Europe's tech secondaries market is booming, with high-profile scaleups like Revolut, ElevenLabs and Lovable using secondary sales to hand liquidity to early investors and employees while resetting their valuations. The trend has become one of the most talked-about topics in European tech over the past year.
But the article questions whether this boom is only serving the top 1%. One investor quoted in the piece estimates that only 1% to 8% of the ecosystem can participate, describing the market as a game for the wealthy. The concern is that secondary liquidity is flowing to insiders and the wealthy, rather than spreading across the startup community.
The piece also highlights a large secondary component in a $20B Series G round for Revolut, which allowed early employees and investors to sell shares. However, critics argue that such liquidity events are not accessible to most founders and employees, and that the market is increasingly driven by investors chasing a few winners. The article suggests that the boom may be creating a two-tier system, where the biggest names benefit while the rest are left out.