Has anyone sold their employee stock on the secondary market?

I haven't personally, but I know people that have. The people that I know that sold shares used Equity Zen (https://equityzen.com/). The company I worked for has/had a "first right of refusal" option in the equity contracts, which basically means that when EquityZen offers you a deal, you have to bring the deal to your company and they can decide to buy your shares for the same price instead of letting you sell your shares to an outside party (which they might not want).

Not sure why this is Marked dead. Seems like a perfect question for this forum. I too would like to know the answer.

Yes, with SharesPost, equityzen and Forge. Company had a pretty standard policy so approval was straightforward but took a few months and required some legal opinions (costing $,$$$). In my case the deal was for the shares directly. Biggest lesson was really just that the fees really added up (near 10% if under $100k) and it’s a shame more companies don’t do more to broker these deals on employees behalf to get the best price and cut out the middlemen (another employer did this and it was great).

DM if I can help with more info, experience with each company was essentially the same and you should just reach out to all of them to see who has inbound buy requests at the highest price. Worth noting that there is more room for negotiation on price than you might expect.

I sold once with Equityzen and once with a different company, I forget the name. Both times were great, but it took years from start to finish. They’ll help you through the process. The fees were levels below the taxes, not bad at all. If you are interested and your company is listed on secondary sites, why not list some shares and see if anything comes through.

>Were you able to sell?

yes, the company allowed people to sell up to 25% of vested shares if you were employed for more than 24 months

>What platform did you use?

Carta

> Were you able to sell w/o board approval? If so, were you able to use private forward contracts to complete a deal?

No

Anecdotally, this same line of thinking revealed the utter worthlessness of my ISOs upon leaving a company that is valued below a billion dollars and is not on a clear IPO trajectory.

I'm also curious if anyone has purchased secondary market shares and what that experience is like.

I used EquityZen a few times to sell shares and had a good experience with them. The main things I'd do differently are probably not hire a lawyer or at least find one I knew specialized in startups (I had the first deal with a lawyer and subsequent without and it just seemed to add friction without value, but who knows...I'm not a lawyer haha) and learn about Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) for tax purposes/talk to accountant that specialized in startups. The accountant I did talk to (recommended by my lawyer :-p) didn't mention this at all even though it did qualify.

The deals did need board approval, but it seemed like it was more to determine whether they wanted to exercise the right of first refusal (they did in the first deal and did not in subsequent), but maybe standard terms have changed since the rise of secondary market platforms. It was a bit nerve-wracking the first time since I didn't know what I was doing and I was most likely the first person to do it at the company, but it ended up working out fine (probably also worth noting I was no longer an employee at the time of the deals). Good luck!

I'm curious about this as well. Does your employer know that you sold or not?

Check out exchange funds, or sometimes called swap funds. They are designed for this exact purpose.

I approached VCs that already invested into the company and they were willing to buy from me.

How about startup advisors? Or others who have received slivers of equity?