity. By combining NewView's expertise in structuring secondary deals with Carta's established equity management platform, the two firms hope to reduce the administrative and logistical friction that often discourages companies from launching such programs.

Ravi Viswanathan, the founder and managing partner of NewView, emphasized that the partnership is intended to help CEOs view liquidity programs as a routine operational tool rather than a complex exception. He described the goal as making it easier for leadership teams to consider tenders, framing early liquidity as a mutually beneficial arrangement for employees, the company, and its investors. Viswanathan noted that recent data from NewView Capital and Carta indicates a significant shift in market behavior, with tender offers among Series C and later-stage startups projected to have tripled over the last three years.

This growth is not restricted to the largest private giants like OpenAI or Anduril. Viswanathan cited Hightouch, a marketing customization firm, as an example of a company that utilized a tender offer led by NewView last year. At that time, the seven-year-old startup was valued at 1.3 billion dollars. This illustrates how mid-sized private companies are now embracing these mechanisms to manage their capital structures and employee expectations.

Despite this upward trend, the practice is not yet standard. Research from the partners found that only 44 tender offers were executed in the first half of 2026, which represents a small fraction of eligible startups. Viswanathan argues that these offers serve as critical retention tools and morale boosters, particularly as the traditional recruiting pitch of eventual unicorn status loses its appeal. He suggested that a tender offer allows a company to explicitly promise liquidity during the employee's tenure, a distinction that has become more valuable as the number of billion-dollar firms increases.

Recent examples of companies using this approach include Decagon, an AI customer support platform, Wayve, a self-driving technology developer, and ElevenLabs, an AI voice generator that conducted two such offerings in less than a year. Viswanathan indicated that the trend of prolonged private ownership is likely to persist, with companies now staying private for 12 to 15 years. To prevent a steady migration of talent from venture-backed startups to public competitors, he stated that ensuring liquidity for employees is no longer optional but a necessary strategy for long-term stability.

The partnership signals a broader recognition that equity compensation requires a clearer path to value realization. By lowering the barriers to entry for secondary sales, NewView and Carta are attempting to formalize a practice that has historically been ad hoc. This shift may influence how founders structure their hiring and retention strategies in an environment where the exit window remains uncertain.