Public market investors are spoiled for options when it comes to tracking their holdings, from newfangled platforms like Robinhood to incumbents like Fidelity. But markets are shifting, with massive companies such as SpaceX staying private longer, and alternative asset vehicles like private credit growing in popularity. The New York-based fintech startup Arch is building what CEO Ryan Eisenman describes as the “Schwab for private markets”—and it just raised a $52 million Series B led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Menlo Ventures, Craft Ventures, and Quiet Capital.
While it may be tough to feel sympathy for wealthy family offices and limited partners, or investors in venture capital and private equity funds, they have an undeniably difficult job tracking what can be thousands of investments across different firms, which each have their own portals. Eisenman, who started his career as an analyst at Deloitte, described their plight as “death by a thousand paper cuts.” As a result, it can be cumbersome for private market investors to keep tabs on the status of their capital across different firms, let alone how it’s performing and allocated, outside of Excel spreadsheets.
