Silbert's SecondMarket Joins Greifeld's Private Market in Deal
- Private share pioneer becomes part of Nasdaq non-public market
- Combined marketplace to be led by SecondMarket CEO Bill Siegel
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Back when Mark Zuckerberg was still at Harvard, a guy named Barry Silbert opened a private club for future Facebooks of the world. The idea was this: Let people trade stock in hot young companies -- before those companies go public.
At the time, it seemed crazy. A decade on, Silbert’s creation, SecondMarket Solutions Inc., has drawn the interest of Nasdaq Inc., which bought it for an undisclosed sum to combine with its own market for non-public companies, Nasdaq Private Market. The price was said to be less than $10 million, according to a person briefed on the deal. Their merged client base will include more than 200 private companies, including Pinterest Inc., Tango Inc. and DocuSign Inc.