Startups are waiting far longer to go public, leaving employees with valuable equity they cannot easily cash in. Data from Morningstar Indexes and PitchBook cited by Sifted shows the average time from founding to IPO has stretched from 6.9 years in 2014 to 11 years in 2024. That shift has made secondary share sales—where employees sell existing shares to new buyers—a practical alternative to waiting for an exit.
Regular liquidity programs are becoming a competitive expectation rather than a perk. Revolut, Stripe, and OpenAI already use them, and Crowdcube co-CEO Matt Cooper describes the trend as a "secondaries arms race." Moneybox recently ran a £45m secondary sale, with eligibility rules tied to tenure and share limits, to reward long-serving staff without pushing them out the door.
The London Stock Exchange has launched the Private Securities Market to support this demand, letting private companies run intermittent liquidity auctions while staying private. The goal, as Cooper puts it, is to separate liquidity from a full exit. For founders, the challenge is no longer whether to offer liquidity, but how to structure it fairly and sustainably.