Valuations are sinking. Exits are down. And VCs, who may be anxiously eyeing the value of their portfolios, are looking for options to give their investors, or limited partners, liquidity. According to one investor focusing on buying up secondary stakes, firms are having more and more conversations to make those deals happen.
“The quality and the quantity of conversations has really exploded,” Ravi Viswanathan, the founder and managing partner of NewView Capital, told me last week. NewView specializes in buying up stakes of companies from other VC firms or from companies themselves, in addition to funding new rounds and follow-on investments. And from Viswanathan’s vantage point, 2023 so far has seen an influx of interest in selling shares.
